A Walk in the Woods

We ate a dinner of Slim Jims, raisins, and Snickers and retired to our tents to escape
the endless assault of mosquitoes. As we lay there, Katz said, quite brightly, "Hard day
today. I'm beat." It was unlike him to be chatty at tent time.
I grunted in agreement.
"I'd forgotten how hard it is."
"Yeah, me, too."
"First days are always hard, though, aren't they?"
"Yeah."
He gave a settling-down sigh and yawned melodiously. "It'll be better tomorrow," he
said, still yawning. By this he meant, I supposed, that he wouldn't fling anything foolish
away. "Well, good night," he added.
I stared in surprise at the wall of my tent in the direction from which his voice had
come. In all the weeks of camping together, it was the first time he had wished me a
good night.
"Good night," I said.
I rolled over on my side. He was right, of course. First days are always bad. Tomorrow
would be better. We were both asleep in minutes.
Well, we were both wrong. The next day started well enough, with a sunny dawn that
promised another hot day. It was the first time along the trail that we had woken to
warmth, and we enjoyed the novelty of it. We packed up our tents, breakfasted on raisins
and Snickers, and set off into the deep woods. By nine o'clock the sun was already high
and blazing. Even on hot days, the woods are normally cool, but here the air was heavy
and steamy, almost tropical. About two hours after setting off, we came to a lagoon,
about two acres in size, I would guess, and filled with papery reeds, fallen trees, and the
bleached torsos of dead trees that were still standing. Dragonflies danced across the
surface. Beyond, waiting, rose a titanic heap called Moxie Bald Mountain. But what was of
immediate note was that the trail ended, abruptly and disconcertingly, at the water's
edge. Katz and I looked at each other-- something wrong here surely. For the first time
since Georgia, we wondered if we had lost the trail. (God knows what Chicken John would
have made of it.) We retraced our steps a considerable distance, perplexedly studied our
map and trail guide, tried to find an alternative way around the pond through the dense
and lacerating undergrowth, and finally concluded that we were intended to ford it. On
the far shore, perhaps eighty yards away, Katz spied a continuation of trail and a white AT
blaze. Clearly we had to wade across.
Katz led the way, barefoot and in boxer shorts, using a long stick like a punting pole to
try to pick his way across on a jumble of submerged or half submerged logs. I followed in
a similar manner but staying far enough back that I didn't put my weight on logs he was
using. They were covered in a slick moss and tended to bob or rotate alarmingly when
stepped on. Twice he nearly toppled over. Finally, about twenty-five yards out, he lost it
altogether and plunged with wheeling arms and an unhappy wail into the murky water.
He went completely under, came up, went under again, and came up flailing and
floundering with such wildness that for a few sincerely mortifying moments I thought he
was drowning. The weight of his pack was clearly dragging him backwards and keeping
him from gaining an upright position or even successfully keeping his head above water. I
was about to drop my pack and plunge in to help when he managed to catch hold of a log