1.<\/p>\n

B<\/span>elow a ridge above Little Hell Roaring Creek, I lead Greg off the trail.\u00a0 To our south, glaciations and alpine erosions have carved up steep, knife-edged ridges, wrinkled, craggy peaks, and deep, cereal-bowl cirques yet littered with winter\u2019s leftovers.\u00a0\u00a0I want to show him the view from here, but we still need to bushwhack higher.<\/p>\n

This should at least give him a good taste, I tell myself\u2014knowing that even when we do reach the ridge, we won\u2019t yet see the looking-glass lakes and speckled alpine meadows from last summer.\u00a0 For now, they remain untouched since last fall, squished into the cold, stubborn fists of this range.\u00a0 By midsummer, the sun, wind, and water will have meted out from its cracked and calloused palms killer fly-fishing hideouts\u2014lakes blazing with cutthroat trout salmon-orange from an endless sea of zooplankton.<\/p>\n

We stop at mid-slope for air and I reach around my pack for water.\u00a0\u00a0The bottle is stashed in a handy outside pocket\u2014one usually reserved for my radio.\u00a0\u00a0Today, though, the dead weight of a speaker, wires, and two accompanying battery packs lay deep beneath the driver\u2019s seat in the greeny rig three miles back at Spanish Creek.\u00a0\u00a0Minimizing pack load is working smarter, not harder, I tell myself.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s Indian Ridge, I say, pointing to a high, white crease between us and Gallatin Peak, the highest mountain around.\u00a0 Several peaks not far from here top 11,000 feet, I add.<\/p>\n

Where are we? asks Greg.<\/p>\n

The northeast boundary of the Spanish Peaks, I say.<\/p>\n

How far to the Lee Metcalf Wilderness?<\/p>\n

It\u2019s our first day, I remind myself.\u00a0 He\u2019s winded, needs water, and still hasn\u2019t found his bearings yet.\u00a0 While the ten-mile day-hike from the greeny at Spanish, over the crest, down Logger Creek to Greg\u2019s rig parked on the Gallatin seems like\u00a0a good test run for our plan, I am still sketchy of the dynamics: me, the sojourning undergrad\/lone wilderness ranger leading through the backcountry, the\u00a0satirist, singer, poet, painter, English professor, and now my fellow fishing addict, and wilderness volunteer,\u00a0Greg Keeler.<\/p>\n

You\u2019re standing in it, I tell him removing my ball cap, content with just carrying it the rest of the way up.\u00a0 The Spanish Peaks\u00a0Unit <\/em>of the Lee Metcalf, I emphasize.<\/p>\n

<\/a>The slope\u2019s tall sage brush and heartleaf arnica tickle my calves, reaffirming why I always wear cruising shorts in the backcountry.\u00a0 The ridge at last gives yields a 360-degree panorama, reminding me again of how enveloped we are.\u00a0 \u00a0Adjacent to the north, the prairie and pines wind together across Ted Turners\u2019 Flying-D Ranch, home for some 3,000 head of free-roaming bison.<\/p>\n

Sprawling over twice the size of the wilderness, the ranch buffers us from a heavily cultivated maze of bone-colored stains and shattered mirror reflections beyond.\u00a0 Twenty-five miles north, the Bozeman buzz is nearly audible.\u00a0 Named after a man who in the 1860s left his wife and children in Colorado to mine the miners here, the town is now at full-tilt mining the tourists.<\/p>\n

The Valley of Flowers, Greg says.<\/p>\n

Flowers?<\/p>\n

The English translation for the name the Blackfeet gave the valley. \u00a0He speaks with the same humble tone he does in his Regional Literature or Poetry classes. \u00a0Before Bozeman, Bridger, Lewis and Clark, or any of the rest, pausing in thought, he waves his arm across our view; the valley was a common hunting ground that the tribes agreed belonged to no one.<\/p>\n

And when Clark was headed back, I add, he re-christened it after the U.S. Treasurer.\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that how it went?<\/p>\n

