Starry Night

seventeen

There are a few worse words to hear right now. All I want to know is (A) How "wrong way" are we, and (B) how do we get back on track?

Jungkook takes out his phone to study the book he's saved. His eyes flick over the screen, and then he whimpers softly. "I knew it. This isn't the right exit. We got turned around somehow. I knew I felt like we were going up. I just . . ."

"Where are we?"

"We're at the eastern exit. We need to be south, which is lower in elevation. A lot lower."

Do not panic.

"Is there a map of the cave?" I ask.

"If there were a map of the cave, we wouldn't be standing here, would we?"

Aish. No need to be grumpy. I'm the one with the snake bite. And speaking of snakes, I look back at the dark, spiderwebbed exit. "I'm not going back in there. Forget it."

"I don't think we have to," he says, flipping to another screen to reread a passage. "This cliff goes all the way around to the exit we should have used. It's just . . ."

"Just what?"

He takes his compass out of his pocket. "It's a roundabout. The other exit was a straight shot to the path in the valley. It's about a mile down from here to the northern exit, as a crow flies. But that's more like two or three miles, hiking around this cliff. Then another mile down into the valley.

"So, we're talking, what?"

"Two hours. A little longer. It won't be an easy descent. It's not an actual trail. Jungkook looks down at my bloody ankle. It's starting to swell.

I look around the cliff. How could a place that's so beautiful make me miserable?

"Hey, look," I say, spotting something dark on the mountain wall, several meters away from where we exited. Maybe Jungkook's wrong. Maybe we are in the right place. That could be the southern exit there.

But as I hobble toward it, and Jungkook shines his headlamp inside, I lose hope. It's another cave entrance, yes, but not to the network of tunnels we were just hiking. It's just a big, wide single cave. As though nature used a melon baller and scooped out a hole in the side of the mountain.

"This isn't animal cave, is it?" I say, imagining us waking up some hibernating family of bears.

"it looks clear," Jungkook reports.

We have to duck to enter the mouth of the cave, but once we're in, the ceiling is high, so we can stand and walk around. It's maybe a dozen feet wide and twice as deep. There are no hibernating animals. No stream. Not much of anything at all, except a dip in the rocky floor near the mouth that cradles the remnants of burned firewood.

"People have camped here," Jungkook says, bending down to inspect it. "Not recently, I don't think. but look." He kicks a discarded, empty can of food in the corner. It's covered in dirt and bone-dry, so it's been here in a while. "Bastards. What about 'leave no trace' don't people understand?"

I'm having trouble caring about that right now. I turn toward the half-moon mouth of the tiny cave and look toward the valley of trees. It's like gazing into a framed painting.

"Look, it's not what I'd planned, but I think we should camp here," Jungkook says. "It's flat and protected. Seems reasonably safe - it's obviously been used as a site by other hikers. There's room enough for us to build our tents inside this cave and build a fire."

"What about water?" I say.

"I've only taken a swig out of my bottle. How much do you have left?"