Lost on Father's Day

It was getting dark on the summer solstice, the longest day of the year, and Nate was nowhere to be found. He had survival gear in his pack, but the disturbing fact was that he had separated from the group. He was an inexperienced backpacker, only having packed overnight a handful of times. Plus, he was disoriented from the drugs he was taking for stage-four Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma.

I knew about Nate’s cancer and the trial drug, and also about his lifelong battle with ADHD, so I asked him to keep within eyesight. There had to be some ground rules. “Make sure you see the guy in front and the guy in back,” I said. “...and stop at trail junctions to wait for each other so we go the right way,” but the ground rules didn’t help much from the start.

That morning it took us two hours to go two miles, and Nate started breaking every ten steps. After fifteen hundred feet of gain he fessed up important medical information. “Don’t know if I told you,” he said. “I have a collapsed lung. Well not a whole lung, but the lower right quadrant of the four. It’s collapsed. You know, it’s just sitting there deflated. It doesn’t hurt or anything, it’s just not as easy to catch a breath.”

“Oh great! You’re telling me this now at eleven thousand feet? What the hell man?” I retorted.

“The sky is blue, the birds are singing and life is good,” he said. “I’m fine.”

I knew if something happened we’d have to get back, and the further out we hiked, the harder it would be getting back. We were following a rarely used shortcut over the crest to the first lake, and made it to the pass. Nate dropped his pack and caught three quarters of his breath, but for me, when I gazed into the wilderness over the crest, it twas breathtaking.

“Forty pound pack, stage four cancer, disorienting trial drug, ADHD, collapsed lung? How are you doing this, and why aren’t we turning back?” I was at a loss and wanted answers, but got nothing. He sloughed it off and said, “None of it matters. I’m doing this whether you like it or not. My son can carry some of my crap if he has to.”

Nate Jr. Didn’t seem affected by the weight of his pack on his first time out ever. He was like a mule four-stepping up the switchbacks, but the thirty-five year old’s patience wore thin having to deal with his dad and his maladies. The two had been estranged for a decade and were trying to reconnect. Down-climbing from the pass Nate Jr. found his own way. I cat-called across the moraine and he chirped back, so I let him be.

My son John had a deliberate, methodical approach to backpacking. He took his time and paced himself; carefully watching his footing, continuously moving. Afterall, he was an EMT and knew full well what a broken ankle looked like. He wanted none of that. He looked comfortable traversing cross-country down the loose boulder slope to the lake.

Nate, however, was a whole different story. He had trouble focusing on anything, including my attempts to plan the trip with him the week before. “I’m ready and have everything I need,” he said.” I didn’t believe it, but accepted it. He was a grown man, and he may have gone anyway, with or without the rest of us. I questioned his secrecy, but he probably knew I would ask him to back out if he told me about the lung.

Coming down from the pass I was leading the way, and John was about fifty yards back. Nate was way behind, and out of sight. I decided to scramble back, and went a good tenth of a mile where I found him staggering along the crumbly scree like a zombie. His right arm was frozen between his legs, and his left hand was clawed into his chest. The hood of his coat covered his face and flopped around his head with every straight-legged step as he stumbled across the rocks.

“Nate!” I yelled. He didn’t respond. He may not have heard me. The acoustics in the boulder field were weird. I yelled out again, and he lifted his head, still zombie-walking. When I reached him I told him to sit. “What’s going on Dude? You don’t look good.” I was worried. It was worse than I thought – then he spoke… “I don’t think it’s a stroke or anything but my arm…”

“Wait, what? You think you had a stroke?”

“Well no,” he said, “It’s not a stroke. I just got disoriented back there. I feel like…”

“Like what?” I implored. He didn’t answer. “Sit down for a minute and drink some water,” I said. “Catch your breath and relax here.” It was approximately two miles back to the car. I could hike his gear out, and he could still walk back on his own. I asked him to opt out, but he was having none of it.