Yep, Greg drops his pack.\u00a0 How the West went.<\/p>\n

Gallatin just sounded manlier, I guess. <\/em>I\u00a0am goading him on and don\u2019t even know it.<\/p>\n

He smiles into the wind and digs into his repertoire. \u00a0We’re men among men and manly men, <\/em>he sings. \u00a0Yes, manly men are we \/ We’re men among manly men among manly \/ Manly men are we.<\/em><\/p>\n

Unbeknownst to me or the birds, I\u2019ve surfaced another character from one of his satirical western melodramas.\u00a0 In a galloping cadence, he belts out to the hills, swinging his arms, elbows bent at his chest, hands slightly fisted.<\/p>\n

We’ll drive out West on a buffalo hunt \/ In a venture bold and daring. \/ We’ll shoot one again and again and again \/ While the others stand there staring. \/ While the others stand there staring<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I laugh and clap in rhythm.<\/p>\n

We’re men among men and manly men. \/ Yes, manly men are we. \/ We’re men among manly men among manly \/ Manly men are we<\/em>.<\/p>\n

When he finishes, his arms and hands relax as he smiles as if for the first time in a week he\u2019s finally taken a shit. He shakes his head and marvels.\u00a0 Such contrast, he says. \u00a0The one naming the place after its aesthetic qualities, the other after, he pauses again looking down at his zipper, well...<\/p>\n

Manly men, we say in unison.<\/p>\n

I hand him my monocular and face us northeast, to the Bridgers\u2014a blue, snowcapped range caressing the opposite side of Gallatin Valley, its southern-most foot emblazoned with whitewashed rocks forming a giant capital M above a smaller rock-formed B.\u00a0 He looks beyond the range, farther to the northeast.<\/p>\n

Must be the Crazies on the other side of the Bridgers, he says.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s working, I figure.\u00a0 He now has his bead.\u00a0 Yes, the Crazies, I say.\u00a0 Named after, well....<\/p>\n

Go ahead. You can say it, says Greg looking around us.\u00a0 I think we\u2019re the only ones up here.<\/p>\n

A woman, right?\u00a0 Some obscure, nameless crazy woman, right?<\/p>\n

Yep, says Greg, busting into a crotchety western drawl.\u00a0\u00a0 Retreated up there after going insane from her family being killed off by Injuns.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t know as I could blame her, I try playing along.<\/p>\n

Blame her?\u00a0 Bah! \u00a0He puffs his chest and throws from his hands more air to the wind.\u00a0 She was a woman. \u00a0 Her name just wasn\u2019t important.\u00a0 It was how she behaved, damn it.<\/p>\n

At last I am struck by what makes my professor and volunteer tick; how satire courses through him like spawning steelhead up raucous rivers, compelling him to mock even the sun, were it to point out the painfully obvious and oblivious.<\/p>\n

A brisk, spring wind slaps our faces.\u00a0 I keep to myself how this place brings me back to my bedrock: wrestling trout up high on Triangle Lake, my two brothers, my cousin, and me baking our adolescence in gleaming snowmelt and limiting out in under an hour; the snow bar that Dad, as president of the Red Lodge Chamber of Commerce, orchestrated each July atop the switchbacks on Beartooth Highway, his crew pouring free beer and well drinks to everyone headed into town; the rainy, snowy, miserable thirty-two mile trail from Cook City to East Rosebud Lake\u2014the hitch that gave me my first muddy exposure to my own spirituality, while slogging along behind my sister and a dozen other teens from her evangelical church youth group.<\/p>\n

Greg looks west through the monocular to rolling hills covered in timber.<\/p>\n

Cowboy Heaven, I say.<\/p>\n

Right.<\/p>\n

I dig out the topo, tracing for him a favorite horse riding trail for locals, how it bounces and bumps in and out of Alder Creek, Placer Creek, Willow Swamp, and Cherry Creek\u2014four fingers splayed across the foothills like a giant hand\u2014before dropping down into the Beartrap on the Madison.<\/p>\n

