Juggling Fire Read Online Free
pack and shrug them on. I’m not camping anywhere near the bear.
The trail climbs and winds across a knoll; raindrops glob together into white wet clumps of slush that slide down my cheeks and collarbone, plastering my hair to my skull even under my hood. The peaks have disappeared. The fog is comforting—or would be if I could quit thinking about being cold. It makes the land seem smaller. I walk and I talk and Brooks trudges along, swaying with each step. I keep the leash snapped between us. I like to feel him there at the end of it, within my reach.
I drink at a creek crossing that is more like a slash through the tundra. The water smells like earth and moss. My rain gear is soaked. The fabric sticks to my wrists and calves. Shivering, I lie on my stomach and put my face flush with the ankle-deep water, moss green from its bed. The current slides fast around a bend. Twigs bob up and down, sweeping the waves. After each gulp, I lift my eyes and scan the far bank. My arms are tightening and loosening, clenching with cold. I have to move.
I stumble on, trying to run until I feel my body relax; then I speed-walk with Brooks trotting at my side.
When the rain has settled to a steady downpour, I stop on open high rocky ground where I can see and be seen. Low-bush cranberries lie like fat, round red apples along their creeping stems of evergreen leaves. Globs of slush are melting as I watch. Even under the snow all winter, cranberry leaves stay green. Easier for the plant not to start every short summer growing new leaves from scratch, I guess.
I get my tent out of a garbage bag, then pull it from its stuff sack and dump out the poles and pegs. It’s a oneperson mountain tent. A pole threads from side to side across the front and another across the foot end where the ceiling’s low. That’s it. I stick them in fast but can’t peg anything on the thin soil beneath the lichen. I tie the tent ropes to twigs and hope the poles stay balanced. I need to work quickly before the cold makes me clumsy. When I roll back the sleeve of my raincoat, I notice goose bumps like a plucked turkey on my arm. I pull my sleeping bag out of its stuff bag and lay it flat over my blue sleeping pad in the tent. Fingers barely responding, I crawl inside, pulling Brooks after me and shoving him to my feet while I nestle in my bag.
Wherever there’s tundra, there’s also permafrost. It’s a layer of soil and rock that’s been frozen year-round for at least two years. The trouble with permafrost is that there’s always an active layer above the ice that thaws in the summer and tosses about any structure people try to build over it. That’s why it’s hard to stick in my poles properly.
“I don’t know where he is,” Mom kept saying when I was small and I’d ask when he was coming back. “But it’s very likely he died in the bush. An accident.” I think she wanted to say more, but her voice got small whenever she talked about it.
She didn’t sound like Mom then, but like someone who was talking from very far away. I didn’t understand that when I was a kid, but now I think she was just trying really hard not to cry in front of me. She didn’t want me to grow up sad.
Except I knew different.
He said good-bye to me the night before he left. I was tucked in bed after Mom had told me my story. Becky hadn’t come to our room yet. Dad slipped in and leaned on the windowsill for a long time. Stars pulsed across the sky, and the first snow lay like icing sugar sifted over the mountains in the distance where he was going. It must have been early fall, just this time of year. He stayed there with his head stuck out the open window for so long that I must have fallen asleep.
He woke me with a hug smelling like snow and the night. “Don’t worry, Rachel,” he said when I wouldn’t let go of his neck. “I’ll be back. You just keep right on rolling.”
He meant my gymnastics. I rolled right through my childhood up until he
The trail climbs and winds across a knoll; raindrops glob together into white wet clumps of slush that slide down my cheeks and collarbone, plastering my hair to my skull even under my hood. The peaks have disappeared. The fog is comforting—or would be if I could quit thinking about being cold. It makes the land seem smaller. I walk and I talk and Brooks trudges along, swaying with each step. I keep the leash snapped between us. I like to feel him there at the end of it, within my reach.
I drink at a creek crossing that is more like a slash through the tundra. The water smells like earth and moss. My rain gear is soaked. The fabric sticks to my wrists and calves. Shivering, I lie on my stomach and put my face flush with the ankle-deep water, moss green from its bed. The current slides fast around a bend. Twigs bob up and down, sweeping the waves. After each gulp, I lift my eyes and scan the far bank. My arms are tightening and loosening, clenching with cold. I have to move.
I stumble on, trying to run until I feel my body relax; then I speed-walk with Brooks trotting at my side.
When the rain has settled to a steady downpour, I stop on open high rocky ground where I can see and be seen. Low-bush cranberries lie like fat, round red apples along their creeping stems of evergreen leaves. Globs of slush are melting as I watch. Even under the snow all winter, cranberry leaves stay green. Easier for the plant not to start every short summer growing new leaves from scratch, I guess.
I get my tent out of a garbage bag, then pull it from its stuff sack and dump out the poles and pegs. It’s a oneperson mountain tent. A pole threads from side to side across the front and another across the foot end where the ceiling’s low. That’s it. I stick them in fast but can’t peg anything on the thin soil beneath the lichen. I tie the tent ropes to twigs and hope the poles stay balanced. I need to work quickly before the cold makes me clumsy. When I roll back the sleeve of my raincoat, I notice goose bumps like a plucked turkey on my arm. I pull my sleeping bag out of its stuff bag and lay it flat over my blue sleeping pad in the tent. Fingers barely responding, I crawl inside, pulling Brooks after me and shoving him to my feet while I nestle in my bag.
Wherever there’s tundra, there’s also permafrost. It’s a layer of soil and rock that’s been frozen year-round for at least two years. The trouble with permafrost is that there’s always an active layer above the ice that thaws in the summer and tosses about any structure people try to build over it. That’s why it’s hard to stick in my poles properly.
“I don’t know where he is,” Mom kept saying when I was small and I’d ask when he was coming back. “But it’s very likely he died in the bush. An accident.” I think she wanted to say more, but her voice got small whenever she talked about it.
She didn’t sound like Mom then, but like someone who was talking from very far away. I didn’t understand that when I was a kid, but now I think she was just trying really hard not to cry in front of me. She didn’t want me to grow up sad.
Except I knew different.
He said good-bye to me the night before he left. I was tucked in bed after Mom had told me my story. Becky hadn’t come to our room yet. Dad slipped in and leaned on the windowsill for a long time. Stars pulsed across the sky, and the first snow lay like icing sugar sifted over the mountains in the distance where he was going. It must have been early fall, just this time of year. He stayed there with his head stuck out the open window for so long that I must have fallen asleep.
He woke me with a hug smelling like snow and the night. “Don’t worry, Rachel,” he said when I wouldn’t let go of his neck. “I’ll be back. You just keep right on rolling.”
He meant my gymnastics. I rolled right through my childhood up until he
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