Jen's Legacy.

Two weeks later, Royce was almost two hundred miles from his starting point, just west of Welland.

As he walked, he gradually left all signs of civilization behind him. He had been able to eat well, and better than he had for months, but sleep was still a problem.

The eagles had been observing him for a few hours now, since very early morning, watching his slow course across the plateau as they soared far above him, out of sight in the bright sky that hurt the eyes to look at. Where there was a human, there were often animals fleeing ahead of him and to the side that might be picked off, but where he had walked there would be nothing for a while.

To them, he had no name, and he came from another world outside of theirs. They didn’t care that he was called Royce Healey or what he was in life. They knew nothing of his recent loss, or of his journey along the canyon, or of his reasons for taking it. All they knew was that he was not a sheep or a goat, and not their usual food, but was a human, or whatever that image of him in their avian brains conveyed about him. Humans in their environment were dangerous and were to be avoided, as were the strange, noisy animals that flew with great noise along the canyon most days.

The human, a lone man in shorts and shirt, windblown and sunburned, carrying a backpack and already two weeks into his journey, walked across the scrubby plain at the edge of the canyon. He was unaware of the eagle hovering high to one side of him half a mile up, held there in the thermals off the canyon walls where the afternoon sun hit them.

Those few people he bumped into, saw a man with little to say; a man, driven, in some way. They could see that he was just above average height, stocky, fit, about twenty-six or twenty-seven years old.

His only shirt was sweat-streaked down the back, and his face had two days of stubble. He had no water to waste on washing or shaving unless he was able to make it down to the river to wash the sand and salt out of his clothes and hair, as he would, tonight, but the river was almost a quarter of a mile below him and three miles away. His last shave had been dry, and he’d missed a lot, as well as nicking himself. The dried blood was still on his face from that.

There was a small trickle of water near here, running over the rocks to his right. He remembered it from being up here with his father ten years earlier and even since then, from just five years earlier during the happiest time of his life, on his honeymoon with Jen.

He would shower and shave there if it was still running, and even wash his clothes out, but first he would replenish his supply of water.

He would be down at the river again tonight; with each stop on the plateau or by the river, reliving another memory from the past, with Jen, like way-stages on a pilgrimage before reaching the promised land; the end of the journey, and peace. One way or another.

He favored one leg but not so noticeably now, and the injuries he’d suffered three months earlier in the plane crash; the visible wounds, had mostly healed. It was the internal ones, the ones that still tortured him that he could do little about, but that was why he’d set out on this journey.

He would not be the first to set out on such a journey where the end point was a planned death, to bring an end to his misery. In times of starvation, others had unselfishly done that, so that the little food that there was, would keep others alive for longer.

His hair had been short at one time but had been allowed to become longer than he liked, to hide some of the scars, but was still short, after his mother in law had taken the scissors to it, and it was bleached by the sun.

Another scar across his forehead and running from the front to the back of his scalp could not be hidden, so he accepted it. He had a cap somewhere deep in the bottom of his pack if he hadn’t lost it. His shirt, open at the neck, revealing a bronzed sunburn of at least two weeks, as did his arms. He often walked without a shirt when the wind was stronger and the day not so hot.

At night, and if it got cold, he had a denim jacket he could wear.

His heavy backpack contained mostly essentials, for when and if he got stranded anywhere because of the weather; dried foods of high calorie content, jerked meat, dried soups, and two large containers of water, always kept filled where possible, and each of which, just fitted into the side pockets. They were the heaviest things he carried He’d spoiled himself with cans of spam and beans, as well as fresh bread, when it was available. He stopped for a prepared meal whenever he came by one of those remote stops that the tourists used on their way to the canyon lookouts.

There was a nylon rope, coiled and laid across the top of everything, along with other pieces of climbing equipment, but he was not a serious climber. He did not carry a change of clothing other than for a pair of heavy socks. He didn’t need to carry any bulky clothing with him. He would embarrass no one when he went around naked, as his clothes dried out.

A tightly-rolled sleeping bag, able to protect him down to freezing and below if need be, and a plastic sheet to protect it and him from the rain, hung under his pack secured there by straps.