Greg climbs on his imaginary pony and cloppity-clops westward like Gene Autry, crowing, boy-cow, boy-cow, boy-cow, boy\u2026<\/p>\n

To the south again, I study access across snow up top, the way the peaks play shadow tag bluffing a ruse against all that fritters away its back side.\u00a0 I remember peeking over that crest last summer, watching picture-perfect Lone Mountain watch the onslaught between us: Big Sky and its multi-million dollar homes, hotels, high-speed trams, ski lodges, golf courses, swimming pools, and cozy coffee bars.\u00a0 One endless hunger feeding another, I figure: aggressive logging and untold more development parsing the scant swatch between the bitter edge of town and designated wilderness.\u00a0 The thin window dividing exploitation from tranquility\u2014everything that is from everything that once was\u2014grows thinner by the day.<\/p>\n

We headed for that snow today? Greg asks.<\/p>\n

Just to the edge, I say swigging water.<\/p>\n

To the map again, I show how a couple miles from here the 401 splits with the south leg winding over Indian Ridge then down below Gallatin Peak along the shore of Thompson Lake\u2014a route I plan to do a couple times later this summer.\u00a0 I then point out the east leg, where we will end up today. \u00a0The line I trace drops down Logger Creek to the Gallatin where Greg parked this morning before climbing into the greeny, then along our road to Spanish Creek.\u00a0 I point back to the trail junction up top. \u00a0Most years, I say, all three trails are blocked by snow through mid-June or July.<\/p>\n

Only to see it fly again by when? Late August, mid-September?<\/p>\n

Even after it does melt, I continue, some will wish it hadn\u2019t for how rare drinking water is up there.<\/p>\n

No drankin springs, huh?\u00a0 His crotchety drawl has resurfaced<\/p>\n

Nope, I tell him.\u00a0 Just a desolate, wind-swept ridge.\u00a0 And it\u2019s not just the lack of water up there.\u00a0 No fire wood, either, the way it stays so far above timberline.<\/p>\n

Which means what for the friendly wilderness ranger? he asks.<\/p>\n

No rock fire rings, I say.\u00a0 Which means no tin cans, no freeze-dried turkey tetrazzini wrappers, no tiny shards of foil littering the ridge, and no alpine shorelines eternally strewn with ass wipe.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m glad you\u2019re not bitter about it, he laughs.<\/p>\n

Still doesn\u2019t stop hunters, I say.\u00a0 Looking for elk, deer, bear, moose, sheep, whatever tag they can fill. And having no tags won\u2019t even stop some.\u00a0 Why would it? \u00a0They\u2019ll still load the mules down with fuel and water and tents and rifles and stoves and beds and coolers and beer and...The sentence nearly turns me blue as I gasp for air.\u00a0 All of it, just to be here.<\/p>\n

2.<\/p>\n

We recline in the shade along the trail for lunch close to the Indian Ridge\/Logger Creek junction.\u00a0 Greg\u2019s white plastic caskets from the morning\u2019s stop at Four Corners have been emptied, the white bread sandwiches devoured along with most of the Cheetos.\u00a0 My dehydrated mangos, apples, and gorp that I made yesterday are nearly gone, as well; deep smoky, salty venison jerky yet lingers through my teeth.<\/p>\n

I lay my head against the mountain and look up to our cerulean ceiling through the few trees remaining at timberline.\u00a0 A lone baby mountain grouse stranded on a branch, I discover, has been doing surveillance over our entire meal.<\/p>\n

I put on my leather gloves and slowly stand. \u00a0Someone needs poked, I say quietly.<\/p>\n

Greg stops crunching his Cheetos and looks at me bewildered, unsure whether he understands.<\/p>\n

I reach up into the tree\u2019s bowels, but can\u2019t quite touch the silent cheeper.<\/p>\n

Jesus, says Greg. \u00a0What the hell is that?<\/p>\n

I pick up my shovel and hold it down by the blade, gently rubbing the tip of the handle along the grouse\u2019s tummy.\u00a0 Pokey, pokey, I say in a cartoonish Mickey Mouse falsetto. Gonna poke me a baby grousey.<\/p>\n

