Emerald Lake
By Rigo
1980
From the trailhead, the footpath winds up for five miles through pine, Douglas Fir, and the occasional old-growth Giant Sequoia. The mid-September afternoon is sunny but cool, and Mateo sweats under his cotton sweater and along the waist of his jeans, warm in the sun and cold in the shade as they pass little waterfalls and four alpine lakes, one after another. His shoulders and back burn under the immense weight of the old frame pack he bought at the Army surplus store, now loaded with bagels, peanut butter, and water. In his tennis shoes, his feet and ankles register every root and rock, and every bounce of the sleeping bag cinched to the bottom of his pack sends a jolt through his lower back.
Just ahead of Mateo, Anjali strides in her hiking boots, ripped calves flexing beneath her rolled-up cargo pants as she carries her superlight internal frame pack over her breathable fleece zip-up.
“Look at these views!” she turns back and calls, her light brown oval eyes beaming. Her long black pony tail dangles against her left shoulder as she turns and heads around a bend.
Mateo smiles, glancing at the evergreen-filled canyon down the sheer drop just three feet to the left of the path, staying close to the grey rock wall to his right. Anjali’s radiant smile waits around the turn, and behind her stand rows upon rows of Sierra Mountains. Mateo takes a mental snapshot and feels for the jewelry box in his pocket.
“Isn’t this amazing!?” Anjali asks.
Mateo smirks. “I’ve never seen a view so beautiful,” he says, looking at her.
Her face blooms into a full smile.
“I need a break,” Mateo says, unclipping the snaps at his chest and waist and dropping the eighty-pound pack to the ground, resting it against the rock wall. He pulls out a bag of trail mix, then sits against the trunk of a pine tree and lets his worn body go limp.
Anjali pulls off her pack and fleece, setting them in the sun. She sits beside Mateo with her light brown arm against his dark brown arm, and he angles the bag of trail mix toward her.
“How’s your back holding out?” Anjali takes a handful of mix.
“I’ve definitely learned the value of lightweight gear.”
“Maybe we should have done something short and flat for your first outing. I hope this doesn’t turn you off to backpacking.”
“Not at all. We’ll get me some decent gear for next time.”
Anjali nudges Mateo. “You’ve been a great sport.”
“Being in love does that to you.”
Anjali flashes another smile as they turn to the view, Mateo taking mental snapshots of it all.
At 1pm they come to a break in the trees that opens onto a trail fork with a little sign beside a wooden outhouse. To the left, the trail continues up and over a rocky embankment toward Moose Lake. To the right, the trail snakes through a cluster of pine trees toward a sheer rock face that rises sixty feet toward the brilliant, dark blue sky.
“It’s right behind those trees,” Anjali says and points. “Come on.”
They pick up their pace now that their destination is in view and pass the outhouse and a three-foot bridge that crosses over the clear stream spilling out of Emerald Lake.
The sun twinkles off the rivets of two big iron bear boxes just inside the tree line, and they reach the first of four campsites, each of which amounts to a little wood marker, clearing for a tent, and log seats around an iron fire pit. As they continue along the path toward a cluster of boulders, they come to a grassy clearing that abuts the small crystalline lake.
“Oh wow,” Anjali says. “Look at that.”
The sheer rock wall behind the lake reflects against the still water, creating a doubling effect. They stand in the grass admiring the view to the gentle sound of the lake draining into the stream that winds through the area.
“It’s like a post card.” Mateo removes his heavy frame pack, his blistered heels sighing relief as he lays the pack against the nearest of the boulders that surrounds their side of the lake, a long, low stretch of smooth rock.
“We have the place to ourselves, just like the ranger said we would.” Anjali looks around. “I’d say it’s time for a picnic.” Anjali finally pops off her pack and lays it on the long, low boulder beside the grass.
“Perfect.” Mateo strips to his boxer shorts, laying his clothes on a boulder in the sun. “I need to make better clothing choices next time.”
“Yeah. Cotton isn’t great for backpacking. But I’m glad there’ll be a next time.”