The two Nates hadn’t done anything like this ever in their entire lives. They hadn’t done anything together at all for the past decade or longer. It was a monumental moment for both of them. Nate’s spoken sentiment was to spend this valuable time with his son, and I understood completely. I was enjoying time with my own son, and we were in no hurry on the long summer day.

He regained some color and we worked our way down to the shore. John said Nate didn’t have any of the classic signs of a stroke, but I had serious decisions to make. “It’s only Noon. We could stay here, or go four miles to the first night’s camp as planned. Most of that is downhill.” I rationalized a way to keep going, and vetted other options in my mind. I didn’t want to sacrifice the time, or the adventure with my son on Father’s Day.

We kicked back and dipped our feet in the spectacular alpine lake for two hours. It was quiet solitude. By then Nate returned from the dead, and we all agreed to continue. None of us had trouble putting our packs on. We trekked in bliss from the 11,000 foot lake down canyon. At the three and half mile mark we took a major offshoot from the main trail, and started up switchbacks to a small lake. It was during that push that things went awry.

Immediately the uphill was sluggish. John and Nate Jr. led the way and I dropped behind Nate to stay with him. He couldn’t stop talking; an imbalance in his chemistry – ADHD. I wondered if he got winded vocalizing the steady stream of thought that twirled around in his head. Sarcasm, anger, humor; it all came out in a one-man conversation that everyone could hear, but his actions spoke louder than words. I mostly ignored the words and focused on my own energy output.

“Dave, I want to thank you for staying back here with me. I couldn’t have done this without you. You really are my best friend in the world. I know you get embarrassed when I say that, but you don’t really care. And Nate needs to shut up so Dave can think. How much further is it?” I responded matter-of-fact, because Nate was griping earlier about the effort to hike uphill. I didn’t want to show any emotion trying to avoid a verbal attack. “I think it’s a half mile at least.”

Before I took another breath Nate was in a rage. “You mean another six miles don’t you?” he growled, and took off yelling and ragging on me. He was at the end of his rope, but found some remarkable strength. Within minutes he was gone. I didn’t see him again for hours. Nate Jr. was up ahead and so was John. They had waited at the previous turn-off like they were supposed to, and waited at the final junction too, but no Nate.

“Stay on the trail” Nate told himself. He’d been walking for what seemed like an hour, but time slows down when you travel in the wilderness. “The lake has to be close. It has to be around the next bend. Did I go the wrong way? Dave said it was about a half mile.” It was getting dark, and he was near the fast flowing river. The sound of the water slapping the rocks was loud.

He wondered if he’d be able to hear anyone call him. He tried it himself. “Dave!” he yelled. It didn’t seem to project anywhere. His voice was flat as it left his mouth. All he could hear was the rushing water and his footsteps on the hard ground. He had to reach the lake, but the diminishing light masked the path.

“I’ll find a good campsite, get it together and welcome those guys when they show up. Not that they care or anything. They’re happy to be done with me. I annoy everyone. I can’t keep my mouth shut. I can’t turn my brain off. Plus, I have this damn cancer coursing through my veins. The hell with it. The cancer, the clinical trial. It’s not working anyway. Why even do it? Where am I?”

He looked around and saw nothing but blackness. Dark menacing blackness in the middle of nowhere, and asked himself why. Why did he come out here? Why did he leave those guys in a rage? He didn’t remember why. He was disoriented. Somehow he’d gotten way ahead of the group and didn’t realize what he was doing. His head hurt and his legs hurt. “Dave was messing with me. He’s gonna make us hike to Who Knows Where, that’s what he’s doing.”

The light hadn’t quite faded and he saw spiky summits on the peaks of the ridges. It looked amazing, and scary at the same time. He came out of the trees into a large opening as alpenglow flickered off the forested slopes that curled up around the meadow floor. Finally, the last bits of sunlight disappeared from the rocky benches, and he realized he was lost.