The cheeper clucks and scoots further out on the branch.<\/p>\n

Watch out, says Greg finding a similar falsetto. \u00a0Gonna learn how to fly.\u00a0 Oh boy.\u00a0 Here we go.\u00a0 Where\u2019s my next branchy?<\/p>\n

I nudge the tummy again. \u00a0Pokey, pokey.<\/p>\n

Finally fed up, the cheeper musters a flight to another tree down the draw.\u00a0 The flapping wings spook out two more cheepers, which we also hadn\u2019t noticed.<\/p>\n

Is this what you brought me up here for?<\/p>\n

Like waking from a fuzzy dream, his line brings me back to trail.\u00a0 I gather my containers and schlep on my pack, or it schleps me back on.<\/p>\n

3.<\/p>\n

The sign which I hung on a lodgepole last summer still faces north.\u00a0 It reads:<\/p>\n

Trail 401<\/p>\n

Indian Ridge (an arrow points ahead)<\/p>\n

Spanish Creek Campground (another arrow points right)<\/p>\n

On the tree\u2019s opposite side, a sign facing south reads:<\/p>\n

Logger Creek (an arrow points ahead)<\/p>\n

The signs are cleanly routered and hand-painted in the traditional Forest Service Tudor Brown with sunny, yellow lettering.\u00a0\u00a0 On the north-facing sign, however, beneath the words Spanish Creek, someone wanting to pinpoint themselves has scrawled with a pocket knife\u00a06 mi<\/em>.\u00a0 The distance is being disputed, however, by the one who came later correcting the error with his\/her own pocket knife, scribbling out the first distance and replacing it with\u00a04.5 mi.<\/em><\/p>\n

Why doesn\u2019t the Forest Service just put the distance on these signs?\u00a0 Isn\u2019t that kind of important?<\/p>\n

They used to put distances on them, I say, and I asked the same question the first time I saw that sign down at the District. I rub my fingers over the scrawled distances. \u00a0But the scribbles sort of answer the question for me.\u00a0 One person\u2019s four-point-five is another person\u2019s six, or eight, maybe.\u00a0 Depends.<\/p>\n

On what?<\/p>\n

Context, I suppose.\u00a0 And contents. How heavy is your pack? \u00a0How much water did you bring? Have you slogged through the horse sewer like us? I point to a pile of horse shit next to the sign tree.\u00a0 Or did you sit on your ass the whole way and listen to your horse fart about how far back here he\u2019s lugging you?<\/p>\n

Greg leans against the sign tree, digs in his pack for more water, and belts out another song. \u00a0I\u2019m proud I\u2019m a man \/ and I\u2019m proud I\u2019m right handed. I\u2019m proud I was born well endowed.<\/em><\/p>\n

I recognize this one.\u00a0 He once sang it to me on a fishing trip up Paradise Valley on the Yellowstone.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud of my Ford \/ and my team when they\u2019ve scored \/ and I\u2019m proud I can drive when I\u2019m plowed. I\u2019m proud of George Bush, \/ and I\u2019m proud of my tush, and I\u2019m proud I can fart really loud. And I\u2019m proud to be proud to be proud to be proud to be proud to be proud to be proud.<\/em><\/p>\n

I pick up my shovel and continue along the ridge, fighting back tears of laughter.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud to be white, \/ and I\u2019m proud that I\u2019m right, \/ and I\u2019m proud I\u2019m obnoxious and loud<\/em>.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s not stopping and neither am I, my heavy boots pounding the flat top ridge, thankful for how he keeps away bears.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud of my gun \/ and that we\u2019re number one, \/ and proud I ain\u2019t part of the crowd. \/ I\u2019m proud of my flag, and I\u2019m proud I\u2019m no fag \/ and I\u2019m proud of my gut when I\u2019ve chowed. \/ And I\u2019m proud to be proud to be proud to be proud to be proud to be proud to be proud.<\/em><\/p>\n