“Definitely.” He walks into the lake, the mud squishing between his toes. He turns around, squats low enough to submerge his head, then floats on his back in the water for a minute, his body relaxed.
He turns his head and watches Anjali open one of the many zippers on her pack and pull out a pile of supplies. A little gas canister. A miniature stove in a black bag that cinches at the top. A titanium pot. A lighter. Two silver pouches of dehydrated camping food. A bag of wheat tortillas.
Anjali pats the boulder next to her and Mateo rises, dripping into the lake and onto the boulder, where he sits in his underwear. She screws the steel stove into the can of fuel, empties 16 ounces of water from her Nalgene bottle into the pot, and sets the pot on the three ridged metal legs of the stove. Turning a little metal dial that extends from the body of the stove, the gas hisses and then erupts into a blue flame as Anjali brings the lighter to the base of the pot.
“Can you purify some water for us?”
“Sure.” Mateo removes an empty 2-liter bottle from his pack and squats beside the lake, filling the bottle. He adds yellow iodine tablets, which bubble as he recaps the bottle, shakes it, and sets it near them on the long, low boulder.
With her knees pulled up to her chest, Anjali watches Mateo open an enormous bar of chocolate and break a piece off for each of them.
“Thanks. After lunch we can choose a spot to set up camp.”
Mateo extends his legs and closes his eyes as he rolls his shoulders, savoring the chocolate on his tongue.
After just four minutes, the water boils and Anjali pours it into the silver bag, stirs the bags of Pad Thai mix with a spoon, then seals the closures at the top and checks her watch.
“How long do they take to rehydrate?”
“Ten minutes. You don’t have to wait if you’re hungry.”
“Happy to wait.”
They picnic for the next hour, then set up Anjali’s one-person tent in the campsite nearest to the lake. She shows him how the aluminum poles slide into the sleeves of the waterproof canvas and how they bend to form a cocoon just big enough for the two of them. While Anjali ties thin, high-tension string to their backpacks and loops the strings over branches high enough to pull their bags out of the reach of bears, Mateo gathers kindling and a few logs and stacks them beside the iron fire pit in the middle of their campsite.
Anjali lays out her four-ounce inflatable sleeping pad and eight-ounce down sleeping bag, and Mateo unties his six-pound flannel sleeping bag and rolls it open in the tent. As darkness falls, they boil water for tea, then Anjali pulls out a blue plastic box. She snaps it open to reveal a white, ceramic lantern top with a little blue nozzle that she screws onto her can of fuel. She strikes her lighter inside the ceramic bulb and the hiss of gas bursts into a sound like a blowtorch.
Anjali holds a chain that connects to metal rings on the sides of the lantern bulb and with their steaming cups of tea, she leads them to the long, low boulder beside the lake. They sit and watch the reflection of the moon on the still water and chat about the Berkeley engineering PhD program where they met three years before.
An hour later, they sit beside a blazing campfire, the sweet aroma of Anjali’s steaming beans and rice wafting from two more silver pouches. While they eat, Mateo rests his bare, blistered feet on a towel he moistened in the lake.
“What do you feel like doing tomorrow?” Anjali asks as they huddle side-by-side on the long log, the fire beating back the crisp night air.
“I’d love to lounge around, stay off these blisters, and meditate on the importance of making good footwear choices.”
Anjali laughs and then puts her arm around his back. “I shouldn’t laugh. I’m sorry. Lounging by the lake sounds perfect.”
Mateo stands and lower his pack from the tree. He pulls a bag of marshmallows, graham crackers, and his enormous bar of dark chocolate and returns to Anjali.
“You brought ingredients for s’mores!”
They stay up chatting and snacking until midnight, then make love in the tent before they fall into a deep, restful sleep.
#
Their fifth and last night at Emerald Lake, they sit by the lake sipping tea, awash in contentment, refreshed from a short hike that afternoon to Moose Lake just a mile away where they skinny-dipped and picnicked. It’s another crisp, clear night, and the moon and a sky full of stars reflect in the lake amidst the mirroring effect of the rock walls.