It didn’t rain very often up here at this time of year, but when it did, you’d better be ready. The nights were cold; a legacy of the dry desert air which allowed an observer to see clearly for miles and see the flash of reflected sunlight off car windshields where the east-west highway far back from the canyon and its many side channels became visible, but that was twenty or more miles away.

Then there were the mountains, becoming purple with distance, rising another 3,000 feet, surrounding him, protecting this relative desert on the plateau from precipitation until later in the year.

They were mostly devoid of snow cover at this time of year, except where he could see a protected northern face on a higher peak to the south of him that rarely saw any sun. Logan’s peak, named after the geologist that had first mapped it. Soon, they would get that first sprinkle of snow, signaling the end of Summer. Autumn came early up here and would be followed soon after by the snow.

On the plateau the temperature could get up to more than 120 degrees during the day in the dry air, and then once the sun disappeared, would plummet to well below freezing with no water to condense out of it, giving up its latent heat to keep the temperature from getting so cold.

Nature was not kind to those caught out in the desert. But the lush greenery along sections of the river and up some of the side canyons along the side channels was another world altogether, a subtropical paradise at this time of year; late summer, and was a refuge for the wildlife that the eagles hunted; rabbits, deer, foxes, lambs of the mountain sheep, and goats; though the lambs were grown by now, and had learned to be wary when they had seen others like them picked off.

The river and the shade of the canyon below him, was kinder to those rafters that he saw from time to time on the river below him, and who were saved from those extremes or temperature and weather, unless the canyon, in its meandering course, exposed them to the full blast of the hot midday sun, or denied them it altogether.

He’d re-supplied, three days earlier, by walking out to a small outpost three miles back from the canyon, that he’d remembered from five years earlier, and then had gone back to the canyon; drawn to it. This was where he had to be. The canned food he’d bought, had mostly run out now, and he was back to his dried soups, dried beans, and dried meats.

He strode out with purpose, as though knowing exactly where he was going and what he would do when he got there. It was as though he were walking it again with Jen, as each little memory came back to him; they had rested here and made love, looked out over the canyon, there, admiring the scenery and the colors, they had sheltered from a rain squall in the lee of that boulder and made love again under a plastic sheet.

He spoke with Jen all of the way, as though she were still with him. He even laughed as though hearing her response, but it was an empty laugh with none of the feeling that there had been behind it when she'd been with him.

He shed tears often at the frustrating loneliness as he walked, or as he sat next to his fire each evening when there was fuel enough for one, and dreamed, as he tried to sleep. He forgot to shave for the first week and didn’t wash. He just focused on walking, eating, and getting himself tired enough to rest.

He would restock with other food at the small tourist store, still two days ahead of him. He’d bathe, wash out his clothes, comb out his hair, and shave before that, or he would present the appearance of a wild man.

This odyssey had been the decision of a lifetime, made just weeks earlier after his call to Culver about the job; and his destination was still a week or more ahead of him; if he got there. He would be a week earlier than he’d said he would be, or he might not arrive at all. It was all still up in the air.

He often talked to himself or, when he found a suitable lookout, could stand there for ten minutes at a time, observing everything that could be seen in the canyons, and on its sides and its rim, as he drank everything in. It was dangerous to stand too close to the edge for too long, but he didn’t care about that.

Your mind wanted to draw you down into those depths, hundreds of feet down in stages, to red and grey rocks, some a little harder than others; standing out, and then to more rocks, hypnotically; just as watching the bow wave on a ship, mesmerized those unwise enough to lean over to watch, and drew them over the rail. There was no rail here to stop you.

His body would never be found.

‘Is it to be here?’

No answer. No one could help him.

At each stop, it was the same question, and each time, as before, there was no answer.

Royce would have to decide for himself. Jen would not have approved and would not help him, which was why she did not respond.

He became angry with her and with himself, but then knew that that way was not right. Jen did not deserve his anger.

