In the quiet, I start thinking. Mostly about how dumb it was to chain myself to a tree because I wanted to be friends with someone. A little about how lucky it was that Gideon came to my rescue, because though I do have a sleeping bag and a tent and enough water and calories to stay alive for a few days, I’d be miserable at best.
And I think about how it was Gideon of all people who rescued me, and how maybe we’re over what happened, now, twenty years later, though neither of us have said anything, and maybe the past is in the past and doesn’t matter anymore. We’re all present in the present moment and whatnot and no one is dwelling on things that happened a long time ago and that we can’t change.
But also, I told my parents that I was with someone named Steve Wheeler—a person who doesn’t exist, as far as I know—and Gideon definitely overheard me because the cabin is very small, and now I have to live with yet another awkward, unspoken thing between us.
“What’s a bear tree?” I ask, because he mentioned it last night and I might lose my mind in the quiet.
Gideon clears his throat and takes his time to answer.
“It’s a tree that bears like to rub themselves on,” he finally says, talking over his shoulder to me. “They do it partly to mark their territory, and partly just because they’re itchy. I think the one near the cabin has particularly satisfying bark, and it’s in the middle of the range of several females.”
I take a moment to extrapolate some of that information.
“So that tree is part back-scratcher and part Tinder for bears,” I say. “How come humans don’t have something like that? It’s a great idea.”
He glances at me again, and the path has leveled out a little, so we’re both stomping through a foot of snow more or less side-by-side. I wonder if we should have snowshoes or something. Tennis rackets, maybe? I’m not sure I’ve ever actually seen a snowshoe in real life, given that I grew up half in Virginia and half in New Jersey and have never once been a trapper living alone in a rugged wilderness.
Until today, at least, though I’m still not a trapper. Not that I’m above it at the moment. I’ll eat a squirrel if I need to.
“Have you tried gluing a back scratcher to your phone?” he asks, and it’s hard to tell through the beard and with the hat and the coat zipped all the way up, but there’s a movement at the corner of Gideon’s mouth that almost looks like a smile.
“I didn’t realize it was an option until today,” I tell him. “So, the cabin is a hundred feet from a black bear pickup spot. Can they open doors?”
“They’re not around right now,” he says, which I notice doesn’t answer the question. “They mostly hibernate in the winter.”
“Mostly.”
Gideon exhales, his breath puffing out and disappearing upward until it’s indistinguishable from the steel-gray of the clouds above, flat and monochrome.
“This far south, black bears don’t hibernate as strictly as they do further north, since our winters aren’t generally as harsh,” he says. “The cubs stay in the den, but adult bears often come out between long naps and do some foraging during the winter months.”
“And here I thought that having a foot of snow on the ground at least meant a bear-free vacation.”
“They’re just black bears,” he says. “As long as you don’t go near the cubs, they’re—”
“I know, I know, it was a joke,” I say, because I also partly grew up in the Blue Ridge and am well-versed in our ursine friends. “Are there any actually dangerous animals out here?”
“A few,” he says, grabs onto a tree trunk, and leans past it. “Hold on.”
I realize he’s leaning out over a steep hillside, and that it’s the same one we climbed up last night. It looks much scarier from this direction, and also completely different. I’d never have recognized it. Truthfully, the landscape in the snow looks so strange and flat that I didn’t even realize I was about to fall right down it.
“Oh,” I say, helpfully.
“This is why I wanted to come alone,” he says, but it’s more matter-of-fact than annoyed.
“So no one would know if you fell and broke a leg?”
“So I wouldn’t have to worry about you falling and breaking a leg,” he says, putting down the pack that he’s carrying and opening it. “I’m fine.”
It’s at least the third time I’ve heard some variation on that from him in less than twenty-four hours, and it’s starting to sound like a mantra. I wonder if Gideon ever worries about himself. How often he considers that he might be in danger. Whether he takes himself into account at all, or whether anyone else ever does. Whether anyone else ever really has.
“It’s a tie-down strap!” I say as he pulls a long, red strap with metal buckles from the pack.
“Yes.”
“I told you.”
Gideon gives me a long-suffering look and wraps the strap around the base of a tree, securing it with the ratchet. He’s knotted it every eighteen inches or so, and he tests it by leaning his weight away and pulling as hard as he can.
It makes his pants—which are thick and very practical and not sexy pants, like, at all—go tight around his thighs, which… I notice.
“Okay,” he says, swinging his pack back onto his back and buckling it across his chest. “I’m going first. When you come down, hang onto the strap. I think you’ll be fine anyway, but it never hurts to take an extra precaution.”
“Did you only bring it because I came along?” I ask, and Gideon just gives me a look and starts down the slope without answering.
We both get to the bottom without incident, though there is one part where I slip and slide several feet, banging one knee in the process. When I get to the bottom Gideon frowns at me—what a surprise—and watches disapprovingly while I brush myself off.
“Want me to take a look?” he offers.
“At what?”
Another disbelieving look, which Gideon seems to hand out like candy on Halloween.
“The knee you just smashed into a granite outcropping,” he says.
“I didn’t smash it and it was a rock, not an outcropping,” I say. “I’m fine.” It hurts, and it’ll definitely bruise, but I’ve survived bruises before and I’ll survive them again. Gideon sighs and starts walking.
The ground here is a little trickier, a slope that’s rockier and has more fallen branches than before, so we go silent for a while. Gideon won’t quit glancing over at me like I’m going to collapse at any moment, and I wish he’d quit it.
“You didn’t answer me,” I finally say after are you going to survive this short walk in the woods look number two hundred and thirty-eight. “About what dangerous animals are out here.”
“In theory or in practice?”
I don’t know what that means. “Both?”
“In theory, mountain lions,” he says, stepping over a large rock. Something crunches underfoot. “If you come up against a hundred and fifty pounds of big, angry cat, you don’t stand much of a chance. But they hardly ever go after humans.”
“Oh,” I say, and look around at the snowy forest. I don’t see any mountain lions, but I’m not sure that counts for a lot. Cats are notoriously sneaky. “Hardly ever.”