“When should we come back?” Anjali asks.
“I’d love to see this place in a few months, in the winter.”
“Some of those spots where the trail passes ravines probably aren’t safe when there’s ten feet of snow on the ground.”
“The Sierras get ten feet of snow?”
“Sometimes more.”
“Wow.”
Anjali looks at the stars and pulls her knees up to her chest with both arms, the zippers of her cargo pants closed now. “Want to know a secret?”
“Sure.”
“I want to spend my life with you.” Anjali rocks back and forth then glances at him and looks down at her knees. She slides her long black hair behind her ears.
Mateo stands up and pulls the little jewelry box from his jeans pocket. He gets down on one knee, extends the box with his left hand and opens it with his right.
“Oh my God,” Anjali whispers, her mouth dropping open.
“I want to spend my life with you too.”
Anjali’s lips tremble and she starts to cry, her hands shaking as she pivots to face him, her legs crossed.
“Will you marry me?”
“Yes, yes, of course I will.”
Mateo smiles big as he detaches the ring, sets the box on the boulder, and takes her left hand.
1983
A steady snowfall adds to the twelve feet of snow that buries the trail to Emerald Lake. Visibility through the trees and canyons is minimal and Mateo soldiers forward in his heavy hiking boots, down jacket, and thick wool pants, with Anjali’s pack strapped to his back. He claps his thick wool mittens together, sending the layer of snow to the ground, then he brushes the snow from his brow and heavy wool cap.
He steadies himself with his carbide-tipped hiking staff, going slow the first two hours with the snow, the difficulty spotting the trail blazes, and with the ice that covers the trail in places. But then, the snow lets up and warms the air enough for Mateo to shed his hat and gloves.
On he tromps, sometimes sinking into the snow in places and pulling himself up and out with great effort. After six hours, he comes to the trail fork and the rock wall that towers over Emerald Lake. The thick aluminum vent atop the outhouse sticks just two feet out of the snow. He continues over the thick layers of snow and ice that will conceal the lake until late May. Running his hand along the rock wall, he comes to a ledge that he hadn’t noticed from the campground side of the lake. As he scrambles the three feet up the ledge, he spots a dark space two feet tall and three feet wide against the rock wall.
From Anjali’s pack, he pulls a headlamp that he secures over his head with a stretchy band. He removes the pack and sets it at the cave entrance then clicks on the headlamp and crawls in. The entrance opens into a space eight feet deep and six feet wide and high. The cave is dry and grey like the rock formations outside. He pulls Anjali’s pack inside and uses her stove to prepare a silver pouch of southwest-style beans and rice. Mateo sits against the back of the cave and eats in the dark. Then he closes his eyes and leans his head against the cave wall and plays memories in his mind for hours.
He startles awake, his eyes taking in the vapor of his breath and the light of the dawn beyond the two-foot-tall cave entrance.
From the pocket of his wool pants, Mateo pulls a little black felt bag. Eyes closed, he holds it tight in his hand for some time and then places the bag against the wall in the middle of the cave, covering it with rocks.
From Anjali’s pack he extracts a small backpacker guitar just twelve inches long and three inches wide. After tuning the instrument, Mateo fingerpicks a simple chord progression, oscillating between C and G for a couple minutes. Then, he sings in his thin, raspy voice.
I’ve been trying to get back to that Emerald Lake where I first fell in love with you
And I can’t say as much about too many things but I know this love was true
I know this love was true
Mateo stops singing and takes a deep breath. He sits listening to the gentle breeze outside the cave with the little guitar on his lap. Then, he loosens the strings and props the guitar against the cave wall, leaving it there as he closes Anjali’s pack and crawls out of the cave.
He looks at the stretch of forest bathed in red-orange morning light for a few minutes, then begins the trek back, his empty stomach growling.
1987
The sun warms the brisk September morning. With Anjali’s pack on his back, Mateo holds his son’s hand as Angel hops on rocks and roots. The boy wears a long-sleeve wool shirt, straw hat, and cargo pants with the legs zipped off at the knee. His shiny black hair falls over his ears and the sides of his light brown face and the oval eyes he inherited from Anjali.