A short gust of wind applauds Greg through the trees.\u00a0 I try giving the carvers the benefit of my doubt, telling myself that some only break out the knife under the pretext of wanting to help the next traveler.\u00a0 Yet, the next person\u2019s desire to know distance has equaled his own sacred search, so he scrawls his own correction.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m proud I\u2019m a Christian,<\/em> he belts out again. \u00a0And proud I don\u2019t question, the reasons I have to be proud. \/\u00a0Yes, I\u2019m proud to be proud to be proud to be \/ proud to be proud to be proud to be proud.<\/em><\/p>\n

I suppose it kind of enhances the whole wilderness experience, I say.<\/p>\n

What, my singing?<\/p>\n

That, too. \u00a0The lack of distance on the signs, I mean. \u00a0I point back to the junction. \u00a0Some people just breathe easier when they know how far away home is.<\/p>\n

We stop above the timber and krummholz as the trail peters out into a drift of lingering snow atop the green-yellow tundra of Indian Ridge.\u00a0 I break out the map, pinpointing again our current position.<\/p>\n

If we were going over the ridge today, Greg asks, how would we know where the trail is in all this snow? \u00a0Does it follow those piles of rock, somehow?<\/p>\n

The rock piles are meant to be waypoints across the ridge, I say.\u00a0 Allegedly, anyway.\u00a0 Most folks call them cairns.<\/p>\n

What do you call them? asks Greg.<\/p>\n

Stone temples, for how they can hold sacred directions, allegedly\u2014directions on where we think we have been, where we think we are going,<\/p>\n

Why allegedly? he asks.<\/p>\n

Because, I explain.\u00a0 One day late last spring with thick fog quickly rolling I found myself allegedly following the stone temples across this ridge.\u00a0 One by one they led me to a crumbling cliff peering over a field of sharp, angular boulders that looked more like giant hunting knives, like it was the end of the trail, or something.\u00a0 But there is no end to this trail.\u00a0 It just parallels the top of the ridge for a mile or so then drops down switchbacks over the other side.<\/p>\n

You don’t mean...?<\/p>\n

No, I wasn\u2019t lost, I interrupt.\u00a0 Like a real manly man, I was just temporarily disoriented.<\/p>\n

Allegedly, he says shaking his head.<\/p>\n

The moral, I tell him: in heavy fog, stone temples are to be trusted no further than one can hurl them, as I did shooting them down the cliffs among the giant hunting knives.<\/p>\n

4.<\/p>\n

We back-track toward the scribbled junction sign, both of us silent as the view from the ridge yields glimpses of a myrtle vein etching the bottom of the canyon: the Gallatin River and its busy ribbon of highway mimicking it\u2019s every turn.\u00a0 We are both silent as the thought of the stone temples takes me back two weeks ago when I last visited the bottom of Logger Creek:<\/p>\n

After a morning of clearing trail up to the junction, I stood alone in the bottom of the drainage where the trail closely followed the creek; the thick understory climbing both sides of the steep draw.\u00a0 I stared at a stone temple piled atop a three-foot stump fifteen feet off the trail.\u00a0 Sprawling beneath the rock pile was a three-foot square, candy-apple red, shag carpet remnant.\u00a0 Why hadn\u2019t I spotted this on my way up that morning?<\/p>\n

Maybe it\u2019s the playful work of imaginative children, I thought, but who would\u2019ve cut the tree leaving that much stump? It certainly is no stone temple for cross country skiers or hikers as the trail (in winter or summer) is clearly discerned through the drainage.\u00a0 A castle, I decided, for a warlord\u2019s retreat.\u00a0 Or an outpost for the brave, young prince conquering the drainage during a woodsy picnic with Mother and Father.<\/p>\n

With my shovel firmly in hand, I loathed dismantling a child\u2019s imagined world.\u00a0 Yet, because it sat on federal land and inside a wilderness boundary, I was compelled to consider the carpet trash that needed to be removed.<\/p>\n

