Finding Jennifer

Finding

Jennifer

By

Dave Folsom

This book is a work of fiction.  Names, places, or incidents are either products of the authors imagination or used fictionally.  Any resemblance to actual events, localities, or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

© Dave Folsom 2011 All Rights Reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or used in any form without the expressed permission of the author.

 Chapter One

 Jennifer Hollings parked her five-year old Honda CRV at the end of the road.  An exaggeration when called a road, the rough, gravelly, seventeen mile, two cow-path byway was intended at the end of the 19th Century for mule-drawn ore wagons.  The remnants of the old wagon road finished at the edge of a deep wash.  Surrounded by fifty-plus miles of Sonoran Desert in any direction, Jennifer loaded her backpack with three 24 ounce bottles of water, a small Mini-Maglite, two Granny Smith apples, two whole grain bread and sliced roast beef sandwiches and a package of Twinkies in the predawn darkness. She’d decided the two mile walk to the old mine site would burn enough calories to afford the sweet.  Arranging everything in the backpack to ensure the Twinkies survived undamaged, Jennifer added her camera bag and wiggled into the backpack straps.

Ready to go, she lifted her camera strap over her head, securing her prized Canon EOS 7D digital SLR camera with its 28-135mm kit lens close to her body.  Jennifer loved the 18 megapixel camera body and hated the kit lens.  She preferred a longer, faster lens but her meager salary at the local newspaper prevented the purchase.  As a beginning photographer/writer, copy person and maker of the morning coffee for anybody that wanted it, Jennifer’s skimpy paycheck barely covered her living expenses.  She skipped meals and saved loose change to buy gas for her desert photography trips.  So, the kit lens had to do, and she concentrated on composition, detail, and lighting to compensate.  Her plan this morning included using the hike to catch a desert critter or two framed in her camera lens and reach the mine site as the morning sun created long shadows on the landscape.  The old buildings would standout like lonely pillars of a past time.

Jennifer loved the desert.  She knew the silent, seemingly unoccupied setting was filled with silently struggling vegetation hiding any number of ominous creatures.  Snakes, scorpions, and an occasional tarantula lurked in the sparse grasses and green barked Palo Verdi brush while Giant Saguaro cactus stood like soldiers guarding her path, arms held out in welcome.  She loved the desert, but had also learned enough about it to respect its unseen dangers.

Taller than average at five-foot-nine with a slim build, she enjoyed hiking in the cool of the morning and a thrill of anticipation rose inside her anticipating the coming adventure.  Tying up her crimson hair with a cotton scarf to keep it out of her eyes, she dropped into the wash and climbed up the other side, impatient to follow the remnants of old wagon road to the mine site and its abandoned structures.  The old buildings would make a dramatic backdrop for her photographical creations. It was spring and the desert bloomed in proliferate color contrasting deeply with its normal earthy tones.  Backpack laden, Jennifer hiked through the growing heat enjoying the smells and sensations of crimson Ocotillos, white and yellow flowers peeking from the tops of Saguaros and watching the antics of geckos racing through the hot sandy soil.  The desert thrilled her, its empty landscape from a distance contrasted oddly to its abundance close up.

The gravel filled trail she followed climbed upward along the rocky contour of an ancient volcano cone, one of many that dotted the desert floor.  Jennifer considered herself desert savvy, seasoned in a variety of flora and fauna that eked out an existence in sometimes severe conditions.  Summer temperatures routinely reached one-hundred-twenty in the scarcely available shade.  This day, Jennifer knew it would barely reach ninety.  Her pace was slow and steady, conserving energy as the sun peaked over the horizon and began its daily travel across a cloudless azure sky.  She also considered herself tough; once allowing a traveling sidewinder rattlesnake to slither across her booted ankles while she clicked her Canon following its movements.