Southbound

“I’ve never seen snow actually coming down from the sky before.”

Day one, snow on a shoe. Georgie, eleven, in the parking lot at Harts Pass.

Georgie tapped my calf with her trekking pole. “Dad, how did we not notice the rainbow?”

The last miles in to the border, in snow, hail and rain.

We’d all raced into the meadow and stood, palms open. With her eyes closed and her face turned up, Georgie had said she’d never been so happy to see the sun in her life. “Don’t get used to it, kid,” I’d said.

The meadow where the sun finally came out, a day short of the monument.

“Technically,” June said, “we haven’t done any of it yet.”

The phone screen at the northern terminus, reading 2,652.2 miles.

“Have you seen such a view?” — He rolled his eyes toward me and said, “I’ve seen better.”

Henry at the Hopkins Lake overlook, the first time he says it.

Georgie pinched my elbow. I bent down, and she whispered, “I have an extra.”

Broken Toe’s hiker box, spread across the picnic table at Harts Pass.

“We will forget this, I think,” I said. “Forget what?” — “These unremarkable moments.”

The yard sale: every wet thing laid out to dry at Methow Pass. Georgie asleep.

“Look, Georgie, it’s like these things are giant granite teeth, and the giant has gingivitis.”

The granite wall where the snow peels back from the base.

“And then there were six,” I said.

Stephen and Silas at the car. The hugs down the line, youngest to oldest.

Out of the grass and fog the shape of an old tractor emerges, its frame raw, each piston housing a rib.

The rusted tractor in the Douglas fir rows.

“You mean my least worst part?”… “That cinnamon roll from the Stehekin Bakery.”

The Stehekin Bakery lived up to the hype.

She said, “That wasn’t bad at all, was it?”

The crossing above the waterfall — ten feet below, the stream drops out of sight.

“You know I don’t feel the cold, I only feel its power.”

Mica Lake. The jump. Henry falling in afterward and shouting “Four!”

“Look at that view, Mom. It’s like an ocean of mountains. Rolling and rolling and wave after wave.”

Her notebook says of Washington: “Looked like ocean.” She wrote it on the trail; the line reached the book years later.

Last night was cold. / Last night was freezing. / I cried a lot. / But Henry helped me.

The song about Henry, on the GoPro, foggy morning.

The sun rises through the black remnant of trees, and all through the creek bottom beside us, small yellow flowers lift their faces.

The Norse Peak burn at dawn — arnica in the ash.

“July 23rd we will meet you at the pass with pizza, if all goes as planned.” — I remember asking, “Whose plan?”

The Browns, 328 miles in, with the pizza they promised. One of their boys comes up from the river to say hello.

“It looks like God dropped a giant stegosaurus right on top of a ridge.”

Knife’s Edge. The spine, and the drop either side.

Henry looked up from the cooler. “This is our first trail magic.”

The white canopy near Trout Lake. The Coke Henry then carried 2,200 miles.

“All right, everyone,” I said. “Say goodbye to Washington.”

Bridge of the Gods — the open grating, the wind, Georgie holding Aiden’s hand.

“Twenty-five-miles-every-day flat? This is going to ruin it.”

The pace fight, just past Timberline.

“Bug, anywhere in the world without you, or right here with you—I’d rather be here.”

Under her jacket on the trail at dusk. Then: “Look. The first star.”

We have three gears. Toddleberry… Toddlebooster… Making Hay.

Henry’s toes kicking out; June’s poker-face plod.

“That’s really nice of them, Dad. She brought a tablecloth and everything.”

Brian and Jana at Big Lake — the sheet unfurled over the picnic table.

Someone sings, I think it is Aiden, and we dance our way through the fog. Not once do we stop.

The lava field at four in the morning. Fog, headlamps, black rock.

“Look at this.” I held out my phone. “This is now one of my favorite pictures of you.”

The obsidian arrowhead June made while she walked.

“How are we supposed to get a park ranger to pose with us in our picture?”

The Browns’ picture challenge, 1 of 3. A stranger stood in for the ranger.

“Welcome, Mrs. Strawbridge,” the clerk said. “We are happy to see that you’ve made it.”

Crater Lake. Her face at the front desk. Grandmommy had booked the room.

“You are walking right into those fires.”

Ashland in smoke. The N95s on the kids.

“Trail magic already, and we’re only two steps into California.”

The California sign, and the dropped Skittles they wiped off and ate.

“One thousand miles, everybody. Can you believe this?”

Six pairs of feet around the rocks spelling 1000. He photographed feet at every hundred.

“That fire isn’t gonna get us, is it, Dad?” — “Is that you, Georgie?” — “You can’t see me?” — “Only when the fire flares up.”

The Hirz Fire throwing red against the black. Everyone cowboy camped.

“I wonder how far that smoke will travel, Georgie.”

The Delta Fire plume, mushroom-shaped, traffic backed up on the highway below.

“I missed it,” I said. “All I saw was that giant pinecone you found.” “You should see the one June has.”

Georgie with her pinecone. Hers was enormous; her answer is that her sister’s is bigger.