A doe crosses the trail and saunters off into the wood as it registers the sound of footfalls and the six-year-old boy chattering. Father and son stop to watch. Then, Angel’s mouth drops open and he points to the white speckled fawn that appears next.
“Wow,” Angel whispers, watching as the fawn spots them, then bounds after its mother.
“Must have been born late summer. That was a treat.”
“I hope we see a bear.”
“We’ll keep looking.”
Two hours and three stops later, Mateo and Angel come to a ravine where far below a river rushes. Clouds have rolled in and Angel wears the lower halves of his pants now.
“I’m pooped, dad.” Angel lays on his back in the grass on the side of the trail. “How much longer?”
“Maybe half an hour.” Mateo pulls his back from the tree where he leans and scoops up Anjali’s pack as he stands, strapping it over his back and clipping the thick belt tight around his hips. “Need a ride?”
“Yeah.” Angel squints at his father, then rises to his feet. Mateo lifts the boy by the waist, up and over his head, depositing him on his muscular shoulders. Mateo takes a foot in each hand and sets off down the trail.
“Have you always been so strong?”
“No.”
“You didn’t always lift weights?”
“No.”
“Why’d you start?”
“To keep up with your mother.”
“This was the first place you ever camped?”
“Yes. Watch your head.” Mateo bends his knees as they pass under a low tree branch.
“And now it will be the first place I ever camp.”
“Nice, huh?”
“Yeah. It was the last thing on our summer list.”
“Then you start first grade. Excited?”
“Nervous.”
Mateo squeezes Angel’s ankles.
For the next twenty minutes, Mateo carries his son to the clearing with the trail fork and the outhouse. They turn right and cross the little bridge over the creek. Mateo takes a deep breath and stops at the tree-line just over the bridge. “Here we are, son.”
“Where’s the lake?”
“Just through the trees.”
“Set me down, Dad.”
Mateo pops his son off his shoulders, and he runs along the trail toward the rock wall. Angel stops at the water’s edge and looks up and down between the water and rock.
“It’s like a mirror,” Angel says as his father puts a hand on his shoulder.
Mateo swallows and glances at the ledge ten feet up on the other side of the lake. His eyes trace a line from the ledge to the water, noting possible hand- and foot-holds.
“Can we go for a swim?”
“Absolutely.”
After an hour splashing in the cool, clear water, they set up camp with Anjali’s tent, mat, and down sleeping bag. They build a fire in the iron pit and boil water for coffee, hot chocolate, and two bags of dehydrated camping food. They sit on the long log watching the smoke twirl toward the full moon and endless stars.
“Can we walk back to the lake?” Angel asks after dinner.
“Sure.”
“Can I use mom’s lantern?” Angel picks up the blue plastic case from the pile of equipment.
“Of course.”
Mateo helps Angel screw the ceramic lantern top to the can of fuel, lights it, then shows him how to hold it by the chain. As Angel leads the way, Mateo smiles at the little boy who looks down at the lantern swinging in his hand. On the long, low boulder facing the lake, Angel sits on Mateo’s lap, counting the stars reflected in the water.
“How did you and mom find out about this place?”
“From a library book.”
“Did she come here a bunch?”
“Just once.”
“That’s when you asked her to marry you?”
“Yes.”
They sit in silence for some time, Mateo taking in the feeling of Angel’s breathing against his chest, the air cooling against his wool-covered back, and the march of time almost discernible in the moon’s walk across the sky
“Do you think you’ll ever marry again, dad?”
Mateo listens to the hiss of Anjali’s lantern and the distant trickle of the lake draining down the mountain stream. He takes in the cold air passing in and out of his nose, sustaining his relaxed body. “No.”
Angel turns to look at his father’s face. “How do you know?”
“I don’t.”
“Why do you think you won’t?”
“Just a feeling.”
