Henry Colt points at Bear Mountain. (Sentinel Photo)
Picture three 20-year-olds from a small college in Maine somewhere on the side of Sitka’s Bear Mountain in the summer of 2016, drunk on the sheer joy of being young and foolish and physically capable and off work for the weekend.
Two of them are your classic Mr. Responsible types: straight A’s, on time for everything, six-foot silhouettes, visible pectorals — legitimate dating material.
The other 20-year-old, whose last name may rhyme with “jolt,” is a pectorally deficient dangerously disorganized A.D.H.D.-ridden insomniac who is subpar dating material, and even worse camping trip material.
But the young men are friends. Better still, their friendship has rocketed past the Bro Zone — beers, adventures, meaningless slaps on the back — into the seldom-traveled outer reaches of the Male Friendship Galaxy: a place where feelings and vulnerabilities are shared, where supernovas twinkle.
At least this is what they believe.
The trio hopes to climb Bear Mountain. The plan is to leave Friday after work, hike until dark, then camp, then rise early the next morning and make it to the top and down in time to get to Agave before it closes, where they will splurge on the largest available size of sausage pizza. Though they had access to both a two-man tent and one-man tent, to save weight – and become closer with one another – they decide to take only the two-man tent.
(But at the last minute, the insomniac secretly stuffs the one-man tent in his pack as a “just in case” measure — he knows he’d have trouble sleeping in cramped quarters.)
Racing daylight and each other, they zoom through the intricate jumble of spruce and loose rock and devil’s club and shoot onto a treeless ridge as the sun begins to set. But they can’t see the sun, because it’s raining.
They rifle through their packs in search of cooking gear and the two-man tent, throwing on layers now that they are no longer moving. Each item they fumble with checks a little box of reassurance that they packed what they’d meant to pack: hats, gloves, rain layers, Snickers bars, a topographic map in a Ziploc bag.
They find the stove and the ingredients for tonight’s dinner, a cheesy slop.
Yum.
They don headlamps. The insomniac feels the shape of the one-man tent in his pack, but it will remain there, he decides, for the duration of the trip. He feels confident about his chances for sleep.
Then one of his friends asks, “Where’s the tent?”
“Which tent?”
“The two-man tent. Which you were supposed to pack.”
Sour things happen inside the insomniac’s stomach as he remembers the moment, word-for-word, in which he cheerfully agreed to pack the two-man tent. Quite classic, quite dangerous.
He says he thought other people were packing the two-man tent, but then he sheepishly removes the one-man tent from his pack, and chucks it on the ground. He mumbles something about not wanting to be cramped. He doesn’t mention his insomnia.
His friend’s faces, lit by headlamps, take on an epic quality. Their main expressions are happiness and relief — they are, after all, on the side of a new mountain in a new place in the midst of wind and horizontal rain. At least they have a shelter.
Their other expression is unclear. It may be one the insomniac invents later, as he mentally replays that night’s events. Could it be a look of disappointment? Of betrayal? Why did the one-man tent have to be a secret?
They cook dinner, squeeze into the one-man tent, make it to the summit (and to Agave before it closes), leave Sitka, graduate college, and go their separate ways.
Each friend now lives in a different part of the country. They used to talk on the phone, but now rarely do.
Every once in a while, when he can’t sleep, the insomniac wonders about the seldom-traveled outer reaches of the Male Friendship Galaxy — and whether such a place even exists.