Just as at sea, a body could soon get lost down there, never to be found for decades, if at all, other than for a few bone fragments, a tooth; especially if no one knew where you were. And no one knew where he was, where he had gone, or what was his destination, other than Mr. Crowther in Culver, but even he didn’t know where he was.

Royce felt better without people feeling sorry for him, wanting to know how he was holding up, when all he felt was a mess. Being out here would either pull him together or pull him apart even more.

Rather than break into his supplies, he endeavored to live off the land as much as he could, taking advantage of a few stands of trees, heavy with the scent of resin; or took refuge from the wind and the blowing sand in sheltered gullies, catching a rabbit where possible, or a rattler, as his father had shown him. Or he didn’t bother with food so much. All he really needed was water.

In those sheltered places he could make a small fire and roast whatever he’d caught. Some of the grasses had seeds that he collected; softening them in his mouth and then chewing them as he walked. Native Americans, the Anasazi, had once been all through this region, but there was little sign of them now, other than for the pueblos, their cliff dwellings, much farther down the river in another state, but their descendants, the Navajos were everywhere, and still recognizable in this environment. Out here, they were tall, thin people with skin the color of mahogany, and strands of beads around their necks. Where they were not so obvious, was in the cities, high above everyone; building skyscrapers.

He saw bighorn sheep and even deer at a distance fleeing from him, and was aware that there was a cougar interested in his passage near it. He was too big for it to take on, but it had briefly considered it in its constant state of hunger. He had a heavy knife in his belt, but he knew he was safe. It was safer to face them down if you had the nerve for it. Those who didn’t, ran, but that was foolish and invited you to be pulled down. It was the smaller and more venomous reptiles and arachnids he was concerned about.

Eagles and other raptors, and vultures, knew enough to keep away from him. They watched the sheep and their still-growing young, ready to pick one off and pull it off its rocky perch to its death; if it could, if it could catch it off-guard.

He’d put on some weight and held it, since he’d set out and put muscles on his legs, and shoulders. The slight buildup of fat around his middle from being tempted by, and giving in to that easier life behind him when he’d overeaten without even thinking about it, had burned off in the first week as he’d pushed himself along.

He had an ambitious target over such hard ground, of averaging at least twelve miles each day from sunup to sunset to get where he needed to be, and he’d almost managed that since he’d first started. He intended to be at the Witches’ Cauldron by the twentieth of the month, where he would cross the river on that suspension bridge, first put in for the miners, and upgraded several times since; and today was the fourteenth. Six days. He’d make it.

Witches’ Cauldron; named after a place where the river narrowed as it tore through a gap cut through a hundred-foot wide dolerite-dike standing across the path of the river; holding it up and churning the sediment-laden water into an angry torrent as it tried to cut down through it. A whirlpool at the bottom of that, was where everything in the river that got down to that point was churned around and smashed into thousands of pieces. The odd tree trunk that went down into that part of the river and got caught up on that, had sometimes come out of it shattered, sharpened like a pencil at one end from that swirling action. There was an old copper and gold-mine; abandoned, just a hundred feet down-river from that, with the ore zone on both sides of the river. The ore from the north side of the river was carried by hawser over the river, to join the production from the south side, where it was shoveled into the panniers of a mule train to get up to the rim, and then was transferred to horse drawn carts and driven into Culver, about twenty miles away, for smelting, but all of that had been a hundred years ago, and all that was left now, was the hawser across the river, a couple of tipping buckets, rusted-out machinery, and a few skeletons of the miners’ cabins. Obvious signs, warned of the dangers of entering the old workings.

It had been looked at briefly, during the war years, as a uranium resource, but with richer deposits elsewhere, it had been shelved again.

The only greenery worth speaking about, this late in the summer was to be found deep in the canyon along the river channel and from trickles of water that broke out of the red and grey sandstones of the canyon walls. Those trickles supplied him with water once he’d rappelled down there, if water was not to be found any other way. There were few sources of water on top of the plateau worth relying upon. A couple of hours of effort would get him down to the river and allow him to cross the few tributaries that lay across his course, eating their own smaller canyons back ten or twenty miles deeper into the plateau. Crossing them at the main river saved him a couple of day’s detour walking around each of them.