I thrashed away at the stacked rocks, pelting the grass and shrubs.\u00a0 I dropped my pack and stuffed the carpet in another black hole\u2014a term I use for the black trash bags that I always carry with me.\u00a0 My peripheral view caught a powder-white object farther off the trail.\u00a0 It looked to be couched in a small grotto behind thick shrubs thirty yards away.\u00a0 Another castle, perhaps? An entire kingdom of warlords?<\/p>\n

I walked the shovel and black hole down a spur leading to the grotto.\u00a0 Half-way there, I looked back at my pack next to the massive stump.\u00a0 If this was child\u2019s play, I thought, why didn\u2019t the parents clean up the mess?\u00a0 I looked to the grotto again.\u00a0 A massive dope stash, maybe?\u00a0 A pile of money from a Belgrade robbery?\u00a0 I could feel my eyebrows raise at all the possibilities.<\/p>\n

Behind the shrubs, I stood admiring how the base of the mountain met the cool valley floor in a majestic mossy overhang.\u00a0 The boulders were speckled with tiny green and yellow mosses, small blond and rust-brown rocks, and orange and grayish-blue lichens.\u00a0\u00a0 A small seep dribbled down the overhang onto a deep maroon rock\u2014a sculpture in progress.\u00a0 The smell was rich and full of life, like a freshly tilled garden.<\/p>\n

My eyes wandered to the powder-white object I saw from the trail.\u00a0 Could it be?\u00a0 Yes, it was.\u00a0 Mary.\u00a0 THE Mary, in all her six-inch plastic virgin beauty, with arms open wide to bless the grotto\u2019s parishioners.\u00a0 And there above her sailed plastic angels and cherubs watching over the sanctuary from tiny rock balconies.<\/p>\n

Below and to her left, a shaded crevice propped up a hefty plastic crucifix, as a plastic Saint Someone, straddling more green and yellow moss, prayed in sacred silence. \u00a0As a firm foundation, a large flat kneeling rock was arranged in the mud and dirt at the grotto\u2019s base.<\/p>\n

Should I be in awe and reverential, or distant and professional?\u00a0 I wanted to respect places of worship, but part of my job was to clean up the wild so that others\u2014regardless of their ethos\u2014could also freely enjoy it, however they saw fit.<\/p>\n

I plopped my butt on the kneeling rock and tried to listen.\u00a0 The only thing that came to mind was how, in this visitor\u2019s sacred quest, he or she had become an aberration in the grotto.\u00a0 While the carpet, stacked rocks, and plastic icons were all waypoints to a personal spiritual connection, I was aghast at how, with all the beauty behind theses shrubs, why anyone needed any of these items to attain any level of spirituality.\u00a0 In my haste to make it back to town, I cast the items with the molding shag carpet deep in the black hole and left the grotto.<\/p>\n

Down at the greeny on the Gallatin, I tossed the black hole on the cab floor where it could stay in\u00a0my peripheral view for\u00a0the lone thirty-minute ride back to the district office.\u00a0 While I\u2019ve never had an affinity for Catholicism, this went far beyond Protestant apologetics, I told myself. I congratulated\u00a0myself for doing the right thing. \u00a0All of that didn’t\u00a0belong in that grotto anymore than my ass wipe belonged strewn along an alpine shoreline, no matter how religious I was.<\/p>\n

I drove out the canyon sulking in silence, keeping the radio off for a change. \u00a0But like a radio not quite tuned to a transmitted signal, the black hole on the cab floor was saying something that I could not make out through the white noise of my emotional frenzy.\u00a0 When the plastic icons finally thumped\u00a0the dumpster abyss there in the district lot, I dusted off my hands, happy that my day was done.<\/p>\n

5.<\/p>\n

As Greg and I come back into thick timber at the top of Logger Creek, the slope is steep, the trail tread deep where the gathered water forms a gut, eroding away the switchbacks.\u00a0 As the haunted grotto draws nearer, I hope against hope that I do not have to share my experience down there with my professor-turned-volunteer.\u00a0 Why risk spooking him off?<\/p>\n

