Russell “Rusty” Hoyt, 62, spent 38 years perched in Sierra Nevada fire towers scanning treetops for smoke plumes before he retired to Bend, Oregon, where he fixes vintage camping stoves out of his cinder block garage. His biggest flaw, the one his ex-wife cited constantly before she left him for a 38 year old ski instructor 12 years prior, is that he’d rather talk to a rusted Coleman burner than another person most days. He avoids the town’s small drama, mostly, only leaves the house for grocery runs, the occasional bass fishing trip, and the monthly vintage outdoor gear swap at the west side beer garden.
That July swap, the sun hung low enough to gild the tops of the ponderosa pines when she leaned over his folding table. He’d seen her before: Mara, 58, the new part-time librarian at the branch near his house, the one all the old guys at the swap had been whispering about for three weeks, ever since someone spotted her making out with the 22 year old seasonal park ranger behind the downtown ice cream shop. Rusty had rolled his eyes at the gossip at the time, written her off as another bored recent widow making bad choices, but when she got within two feet of him he forgot every snarky thought he’d had. She wore a faded 1998 Pearl Jam tour tee, cutoff denim shorts that showed off a scar curling around her left calf, and scuffed work boots caked with trail mud. Her arms were freckled, her left nostril had a tiny silver hoop, and she smelled like pine soap and coconut sunscreen, with a faint undercurrent of the wheat ale she sipped from a dented plastic cup.
She pointed to the 1972 Coleman two-burner he’d spent three weeks restoring, and when she leaned in her shoulder brushed his, warm and solid through his faded flannel shirt. “That’s the exact one my dad took us camping with every summer growing up,” she said, her voice rough, like she smoked a pack a day and laughed too loud too often. He held his breath for half a second, unused to anyone being that close to him on purpose. They talked for 20 minutes about the stove, about how you had to adjust the jet just right to get it to hold a flame at 7000 feet, about how new plastic stoves broke if you looked at them wrong. He caught himself smiling, something he rarely did around strangers, and when she held his gaze for three full beats after he told her he’d knock 20 bucks off the price if she promised to use it for actual camping, not backyard cookouts, his neck went hot.
He almost didn’t mention the hike. He was supposed to lead a day trip to a hidden alpine lake off the Cascade Lakes Highway the next weekend, but his buddy who was supposed to come had broken his ankle falling off a ladder cleaning his gutters. The gossip flickered in the back of his head, that stupid judgment he’d let fester, but before he could talk himself out of it he said he had an extra spot if she wanted to come, no AllTrails directions, no crowds, just a four mile hike up and a lake full of cutthroat trout. She lit up, nodded so fast her messy auburn ponytail bounced, and typed her number into his beat up flip phone before he could second guess himself.
They met for coffee at the tiny diner off Route 20 three days later to go over the trail map. She showed up with a flannel tied around her waist, a dog-eared Raymond Carver collection tucked in her back pocket, and a jar of homemade blackberry jam she’d canned the summer before, as a thank you for the stove discount. Their hands brushed when she passed him the jar, and her palm was calloused, just like his, from splitting firewood and hauling camping gear and turning the pages of old books. He felt stupid for the judgment he’d held onto, so he blurted out that he’d heard the gossip about her and the park ranger, that he’d been an ass to write her off without talking to her first. She laughed so hard she snort-laughed, wiping coffee off her chin with the back of her hand, and said the kid had been sweet but could only talk about his custom mountain bike for 10 minutes straight before he ran out of things to say, that she’d been lonely after her husband died two years prior and had made a dumb, fun choice, and she didn’t owe anyone an explanation for it.
The hike was easier than he expected, her pace matching his, no complaining about the steep switchbacks, no stopping every two minutes to take Instagram photos. They didn’t talk the whole time, and that was the best part, comfortable silence broken only by the sound of woodpeckers drilling into pine trunks and the crunch of pine needles under their boots. When they crested the ridge and the lake came into view, bright blue and surrounded by wild purple lupine, she whooped so loud a flock of geese took off from the shore.
They sat on a flat granite boulder at the edge of the water, and she pulled two cold IPAs out of her pack, stashed there in neoprene koozies, and passed him one. The breeze off the lake was cold enough to make his cheeks pink, and when she leaned her head on his shoulder for half a minute, warm and solid against his side, he didn’t pull away. He popped the tab on his beer, took a long, cold sip, and watched a plump cutthroat trout jump out of the water to catch a dragonfly skittering across the glass-smooth surface.