He had taken the wrong path. He didn’t know about the junction. It wasn’t marked, and not too obvious unless you were looking for it. John and Nate Jr. didn’t seem concerned, but when they said Nate took off, my heart skipped a beat. Immediately I started calling out, but barely heard myself. The only drainage pouring from the canyon muffled the sound.

“Which way did he go?” I asked, but they didn’t know, and it was too dark to pick up tracks. I told them to stay put, dropped my pack, and charged up the foot path to the north. Our destination, the small lake, was a quarter mile of solid uphill to the west. If faced with going north or west I knew Nate would take the path of least resistance.

I screamed his name every twenty steps, but my calls died near the tumultuous river noise. No one could hear me and I wouldn’t be able to hear Nate. I turned back after a half mile thinking he couldn’t have gone further. I imagined weeks of searching the high country for my friend and shuddered to think it would come to that. We had a situation on our hands and my mind raced for answers.

Nate Jr. was in a daze, but John was alert and eager to help. “John, get your headlamp, hike up to the small lake, take a look around, and if you see him tell him to wait. Then report back and we’ll decide what to do.” I tried to go with John, but petered out after a few hundred yards. Besides, I couldn’t leave Nate Jr. on his own.

John returned empty handed, and by then we all needed headlamps. We set up camp near the river at the junction as relentless mosquitoes chowed down on us. I got some food in me and drank some water, and went looking again in the dark. The trail was barely a use path, and I couldn’t hear anything over the splashing river. “Hopefully Nate would turn back and find John and Nate Jr. at camp, or at least stay near the water.”

“He could be dead from a stroke on the trail, or worse yet, dead from a stroke off trail.” A tornado of possibilities whirled around in my head. “He could pass out somewhere, or wander off into the woods, and he wouldn’t hear me calling because of this rushing water.” The trail was hard to follow, but I stayed near the river so I wouldn’t get lost too.

I started questioning my choices. “We should have just car camped. What was I thinking? Here I am staggering around in the dark, searching for Nate while our two son’s are sitting at camp wondering where their dad’s are. This is messed up.” I visualized helicopters floating around for days, scaring all the animals out of the canyon.

Nate was mad about that measly stretch of uphill, but in the dark he hiked much higher in altitude, and an extra two miles without realizing it. “Wait a minute,” he thought out loud. Everything Nate thought was out loud. “The Walkie-Talkies! We have Walkie-Talkies!” The two Nates had packed communication devices and never told anyone. “Nathan!” He barked into the device, but only static came back. “Nathan, are you there?” He wasn’t.

Nate Jr. didn’t know he had a Walkie-Talkie. If he did, he forgot, or maybe he didn’t want to find it. Subconsciously he was glad to have a break from his Dad’s constant banter. Nate screamed into the device to no avail. “Son of a Mother!” he yelled, but nobody heard it. He wanted to smash the Walkie-Talkie on the rocks, and raised it in the air for a moment before realizing it could be the one thing that saves his life. “OK Nate, get a grip. What are you gonna do now?”

The rocks and trees picked up hints of moonlight from the waxing gibbous rising over the ridges, but his headlamp only defined the ground around him. The darkness was closing in. “I need to turn back, that’s it. What am I doing? I’m so hungry. I feel like crap. I’m gonna have to sleep out here alone. What a dumbass I am. Why did I separate?”

The cancer, the drugs, and the collapsed lung that was already drained three times from fluid buildup, made Nate worry about his own imminent death. It was one thing he didn’t vocalize. Instead he chanted his favorite words; “the sky is blue, the birds are singing and life is good.” Saying it brought him to a peaceful place. He repeated the mantra out loud and followed the glow from his headlamp back the way he came.

I had a million questions, a million unknowns and began calling out with full force, but my voice died in the breeze. No one called back. I scanned the terrain ahead searching for a sign or a signal, feeling like this was it; the start of a terrifying rescue effort. “He could be unconscious, or dead,” I thought, “and if I found him like that, then what?”

