It wasn’t long before I reached the road’s lowest point, and it was here that I felt despair begin to seep into my body. My legs and back were aching, my head had started in with a gentle pounding, and my mouth was dry. I had foolishly neglected to bring a bottle of water with me, and so couldn’t eat the jerky and trail mix I had packed.
Worse, the entire endeavor — trying to find the rock — suddenly seemed childish, idiotic even. What, after all, would I do when I got there? Climb up it, yes, but then what? I would stand atop the rock, and look out at the same view my bedroom window offered, except not quite as dramatic. Then I would climb back down and go home. And after that? I would just… live. In solitude, and to no particular end. In that moment, my entire existence seemed utterly futile, and I saw for the first time just how aimless, how pointless, it had become.
I don’t know where this train of thought would have taken me, had I not then heard a noise from the road before me. It was a vehicle, coming up over the rise, a pickup truck. It coughed and wheezed, as if having to struggle to make it to the top — and then, as it crested the hill, it roared to life and came rolling toward me.
I moved onto the shoulder to allow it to pass, and then began to trudge up toward the intersection. The truck was about a hundred yards ahead, and picking up speed. And then, without thinking, I stopped.
For my work, specifically my often tense interactions with other people, I had been compelled to develop a sixth sense. Not an actual sixth sense, of course — rather, a heightened sensitivity to the information I gathered through the five normal senses. A careful observer, I discovered, can learn to predict what another person will say or do; and with practice, one can steer that person’s thoughts and actions in beneficial ways. I don’t know what it was about the driver’s face that alerted me — he appeared in every way to be the typical resident of the area, with a filthy “trucker” style cap shading sallow, thin cheeks and a long drooping mustache — but I was suddenly wary, my muscles tensed.
And then it happened — just as it was about to pass me, the pickup swerved, barreling straight toward the verge where I stood. I leaped off the road surface and into the trees, where I tripped on the deadfall and crashed to the ground. From behind me I heard tires squeal and gravel spray, and the high, mad cackle of the vile redneck driver. I lay there, my hands scraped, my ribs bruised, and listened as the pickup struggled up to the corner of Nemesis and Minerva. I cursed under my breath, and then louder, and that’s when I heard a twig break, and I looked up, into the forest.
It was the white deer. It had turned, leaping, at the sound of my voice, and now stopped and looked back. It was perhaps twenty yards off, gazing at me over its shoulder. Slowly I stood, not once taking my eyes from the animal. I brushed myself off, watching it watch me. One minute passed, and another. And then it bounded off to the southwest, stepping through the rotting branches. It turned once more before it disappeared, and I understood that this was a sign — that the deer was showing me a path to the rock.
Gingerly, I stepped out of the woods. I paced back and forth along the treeline, and after a few minutes found a suitably large stone, which I hauled up onto the road surface and placed on the shoulder, as a marker. Doubtless it would still be here tomorrow, but I stared hard at the trees, forcing myself to remember their arrangement, just in case.
I had my entry point. And indeed, the deadfall here did seem somewhat thinner than elsewhere, and the ground less saturated. I closed my eyes, recalling what I had just witnessed, the white deer hopping, with weightless ease, from one island of ground to the next, and vanishing into the shadows. Tomorrow, I told myself, I would do the same. I would walk down Nemesis Road, find my marker, and follow the deer.
SIX
At 7:00 a.m., after a breakfast of bananas, grapefruit, and oatmeal, I stepped out my door and into the pink light of morning. The sun was low and blinding on the far horizon, the sky streaked with high cirrus, and the air, though cold, was heavy with birdsong and the promise of warmth. I descended the porch steps and crunched across the lot, burdened with gear: my backpack bulged with food and water, a rolled-up tent, climbing supplies, and my compass and binoculars. On my feet were a pair of waterproof boots; lashed to my pack were the climbing shoes and helmet the sneering sporting goods clerk had grudgingly sold me. I had slept well, better than I had at any time since my arrival on the hill. I’d risen at dawn and watched the sun rise behind the rock as, tacked beside my window, the child’s castle drawing served as an inspiring symbol of the endless possibility of adventure.
I marched north on Phoebus Road, retracing, in reverse, my route back from yesterday’s reconnaissance. The pavement, cracked and uneven, was still damp from the rain. I tested my boots by splashing through puddles — though my canvas trousers, tucked in and laced fast, were soon dotted with wet, my feet remained warm and dry. I was alert to the possibility of oncoming traffic, the disturbing encounter with the rusted pickup being fresh in my mind, but my overall mood was one of excitement and confidence. Any passerby, watching my progress along the treeline, would have seen a man who appeared younger than his years, a spring in his step and a sense of purpose in his stride. I leaned forward and, pacing my breaths like a swimmer, plunged forward, as if on a mission of great importance and priceless reward.
After my turn onto Nemesis, it took less than ten minutes to reach the entry point I had discovered the day before. The marker stone was still in its place, the pattern of tree trunks precisely as I recalled. I lifted the stone and tossed it into the weeds at the roadside. Then I took one last look at the brightening sky and plunged into the woods.
In spite of the brilliance of the day, and of the trees’ nascent foliage, I was instantly enveloped in gloom. The temperature dropped fifteen degrees, the light winked out, and a sense of unease began to insinuate itself in my mind. After four or five careful steps into the forest, I peered over my shoulder at the world I had just left. I could make it out, of course — the shoulder, the pavement, and the woods on the other side — but already it seemed impossibly distant. Indeed, it was as though I had been cast back in time to the middle of January.
I suppressed a shiver. My sense of dread was nothing but foolishness. It wasn’t so dark here that my eyes couldn’t adjust; nor was it so cold that my bushwhacking efforts would fail to warm me. Nevertheless, I found myself in the grip of a creeping despair, a premonition of exhaustion and failure.
This was not the state of mind I was accustomed to, at the outset of an expedition. But one does not fight the battles he wishes to fight; he fights the battles that find him. I would do my best to ignore my foul mood and physical discomfort, and plunge ahead as I had planned.
The white deer, I recalled, had fled southwest, and so it was in this general direction that I began to move. As before, the going was slow. Branches that appeared sturdy snapped underfoot, plunging my legs deep into mire; clumps of humus that seemed insubstantial harbored heavy stones, sending me sprawling onto the saturated ground. Low-hanging boughs scraped my face, or released a torrent of water as I ducked beneath them, chilling my scalp and neck.
But I would not be, and was not, deterred. I struggled forward, for hours it seemed, and I did not look back until I felt that I had made sufficient progress. Indeed, when at last I did turn around, there was no sign of the road I had left, and no noise from passing traffic.