Looks like a good place for a water bar, I say, the way everything drains down the center of the tread right here.\u00a0 I plant my shovel, peel off my pack, and kneel to un-strap the buck saw. \u00a0Pick out a spot free of rocks and roots where the water can run off the trail. \u00a0I\u2019ll cut a freshly downed log to size.<\/p>\n

Greg drops his pack and grabs his shovel again. \u00a0Gorgo go find good spot, he says.<\/p>\n

Gorgo, I laugh inside.\u00a0 The name somehow fits.\u00a0 His generous spirit has allowed me to call him a new name\u2014one that sounds like he is my slave.\u00a0 Not that either of us truly see it that way, but, in the awkwardness of having my mentor as a volunteer, this somehow works.\u00a0 Gorgo it is, then.\u00a0 Off into the timber I scour the blow down and snow kill for a freshly fallen log no less than ten inches DBH (diameter at breast height).<\/p>\n

With the log cut, I strip away its bark and shoulder it back to Gorgo\u2019s chosen spot.\u00a0 Good, Gorgo.\u00a0 Now, carve out a basin and below the trench and we\u2019ll angle the log about sixty degrees off the trail. \u00a0I draw a line in the tread with my shovel blade. Make a trench here and bury the log down to here, I say, pointing to the log\u2019s lower third.<\/p>\n

Gorgo digs, he says, stomping his heal to the shovel.<\/p>\n

I unhitch the bow saw from his pack and search for fresh, strong branches slightly thicker than my shovel handle.\u00a0 I cut them to the length of my forearm, sharpen their tips with my knife, and find a loose rock the size of my boot.\u00a0 The high, sharp scent of freshly peeled bark sings through my nostrils.<\/p>\n

Back at the water bar, I pound in the branches, wedging them tight against the log, pinning the work into the trail, solid against future boot kicks and horse shoe knocks.\u00a0 Gorgo packs in dirt and small rocks, shoveling out the basin above.<\/p>\n

Your first water bar, Gorgo.\u00a0 Way to go!<\/p>\n

Thanks.\u00a0 Gorgo likes. \u00a0He picks up the bow saw and secures it again to his pack.<\/p>\n

What might now be waiting at the coming grotto still does not relent.\u00a0 With our packs again hugging our shoulders, my knees twinge at the steepness ahead.\u00a0 I slosh down three ibuprofens from the small pill box in my front pocket.\u00a0 You lead now, I tell Gorgo.\u00a0\u00a0 Just kick off the trail sticks and larger rocks that could cause a hiker to stumble.<\/p>\n

Gorgo copies.<\/p>\n

6.<\/p>\n

He stops in the flat bottom of Logger Creek.\u00a0 My t-shirt is drenched with sweat and I can barely hear from our quick drop in elevation.\u00a0 The pills for my knees seemed to have worked well, but my mouth is parched again.\u00a0 As we both reach for water, I look up from the trail to a narrow blue above.\u00a0 The trees still move through my tunneled vision, sweeping the canyon down to the river.<\/p>\n

My heart rattles a few beats ahead when I realize where we have stopped: just forty yards up from the stone temple I tore down two weeks prior.\u00a0 The pile of rocks is atop the same anomalous tree stump.\u00a0 This time, for better or worse, it is without the tacky shag carpet.\u00a0 I cannot help but looking for the spur trail leading to the kneeling rock.<\/p>\n

No.<\/p>\n

What, asks Gorgo.<\/p>\n

I pull\u00a0from my pack\u00a0another black hole and pick up my shovel again. \u00a0Stand clear. \u00a0My march to the stump ends in another thrashing of the stone temple, its rocks riddling the shrubs and grasses like fired from an M-16.<\/p>\n

Whoa.\u00a0 Won\u2019t someone need that?<\/p>\n

I look at Gorgo and shake my head again. \u00a0I didn\u2019t want to show you this.<\/p>\n