A little before midnight, when they finally head back to their campsite, Angel trips and falls, shattering the ceramic orb of his mother’s lantern into dozens of pieces. The boy sobs as Mateo scoops him up then shuts off the gas valve beneath the shards still attached to the base.
“Can you fix it?” Angel asks, shaking in his father’s arms.
Mateo frowns. “I wish I could say yes.”
Angel sniffles, his shoulder slumped. He puts his face in his father’s neck, his body still trembling. “It was mom’s.”
“I know, buddy.” Mateo sighs. “It’s so hard when you lose something special. You know what I bet mom would think?”
“What?”
“I think she’d be glad you got to use it on your first trip here. And she’d want you to be able to focus on the great time you had using her lantern to lead your dad through the night to our special spot.”
Angel sniffles again as he nods his head.
“You know what I think we should do?”
Angel pulls away and looks at his father, who wipes the boy’s tears. “What?”
“Go make s’mores before we turn in.”
Angel smiles through the fresh tears emerging from his eyes. “Yeah.”
On the last night of their trip, Mateo sits by the dwindling fire, listening to the crackle of burning wood and to Angel breathing the rhythm of sleep. With his headlamp on, Anjali’s pack over one shoulder, and a towel in hand, Mateo takes the trail to the lake and changes into swimming trunks and flip flops. With the pack over both shoulders now, he walks along the edge of the lake through thigh deep water to the rock wall. There, he scales sizable rock protrusions and is atop the ledge without much effort.
He clicks on his headlamp and crawls through cave entrance, sitting cross-legged before the traveler guitar and the pile of rocks that conceal the little, black suede bag against the wall in the middle of the cave. He unpacks the shards of the lantern bulb, placing them in a semicircle around the bag. Behind the bag he leans a 5x7 photo of him and Anjali on their wedding day. She wears a simple white dress and he wears a tuxedo, the Conservatory at Golden Gate park behind them.
He sets out chocolate, trail mix with M&Ms, and a silver bag of Pad Thai camping food. Then, he pulls six glass candles from the pack and sets them around the edge of the ceramic shards, lighting each and filling the cave with the aroma of fresh baked bread, Anjali’s favorite scent.
The candles lit, he pulls out a black photo album. On the cover is a picture of him and Angel in the swinging chair in his in-laws’ backyard. He flips through fifty pages of 3x5s of his life with Angel. Their trip to the Grand Canyon. Angel’s first t-ball game. The kindergarten class photo. Photos of Angel with both sets of grandparents in the living room of Mateo’s house in San Francisco.
He snacks on chocolate and trail mix as he takes his time looking through the pictures and thinking through his memories of each. Then, he slides the album into a freezer bag that he zips closed and sets it in front of the candles. He lifts the guitar from the side wall, tunes the strings, then fingerpicks the same simple chord progression he played in the cave five years before. After a couple minutes he sings,
I’ve been trying to get back to that Emerald Lake where I first fell in love with you
And I can’t say as much about too many things but I know this love was true
I know this love was true
It happened so fast that I found myself dreading night after lonely night
And I knew that I couldn’t keep living this way even though missing you felt right
The world still turns
And fire still burns
You were a flash and a short thunder crack
And there’s no bringing you back
Still I’ll try
“That’s all I got so far,” Mateo says as he loosens the strings and places the guitar back against the wall. He touches the ceramic shards amidst the glass candles.
“I’ll find him a replacement bulb to use with the lantern base. He was so excited to get to have and use something of yours.” Mateo’s frown melts into a sob as he uncovers the suede bag and brings it to his chest, kisses it, then puts it back and conceals it under the rocks.
“I’d better get back to Angel.”
Mateo packs the food back in Anjali’s bag, blows out the candles, and crawls out of the cave as it fills with smoke. Outside, he stands and listens to the slow trickle of Emerald Lake into the stream that carries its waters away. Then, he climbs down from the ledge and steps around the shallow edge of the lake to the long, low boulder where he dries off with the towel and dresses, leaving his wet swimsuit where it will dry in the morning sun. He looks one last time at the ledge before he heads back to the camp.
