“They’ve finally just opened up some more of the trails,” Tracy said. “And it’s about time too. I mean, Echo Mountain’s nice, but it’s gotten so crowded. It’s like running at the friggin’ Rose Bowl.” Tracy was driving fast, weaving in and out of traffic. Every few minutes she reached over to take a gulp of coffee from her travel mug.
“The hikes out of Chantry Flats are cool,” Oscar said, trying not to glance at the speedometer. Chantry Flats had an old-time pack station, complete with mules, goats, and horses. He liked to take Lily sometimes, to see the animals.
“Mount San Gorgonio is awesome too,” Tracy said. “I was just up there last weekend, and there was still snow at the top. Best thing you can do down here to train for altitude.”
Now Gwen turned to her. “Train for altitude? How high up are we going?”
Tracy waved her off. “We’ll be fine. We’ll top out at Green Pass at about 11,500 feet, but not until the last day, so we’ll have time to acclimatize.”
Something occurred to Oscar. “If there’s snow on San Gorgonio, won’t there be snow on our route?”
“It’ll be fine,” Tracy said again. “There wasn’t much snow last winter and most of it’s probably melted off by now. If not, we’ll just make our way over it.”
“Is that safe?” Gwen asked.
“Don’t worry, it’s no big deal. Not like Rainier or even Shasta. You need crampons and ice axes for those, to keep from sliding down a slope or into a crevasse.”
“Sounds dangerous,” Oscar said.
“That’s part of the point, buddy. That’s part of the point. Climbs like that, one wrong step and you’re toast. You have to focus every second. But there’s nothing like a bit of risk to make you feel alive.”
This didn’t make Oscar feel better, but he decided to let it go. She was right—what was the big deal about a little snow? As they merged onto the 5 north and skirted up between the hills, he felt the first real sense of escaping, a sheer, uncomplicated joy at leaving his job behind. He was heading off to a place where income-to-loan ratios meant nothing, where no one cared about the best way to stage a house for a showing, where no one was even thinking about the steady drop in home values over the last five years, and where he wouldn’t see his empty, unfinished houses. In the mountains, he’d have no smartphone, no sharp clothes or fast car to fall back on. He’d have to depend on his endurance and grit, and if he got into a scrape, it would be his own guts and thinking that would have to get him out of it. He could do this, he knew it; he was up for the challenge. Coach Eric from the gym could kiss his ass.
“So, Todd,” Oscar said now, “have you hiked or backpacked much?”
Todd looked startled that someone had spoken to him.
“More when I was younger,” he managed. “I used to camp with my dad. But not so much as an adult, to tell you the truth. I go for hikes with the kids sometimes out in the Palisades or Malibu.”
Of course, Oscar thought. The Westsiders go farther west. This guy was probably soft.
“Most of my workouts these days are with Tracy,” Todd continued. “I went to SportZone for physical therapy last year for a shoulder injury, and then they referred me to Tracy. She pushes me hard, but it’s all in the gym—I’ve really missed being outside.”
“You’re a lawyer?”
“Yeah, a litigator. I work for a great firm, but it’s pretty dry to tell you the truth.” He sounded self-conscious. “The thing I like most is the pro bono work. I do some volunteer work for a couple of youth organizations.”
Gwen turned around in her seat and looked at him. “Really? I work for a youth organization down in South LA.”
“Tracy mentioned that. I’d love to hear more about it.”
And so Gwen began to tell him about the kids her agency helped, and Todd asked questions that seemed genuine, if clueless. (“But why do the kids join gangs?” “Why don’t the families show up for services, if they’re free?”) Oscar was a little irritated at Gwen—she talked as if Watts were the only tough place in the city. So he spoke up about Highland Park and Cypress Park, the poverty and crime, his own friends who’d been lost to gang violence. He described what had changed and what hadn’t in the last few years, the mixed blessing of gentrification. And while this was mostly directed at Gwen, he was annoyed at Todd too, for being so Westside sheltered.
But Oscar decided to go easy on the guy. It didn’t make sense to write him off, not yet. Not when they were north of Castaic now. Not when they were actually on their way, and there was so much anticipation in the small shared space that it seemed like the car might lift off the road and fly. Oscar grinned as they passed Pyramid Lake, with its namesake land mass rising out of the water. Then they drove on to Tejon Ranch and down the other side of the mountains, where they were treated to a bird’s-eye view of open plains flanked by hills as they arrived at the southern gate of the Central Valley.
Which wasn’t, Oscar remembered now, anything to write home about. They passed a clump of gas stations, hotels, and fast-food joints, and stayed on the 99 while most of the traffic veered away on the 5 toward San Francisco. They were entering a different California. Oscar had only driven on the 99 once before, and again he was struck by the contrast between the state’s heartland and its cities on the coast. Near Bakersfield they started to see the antiabortion signs, one of which bore an image of an aborted fetus so graphic that Oscar had to look away. Other signs blamed the current drought on the Federal Reserve. All of them towered over a landscape that was stunning in its flatness. Once they passed Bakersfield, they were deep into farmland—fields of onion and alfalfa and groves of olive trees. The vibrant green was dotted here and there with spots of color—farm workers, surely Mexican, toiling in brightly colored clothes in the sweltering summer sun. Late-model cars were parked at the edge of the fields, and some rundown trailers too; the people clumped around them looked so destitute that Oscar felt a lump in his throat. His own grandparents had been migrant workers; they might have worked these very fields. But before he could think too much about the workers, the car was past them.
He saw haphazard stacks of pallets, discarded farm machinery, ads for irrigation systems and pest control. He saw motels that looked like they hadn’t had a guest in his lifetime. They passed signs for an Indian casino and a half-built housing development, and trailers and RVs dumped in empty fields. Twice they passed huge cattle pens maybe half a mile square, full of cows jostling each other for food and moving around in their own slop. And the towns, or what were called towns—low-profile clusters of buildings that were all some shade of brown. Near one of them was a billboard boasting, Guns! Next Exit! with a silhouette of an assault rifle. Scraps of tire tread and tumbleweeds bumped against the guard rail, and every few miles they passed a gruesome bit of roadkill, a cat and several skunks and a brown, bloated dog. Hanging over everything was a haze of more brown—dust and smog and insecticide and God knew what else. No wonder crystal meth was such a problem here, he thought. As if boredom weren’t enough, you could die of ugliness.
And yet, and yet. Out the window, to the right, Oscar saw a line of white against the skyline. “Is that the mountains?” he asked.
The others turned and stared out the window.
“Looks like it!” Gwen said from the front seat.
“That’s them!” Tracy confirmed, and as they looked closer, Oscar could see the dark shape of them, the uninterrupted mass, the very tops covered in snow.
“Wow,” he said.
“They don’t look real,” Gwen said. They were so startling, so incongruous with the ugly terrain, that it was as if someone had rolled in the wrong backdrop.