She thought it over for a moment and then gave him the little see-saw with her hand. “Moderately energetic,” she said. “I think maybe I had one glass of wine too many.”
Jake chuckled. “That can happen,” he said. “I was thinking of doing that route my dad suggested, the one that leads to that cliff.” He put his finger on the map. “It looks like we head north from the ledge, hang a right at this trail here, go downhill into the canyon, and then hang a right at the main trail and then a left at this connector here. We take another right at this trail and it’ll lead us to the cliff. That seem about right?”
“Uh ... yeah, if you say so,” she said.
“I say so,” he said. “The whole second half of this run is uphill, but it looks like a gradual uphill with only a few steep climbs.”
“All right then,” she said. “Let’s do it.”
“Let’s do it,” he agreed.
Though it was July, the air at this altitude, at this time of the day, had a slight bite to it as a steady wind blew through the canyon. The sun was low in the east and the sky was a brilliant shade of blue that was virtually unseen in Los Angeles. All in all, it was a beautiful morning.
They stretched out for a few minutes, limbering themselves up for exercise, and then Jake led them off, moving at a steady pace that was a little slower than what he usually set when he was alone. Soon, they reached the trailhead and started down into the canyon. The exertion started to work on them almost immediately.
“I thought it would be easy going downhill,” Celia said.
“Not when it’s steep like this,” Jake said. “You expend a lot of energy keeping yourself balanced in this kind of terrain.”
The trail was narrow, full of rocks, holes, and covered by needles from the evergreen trees that grew with moderate density around them. It twisted and turned back and forth through the clusters of trees, always going downhill. Just as they were really starting to get warmed up, they reached the main trail.
“We hang a right here,” Jake said. “This will take us down to the Cross Circuit trail that leads to the cliff.”
“Sounds good,” Celia said, wiping a little sweat from her brow.
This trail was wider, better maintained, not as steep, and featured frequent glimpses down into the canyon. Jake picked up the pace a bit and Celia matched him easily. They spoke little as they made their way downward. After another half a mile or so, they reached an intersection with another trail, this one a little narrower.
“Here’s the Cross Circuit,” Jake said. “We turn right here and go until we reach the cliff.”
“I’ll have to trust you on that,” Celia said. “I am thoroughly disoriented.”
Though Tom had described this portion of the trail as horizontal, they quickly found that that was a relative term. Over the next mile, though their mean elevation remained more or less steady, the path moved up and down over a series of forty to sixty foot undulations in the terrain. Jake was used to running in these conditions. Celia was not. Her pace slowed a bit and she began to pant quite audibly on the rises.
“Doing okay?” Jake asked her at one point.
She gave him a thumbs up but no verbal reply.
And then they came to the uphill portion. It was not steeply uphill, but it was relentlessly uphill, with no downhill or even horizontal sections for momentary relief. Jake pushed himself into it, feeling his heart hammering in his chest, his breath tearing in and out of his lungs. His legs began to burn with the exertion. He was pretty sure he could have made it to the top at this pace, but Celia had to slow to a walk about halfway up.
“Sorry,” she panted, wiping perspiration from her face. “I couldn’t run anymore. Not ... not used to this.”
“No problem,” Jake said, slowing to a walk to stay beside her. “This is a bit of an ass-kicker.”
They trudged onward, still breathing heavy, but no longer breathless.
“It’s funny,” Celia said. “I run on the treadmill for my normal workout. I set it at a pace that’s faster than what we were doing and with more of an incline and I can keep that pace up for forty-five minutes. But here...” She shook her head, “ ... I just can’t hang.”
“It’s real terrain,” Jake told her. “Real terrain is always going to be harder than artificial runs.”
“I see why you run in Griffith Park now,” she said.
The trail angled to the right, away from the drop-off into the canyon and into a dense cluster of trees. The grade grew a bit steeper. They pushed on, now hikers instead of runners. Both of them drank frequently from their water bottles. Eventually the trail cut back to the left. After a final rise it emerged from the trees and, just like that, the vista of the canyon opened up before them.
“Nice,” Jake said appreciatively, as he took in the view.
“Hermoso,” whispered Celia.
“That means, good, right?” Jake asked her.
“It means ‘beautiful’,” she confirmed.
And indeed it was. The trail was now hugging the very ledge of a sheer granite cliff, offering an unobstructed view of the canyon. They could see the Heritage River some eight hundred feet below, a roiling bed of Sierra Nevada meltwater making its way down toward the valley and its eventual storage in Lake Heritage behind the Eastside Dam. The surface was dotted with whitewater rapids and long stretches of placid blue. The banks were narrow widths of craggy rock that pushed up against the steep walls.
“Dad was right,” Jake said. “The view is worth the effort of getting here.”
“Agreed,” Celia said, still taking it in.
“Why don’t we rest here for a few?” Jake suggested. “Get our breath back before final push back up to the top.”
“I thought you’d never ask,” she told him.
Places to sit down were somewhat limited, but they finally found a moderate sized boulder that had come down from higher up and was now sitting just to the right of the trail. They both planted their botines on it, their legs stretched out before them. The fit was a bit cozy. Their hips and legs were touching. Jake felt a little thrill at the contact.
They sat in silence for a bit, taking in the view, listening to the breeze blowing through the trees above them, letting their bodies repay the oxygen debts they had incurred, occasionally sipping from their water.
“Are you ready for today?” Celia finally asked.
“The meeting?” Jake asked. They were scheduled to meet with Oren Blake II—an influential and controversial country music singer and songwriter—at the recording studio he owned in Coos Bay, Oregon. The subject of the meeting was to discuss the possibility of Jake and Celia renting some studio time from him so they could get their music recorded. The problem was that Blake was rumored to be very particular about who he allowed to use his studio.
“The meeting,” she confirmed. “I’m a little nervous about it. If this hidalgo doesn’t sell us some time, we’re going to be forced to go to National or one of the other companies to get our recordings done. You know what that means.”
“Yeah,” Jake said. He did indeed know what that meant. “It means we’ll be letting National or whoever have access to our efforts before we’re ready for release—something that is bad—and that we’ll probably have to offer them additional royalties on sales once we’re in production since they’re unlikely to simply rent us the time at a flat rate—something that is worse.”
“Or, they could just flat out turn us down,” she said. “Something I wouldn’t put past those corporate putas. Neither of us exactly left our contracts on good terms.”
“That would be a worst-case scenario,” Jake had to agree. “That would force us to utilize a second-rate studio somewhere, something like that little place we did our initial demo recording in back in the day. All those places are still analog, as far as I know. Not only would an analog master not sound as good, but it would also take us longer to mix and we’d still have to pay some place to convert it over to digital for us.”