I was desperate to find him, searching in a canyon I’d never seen before, and still couldn’t see in the dark; searching for my friend in Who Knows Where, when suddenly a light flashed ahead. It pierced the night between the dark trees. It was him. “Nate!” I screeched. “Dave!” he barked. I could see the light running at me, and suddenly we were embraced. I’ve never hugged a man so hard in my life. The ordeal was over.

He told me about the Walkie-Talkies on the way back to the junction. I was dumbfounded. All I could do was turn the page on one short chapter from the ongoing saga of the life of Nate. I’ve never been so relieved about anything than to find him alive and well. Back at camp the four of us settled down for the night, but before sleeping Nate had a little talking to do.

“I can’t believe I didn’t mention the communication devices. How stupid can I be? But all is well. No harm, no foul. Right Dave? Did you know you are my best friend in the whole world? Nate needs to shut up. It’s time to get some sleep. I’m exhausted. I must have hiked more than eight miles today. Man am I hungry, but I’ll eat that bagel I brought in the morning. Dave and John are probably having oatmeal, or some granola crap. You hungry Nathan? You’ll be hungry in the morning. The sky is blue…well right now it’s black, and the birds aren’t actually singing cuz they’re asleep, but life is good. Huh Dave?”

Before dozing off I contemplated our choices. We were camped at the farthest reaches of the trip. To return the way we came would be four miles uphill, then back over the shortcut pass. Going forward as planned would be nine miles in total, but only a short uphill to the second pass before dropping over the crest. “I’ll have to see how Nate is tomorrow,” I said out loud, but Nobody heard me over the snoring.

When I woke up I saw blue sky in the early light; I heard birds singing, and felt like life was pretty damn good. It was the second longest day of the year, and I was finally relaxed. Nate was snoring away in the tent next door and I knew everything was fine. He killed it the day before – if you forgot about the missing persons thing. I just had to focus on his behavior, because his words were hard to decipher.

I decided that a two-day stretch over the second pass was the best way for us to get out as soon as possible, and still enjoy time with our sons in the mountains. While drinking coffee we discussed in detail how to avoid getting lost in the future, and Nate made no excuses. He apologized for what happened. It was settled. We would finish the point-to-point trip over the second pass. It was a beautiful walk in the mountains.

A slight breeze took the edge off the hot sun, and we followed bear paths up the drainage above treeline. Nate pointed at numerous vantage points he remembered from his night trek to oblivion, reminding me to keep close no matter what. I had accepted the job of caretaker. It calmed me to fully understand this role, and I did much less charging and a little more strolling.

We reached the saddle where jagged crags curled into towering cirques on both sides of the pass. Jagged pillars and massive peaks jutted up around. We would have stayed for lunch, but the constant pressure of the wind was pushing us. Before descending John and I wandered to the south ridge and took in stunning views of the recesses in the distance separated by 13,000 foot peaks.

John had offered wise suggestions the entire trip. He was my wing man on the adventure. We were standing deep in the wilderness, atop the highest ridge, looking back at where we had come, and I was the happiest father in the world. It was a long road, a little more than one third of my life from the day he was born. ‘My little guy’ was now six-foot-three. We acknowledged what we had accomplished together, visually tracing our path from the first pass to the base of the recesses, then up to the crest where we stood in awe.

The two Nate’s were tired, but we couldn’t stay on the ridge. I waved them to the descent route and showed them the way down. It was slow going. Exposed boulders zig-zagged through lingering snow fields and made route finding sketchy, but the experience going over the first pass 2 days before, made the down-climbing enjoyable. I looked around and soaked in my surroundings. I knew we would make it to the end.

Had I known about Nate’s lung I may have refused to take him along, or maybe he would have convinced me he’d be fine just the same. It’s hard to say if I would do anything different in the future. Maybe a satellite phone? Maybe my own Walkie-Talkies? Maybe just stay at the first lake and leave it at that. Whatever the case, I doesn’t matter how many times Nate tells me about about the sky, the birds and life. The next question is always, “What more could anyone want?” The only answer I have these days is that I want my best friend to beat cancer.