2017
It’s a sunny, hot September afternoon. With Anjali’s old pack on his back and adjustable trekking poles in each hand, Mateo’s sixty-two-year-old legs maintain a steady pace as he follows Angel and his six-year-old granddaughter, Sofia, who bounces from root to root through a flat section of trail, her long, shiny black hair braided into a ponytail. They come to a bend where a short bridge spans a little creek spilling out of a waterfall that leaks down from six feet above over moss-covered rocks.
Mateo and Angel pull off their packs and set them against trees, Mateo removing a plastic water filtration pump that fits atop Anjali’s old Nalgene bottle.
“Can I try it?” Sofia asks as Mateo sits on the bridge and lowers a long, plastic tube into the water below.
“Absolutely.”
Sofia sits on the bridge between her father and grandfather. Angel smiles as he watches his father help Sofia start the filter onto the threads of the bottle. She finishes twisting it on and then Mateo shows her how to operate a plastic lever that lifts away from the cylindrical body. As she pushes the lever back to the body of the filter, water fills the tube and then leaks out of the cylinder into the Nalgene botte.
“Just keep pumping until the bottle is full,” Mateo says and looks at his son, who watches Sofia.
“This is the warmest day I’ve experienced here,” Angel says.
Mateo nods. “It’s getting a little hotter every year. It’ll be nice to take a dip in the lake.”
The last day of the trip, while Angel and Sofia are on a day hike to Moose Lake, Mateo heads around to the backside of Emerald Lake with Anjali’s pack on his back. In his swim trunks and flip flops, he climbs up the ledge, slides the pack through the cave entrance, then crawls through with his headlamp lit. Inside the cave he takes in the ofrenda he built for Anjali, filled with dozens of framed pictures, some hung from little caving anchor hooks he bolted to the walls. Candles line the edge of the cave and the framed photo of Mateo and Anjali from their wedding day and mementos from Mateo’s travels rest on the ground.
From Anjali’s pack, Mateo pulls a 5x7 photo of Angel and Sofia and Sofia’s mother in a porch swing in Mateo’s backyard. He hangs the photo from an empty bolt near the top of the five-foot-tall wall. With a lighter, he ignites the thirty-six candles spread throughout the cave, filling the space with the scent of fresh baked bread.
Mateo takes up the old travel guitar, tunes the strings he replaced during his winter trip six months ago, and sits with the guitar in his lap.
“I finally finished our song,” he says to the photo of their wedding day as he fingerpicks the simple chord progression. He glances left at the cave floor and the framed photo of newborn Angel in the hospital, just hours old, sleeping peacefully. He glances right at the framed photo of newborn Sofia in the hospital with her parents, exhausted from a long labor. Then he looks back at the wedding photo and sings:
I’ve been trying to get back to that Emerald Lake where I first fell in love with you
And I can’t say as much about too many things but I know this love was true
I know this love was true
It happened so fast that I found myself dreading night after lonely night
And I knew that I couldn’t keep living this way even though missing you felt right
The world still turns
And fire still burns
You were a flash and a short thunder crack
And there’s no bringing you back
Still I’ll try
These days when the sun lingers long in the sky I know that to live is to grieve
As the wind howls on we sing sad songs and we find the will to believe
That one day we’ll be together again
The world still turns
And fire still burns
You were a flash and a short thunder crack
And there’s no bringing you back
Still I’ll try
I’m still trying to get back to that Emerald Lake where I first fell in love with you
And I can’t say as much about too many things but I know this love was true
I know this love is true
Finished, he sighs as he loosens the strings and rests the guitar against the cave wall. “It took me a lifetime. I guess I needed that long to figure out what it all meant. But there it is.”
Mateo sits in silence for some time, cross-legged on the floor. “There’s a reason I finally finished it. Not sure I’ll be back again. I’m starting chemo after this trip. It’s a bad case. Still have to break it to Angel.” Mateo tightens his lips and shakes his head.
