Counter-offer

Homoeroticism in the woods, my turn:

Paul was an Eagle Scout. Paul is an Eagle Scout: these things stay with you for life. So he tells them what they should carry, he catalogues the food, he slings a compass from a string around his neck, and he carries the map. At a trail junction thirty minutes up the trail, he reaches up with one hand and unzips the brain of his external frame pack. He doesn’t take the pack off. He brings out a laminated map of the Appalachian Trail and flattens the creases against his knee.

The brain? Goody asks.

Paul replies, That’s the zippered pouch on top. You keep the map and the flashlight in it – where to go, what to see. The brain.

Where are we? Jitski says, shifting the pack and wriggling his shoulders.

Here, Paul says, pointing at an obscure topography of snaking lines. We’re heading toward Ethan Pond.

Jitski leans toward the map dangerously, the top of his borrowed backpack – Paul’s old 4,000 cubic inch green monster – tilting like a windmill. Where are we trying to get to? he asks.

Paul moves his thumb toward a tight ring of concentric circles. Zealand Hut, he says, Hopefully. It’s nine miles from here, with about 3,000 feet of elevation gain. But, you figure, average hikers are babies. The trail guide estimates seven hours, but we can do it in four.

They trust him to lead because they don’t have his experience. They don’t have the same weathered patches that Paul has sewn onto his pack; “Pacific Crest Trail,” “Appalachian Trail,” “NOLS.” Jitski is the indoorsy type, contented with his DVD/MP3/rumble pack and the undulating plasma of his wide-screen HDTV. He is dull, suburban, and adult, but comfortable. He hikes with the unsteady gait of a sleepwalker, knocking his heavy boots together as he trips along. Goody’s experience outdoors doesn’t come from organized activities but from his love for solitude and for long walks on secluded beaches holding hands with himself; his attention to the wildflowers in the state park across from his childhood home in Pennsylvania gives him a wide vocabulary to express his wonder at the pistils, stamens, and petals of the New Hampshire trail.

Paul knows the backcountry as though it were his. He can tie a clove hitch with his tongue. When he clambers skillfully over the bare granite on the first peak, familiar muscles knot in high relief along his legs. But he is no teacher. If they want to learn, he reasons, they will watch him and imitate. Follow the white blazes, he says at the trailhead.