“Kid, what I’m trying to say is that you are far from nondescript, you are a faithful servant, and there is no greater thing.”

The apology to Aiden.

“One leg is past halfway, and one leg is before.” — “Which leg do you like better?” — “The right leg. It’s going home.”

Henry straddling the PCT Midpoint pylon.

On her eyelid her scar from the car wreck showed pale between two lines of dirt.

June asleep, by flashlight. Dirt in the cuticles, in the eyebrows.

I lay on my back and selected the next clip. “I would have forgotten some of this forever,” I said aloud.

The GoPro he walked 20.3 extra miles back to retrieve.

“What you Strawbridges lack in rhythm, you make up for with enthusiasm.”

Dancing to Troubadour at the headwaters of the American River.

“I give up, Dad. I can’t do it.” — I looked at her. “Me too, June.”

Below Sonora Pass. The hinge of the whole book.

“But I’ll freeze to death before I get there.” — “Walk yourself warm.”

Ice sliding down the inside of the tent wall at first light.

“Echo, echo.” — “Hello, hello.” — “I’m trying to hear my echo, you big dummy.”

The wall of granite across the High Sierra meadow. She cupped her hands and shouted at it; the rest of them lay on their groundsheets and listened.

“Shh, Dad. It’s a coyote family.”

Henry barking at them.

“One near Odell Lake and Shelter Cove—check, one in Tuolumne Meadows—check, and now this one.”

The picture challenge, 2 of 3, in Tuolumne Meadows.

“Dad, get the mountain in the background. It’ll make a better picture.” — “You’re a regular Ansel Adams, kid.”

Georgie and the Tenkara rod she has claimed, on the connected ponds below Donahue Pass at 10,477 feet.

“If I were here alone, it would only be me.” I wiped my eyes and looked up. “It would only ever be me.”

The night the quilt and jacket were soaked through. No camera came out. None should have.

This thin layer of ultralight waterproof fabric is the only thing that stands between people I love and their death.

Fifteen degrees. Three in a two-man tent.

“This isn’t too bad really,” Aiden said. — “I’ve seen better,” Henry said. — We all laughed.

Inside the Muir Hut, half-hypothermic, wrapped in his sisters’ spare clothes — and he still lands it.

I pushed open the top half of the Dutch door and cracked the row of icicles that had formed on the eave in the night.

The icicles on the Muir Hut eave, the morning after the night it dripped on them.

“It’s only five names, and it’s supposed to be six. She couldn’t make it.”

The Whitney summit logbook, Aiden’s handwriting, five names.

“He called me Frankie, because Frankie refuses the jumps. And I refused to go up Whitney.”

June, who took the trail name over the second climb.

“Because, when you’ve made it to Kennedy Meadows South, you’ve made it.”

Kennedy Meadows South. 711.8 to go.

“It’s not an easy place for things to live,” Monica said.

The cow skull, horns intact, some hide still on it.

“You are not the first, not the largest, and not the last.”

Limbo, with the external-frame pack. Monica never saw him.

Bright greens and yellows pop in cottonwood cuts to betray even a trickle. … Water is everything here. … And water is life.

One continuous pan across the cottonwood cut, over “we gotta get 18 miles worth of water… see those bright green trees.”

12 strips of bacon / 11 Chick-fil-As / 10 bowls of ice cream…

The food-craving carol Georgie and Henry wrote. Sung on a switchback.

Before June, Monica, or Aiden sat down, we assembled ourselves just as the Browns had in front of the same wooden fence post.

The picture challenge, 3 of 3, above Tehachapi. Creigh set it in Packwood at Mile 328.7 and it closes here.

At the first sound of her mother’s voice, her whole body shook with sobbing. She threw her arms wide, and cried, “Momma!”

Tehachapi. The camera was set up before the knock — this one was filmed on purpose.

“Now I just tell them I’ve learned I’m pretty good at walking.”

Airborne said the title, in a trashed alcove off Bouquet Canyon Road, holding a yogi’d beer.

“Did you sign it too, Georgie?” Dahn said. — “Am I allowed?”

The wall at Hiker Heaven, where Donna asked Dahn to take his picture.

“William,” Aiden said. “That’s called the moon.”

The cousins out from Long Beach, eleven people cowboy camped in a parking lot.

“No, Dad,” he said. “I’m serious. If she can’t do it, we can’t do it.”

Henry, offering to go home for Monica’s feet, five miles short of Cajon Pass.

I turn myself in a circle. Something is happening here. Some becoming thing.

Swimming toward the moon at the reservoir, alone, at night.

O for a thousand tongues to sing / My great Redeemer’s praise

Stephen, nine miles from Mexico.

She looked up at me again and squeezed my hand. She waved at the boy. The boy waved back.

The detainment center fence, two miles from the end.

We crested the rise, and I saw the monument. “Look at this first, my June,” I said. “There it is.”

The last hundred yards across the flat, the first shout of the welcome landing before they finish.

“I think I’ve learned I’m pretty good at walking.”

Aiden, under the border wall, at the very end.