“I’m more upset about making him sad than I am about the likelihood that I’m going to check out in my sixties. I guess that’s love, huh? Or being a parent? Or both?” He smiles. “I wish there was a way to convince Angel that I didn’t spend my life sad. I found peace. I found meaning in him, and Sofia, and through memorializing the beautiful days we had together, Anjali.”
Mateo sits for some time with the candles burning and then blows them out, leaving the cave coughing from the smoke. As he exits, he squints to take one last look at the ofrenda he built over thirty-six years. But the smoke is too dense.
“I’ll be back if I can,” he says against the heartache and numbness in his chest.
Then, he climbs down and heads back to camp to start a fire. He lays out graham crackers, chocolate, and marshmallows so they’ll be ready when Angel and Sofia return.
2037
It’s an overcast, humid, mosquito-filled September morning. In a short-sleeve cotton shirt and cargo shorts, a daypack on her back, Sofia reaches the fork in the trail where the bridge spanned the little creek. Now, saplings emerge through the charred forest floor and throughout the campground that once stood before Emerald Lake.
“Oh,” she sighs at the sight of the blackened walls that envelop the lake. Frowning, she traverses the barren landscape to the remains of the campsite where she, her father, and grandfather camped. All that remains now from the firestorm that swept through the Sierras two years before is the iron fire pit. Sofia’s hiking boots crush the ashen remains of trees, grass, and brush to the soot-stained boulders that flank the lake.
On the long, low boulder, Sofia stands with her bare, muscular arms crossed, listening to the gray lake water drain down the mountain. She closes her eyes and takes in the sensation of the wind her ears, noticing the charcoal smell again as she breathes deep.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she says as she catches sight of the ledge on the opposite side of the lake, squinting her eyes to focus on what looks like cascades of dried wax that spilled down the ledge. “What would have melted like that?”
Sofia looks around the edge of the lake for a place where she might step around to inspect. But water buts up against the rock wall the entire way. She shrugs, removes her boots and socks, then steps in, the mud oozing between her toes, the cool water on her calves.
Stepping along, hands extended should she sink in, she makes her way to the base of the towering rock wall. Large protrusions make the climb easy, and soon her bare feet leave wet prints on the soot-covered ledge as she follows the trail of wax.
“Is that a cave?” She lowers her head, then squats, peering inside, spotting the source of the wax at the back of the wall where a pile of unidentifiable objects rest as black blobs.
Amidst the ruins, Sofia spots wires. She removes her pack and sets it just outside the cave entrance. On her hands and knees, she crawls in far enough to grasps the wires from the back left wall and recognizes them as guitar strings. Then, she spots the dozens of empty metal picture frames hanging from the wall and more on the cave floor amidst the wax and blobs of black rubble. She sets the strings just outside the cave and takes up a frame from the ground, using it to poke at the black blobs, finding it all solid. Then, at the back of the cave, she spots a glimmer.
“Gold,” she says then crawls across the ruin, which leaves charcoal smears on her hands, knees, and feet. As she nears, she recognizes the shape of two gold rings jutting up from the melted objects and realizes that the black blobs must be the remains of the pictures. She tugs at the rings and finds them frozen in place and a scenario takes shape in her mind.
“Dad never found grandpa and grandma’s wedding rings.” She sits in the middle of the cave and crosses her legs, mouth open as her eyes continue to adjust. “Did you make her a shrine, Grandpa?”
A smile blossoms on her smile. “You came her to play her music, didn’t you?”
She laughs as her eyes fill with tears. “Well, I think I found the spot,” she says as she crawls out of the cave and extracts two brass urns from her daypack. She unscrews the cap from each, then stands on the ledge looking down on Emerald Lake. She places the openings of the urns together as she spills half of each over the lake. Sofia smiles as the ashes intermingle and the wind carries them across the campground. Then, she caps the urns and places them in the back of the cave, brass touching, the lodged wedding rings between them.
Sophia leaves the cave and gathers stones from the ledge that she places in front of the entrance. “I’ll be back.” Sofia looks around at the devastated landscape, the once crystalline lake now gray, and focuses on the millions of trees budding through the charcoal. “I’ll be back. And so will this place my grandparents loved so much.”
