Page 68 of Wild About You
My eyes are so laser-focused on my kinda-s’mores that I barely notice the next platform is coming up in time to ready my feet for as soft a landing as I can manage. I don’t take another breath until I’m standing up straight again, processing what I see on my plate.
“IT’S GOOD!” I shout, like a commentator on all the football games my dad watches.
Finn, when he lands a couple minutes after me, is not so lucky, with all three graham cracker tops falling over. I can hear his creative, expletive-filled grumblings about how much he hates graham crackers for half his hike back up the hill, where he has to climb our stairs to the first platform and try again. His second trip down, the crackers redeem themselves, earning us the next envelope from the second zip line attendant.
From there, it’s clear we can both feel our team hitting our stride. I see it flash in Finn’s eyes as I hand over more lip balm–covered cotton pads assembled from my toiletry kit, and he uses them to quickly get a fire going in one of the familiar metal fire rings. It’s in the smile I can’t suppress while we toast the marshmallows as instructed.
When we get our next instructions, after speed-hiking to the end of our side trail where it meets back up with the AT, Finn reads them aloud, a smile stretching wider across his face with each word. “ ‘Co-EdVenturers, this is your last leg—use it to make some trail magic for your fellow hikers. You’ll do this by handing out the six s’mores you’ve made, each to a different hiker you meet. You must find hikers willing to consume the s’more then and there, and they must finish it before you continue on. You have three miles from here to the checkpoint in which to distribute all your s’mores. See you at the finish line!’ ”
I meet his hopeful grin with a gasp, raising the little storage container of s’mores I’ve been holding onto for reasons unknown until now. “I get to talk to people?!”
“Unless you want me to take the lead on this one,” he teases.
My laugh echoes off the trees as I begin to jog. “Here I was, thinking you wanted to win!”
I’m probably a little too confident in my sweet-talking abilities, and the universe decides it needs to humble me. It only takes interacting with the first few strangers to cross our path for team morale to sink.
“Where the fuck did all these hikers with food sensitivities come from?!” I screech when the latest guy to reject our s’mores is barely out of earshot. “Which is worse, Steve—you getting a wittle tummy ache from one square of chocolate, or me dropping out of college!”
The stifled snicker from the production crew peanut gallery is less gratifying in this instance. Finn takes my hand and squeezes as we resume our brisk pace.
“Plenty of trail left,” he says with a confidence I’m not quite feeling after three failed “trail magic” attempts. “We can absolutely do this.”
I definitely frighten every person I talk to from then on out, jumping down their throats with enough enthusiasm behind my “let me watch you eat my s’more” plea. They definitely think there’s s’more than just chocolate and marshmallows inside. But when I explain our situation as briefly as I can, the big TV camera beside me backing up my story, I start to get takers.
Turns out, making anyone stand there and let you watch them eat a room-temperature s’more you assembled a while ago is not the kind of beautiful connection with my fellow humans and hikers that I’d longed for when I first started walking the AT. Reviews aren’t glowing.
“Why is it kind of damp?” asks a decently good-looking twentysomething guy. Attractive or not, I don’t want to explain to him the concept of condensation when you put hot things in less-hot containers.
“I think this has some ash in it,” says a nice older woman a few minutes later, delivering the news apologetically.
“Thank god we don’t have a Yelp page,” I tell Finn after giving our third s’more out to a middle-aged man whose dismayed expression spoke volumes. “Why is torturing innocent hikers considered ‘trail magic’?”
“I’m sure if they understood the scope of the good deed they did today, it would feel more magical,” he offers.
I’m tired, and filthy, and sore in places I didn’t know could get sore. I know Finn is too. But he doesn’t complain. He stays patient with me when I have to slow down a little because of a stitch in my side or when I want to gripe about a total stranger’s gluten intolerance keeping them from eating graham crackers.
I know it’s a conscious effort to stay calm and positive. I’m acutely aware of what’s on the line, so much that I can’t let myself think about it, about all I have to lose. About the fact that we still haven’t seen Zeke and Enemi, and I have no clue if that’s a good or bad thing.
“I have to say,” Finn says while we speed-walk onward, apparently reading my mind, “it’s getting a little weird that we haven’t spotted the other team once since this morning. Like, did they only decide to cut their log in three pieces and do it in half the time we did? Or did they catch all six marshmallows on fire?”
“Yeah,” I agree. “Did a tree fall on Enemi, totally unrelated to the challenge, and crush all but the ruby slippers on her feet?”
“You sound a little too hopeful with that one.”
I shrug. Finn bumps his shoulder to mine with a laugh. “Point is, we don’t have a clue how close of a race we’re in.”
He doesn’t say it, but I’m sure we’re thinking the same thing—it feels closer by the minute.
It turns out I’m right about this, as we turn on a ridge that gives us a clear view of a section of trail we walked about ten minutes ago.
“NO!” Enemi’s shriek, coming only seconds after I’ve spotted her and Zeke back there and they’ve realized we’re in the lead, could probably be heard clear across the country. Hikers on the Pacific Crest Trail will be left wondering what kind of bird that far-off, irregular call came from.
“Is that the last guy we gave a s’more to?” Finn asks, referring to the familiar middle-aged man shaking his head—and holding out his hands defensively, for good measure—as he passes our competitors.
My laugh is delirious, a little unhinged, and too hopeful to be contained. “It is. Looks like he didn’t want seconds.”
This peek into the others’ progress, or lack thereof, reinvigorates us both. We begin jogging again, determined to keep our lead. Our fresh enthusiasm is rewarded when the trail magic fairies smile upon us, sending the two friendliest backpackers I’ve ever encountered straight into our path—and into our hearts forever when they take and eat our last two s’mores.