You put this here?<\/p>\n

No.\u00a0 I tore it down the last time I was here.<\/p>\n

Because?<\/p>\n

Because of candy-apple shag carpet, plastic religious icons, and misguided litter bugs.\u00a0 I don’t know. \u00a0I can\u2019t keep it inside any longer. I tell him the whole story, clear up to dusting off my hands above the dumpster abyss.<\/p>\n

He chuckles like a squirrel as we walk together to the grotto, where, as sure as the Pope is Catholic, another collection of plastic angels perches in the balconies above another plastic Mary, while another plastic Saint Someone kneels prayerfully beneath.\u00a0 This time, however, the entire diorama is eclipsed by a thirty-inch wooden crucifix straddling the mossy crag.<\/p>\n

A white letter-sized envelope pops out from beneath the kneeling rock.\u00a0 I pull it free and read\u00a0aloud\u00a0its cursive handwritten words.<\/p>\n

To whom it may concern, and you know who you are. <\/em><\/p>\n

Gorgo snickers again in wonder.<\/p>\n

I take the letter from the envelope and read it aloud, too.<\/p>\n

Stealing is a sin and you should be ashamed of yourself.\u00a0 Please replace the items you stole from me.\u00a0 My grandmother gave them to me many years ago and they mean more to me than you will ever know. Replace them soon and no harm will be done.\u00a0 I pray for the salvation of your soul.<\/em><\/p>\n

The letters are clear and legible with long, sweeping curves and curls, yet deeply penetrating the paper, as a teacher might write on a failing student\u2019s exam.<\/p>\n

I turn the note over to its blank back page. That\u2019s it, I ask.\u00a0 No\u00a0thank you<\/em>? No\u00a0have a blessed day<\/em>?\u00a0 No\u00a0God be with you<\/em>? Just a veiled threat and a prayer for my wretched soul?<\/p>\n

I look at the moss and wonder what to do next.\u00a0 As awful as I feel about committing\u00a0blasphemy here again, this seeker needs to be stopped. \u00a0She is an aberration in the wild, I tell myself, a non\u00a0sequitur\u00a0in the larger context of what it is to be in wilderness. \u00a0Was she being too spiritual, or not spiritual enough? \u00a0I cannot decide. \u00a0All that I know is she has littered up this grotto again and my job will not allow me to stand for it.<\/p>\n

Now you’ve done it, says Gorgo.\u00a0\u00a0God\u2019s gonna have your hide.\u00a0\u00a0He lifts the virgin off the mosses and admires her white scarf, blue robe, and yellow sandals.<\/p>\n

I take a Cupid-looking figure off of its balcony and, holding it by my finger tips, swish it back and forth before the grotto like a meadowlark in the wind.\u00a0 The angel slowly circles and descends upon Mary.<\/p>\n

Hey, now. \u00a0My Mickey Mouse falsetto from lunch with the baby grouse has returned. \u00a0Watch out.\u00a0 Gonna pokey Miss Mary.<\/p>\n

Gorgo chuckles. \u00a0Uh, oh.\u00a0 Gonna pokey-poke Mary! \u00a0He, too, has found his falsetto again.<\/p>\n

The angel\u2019s wing pricks Mary\u2019s rib next to Gorgo\u2019s fingers.<\/p>\n

Oh, stop! Gorgo cries. Stop, you devilish angel!<\/p>\n

But the angel keeps poking. \u00a0Hey, hey!\u00a0 Pokey-POKEY, Mary.\u00a0 Pokey-POKEY!<\/p>\n

Stop, you winged pervert!\u00a0 STOP!<\/p>\n

Finally, Saint Someone\u00a0grabs the colossal crucifix and clobbers the angel good, chipping its face and wing, as\u00a0Mary\u00a0forgivingly prays in silence.<\/p>\n

With the remnants of the second episode now squashed in another black hole against my buck saw, how has the entire weight of the pack somehow doubled?\u00a0 Even without the radio and batteries back in the greeny, what are a few plastic action figures added to everything else I carry?<\/p>\n