A Walk in the Woods

beside the trail, in an intentionally prominent place, was an empty pack of Old Gold
cigarettes. Katz didn't smoke much, but he always carried a pack of Old Golds. In the mud
by a fallen log were three cigarette butts. He had obviously waited here. So he was alive
and hadn't left the trail, and clearly had come this way. I felt immeasurably better. At
least I was going in the right direction. As long as he stuck to the trail, I was bound
eventually to overtake him.
I found him four hours after setting off, sitting on a rock by the turnoff for West
Chairback Pond, head inclined to the sun as if working on his tan. He was extensively
scratched and muddy, and wildly bedraggled, but otherwise looked OK. He was of course
delighted to see me.
"Bryson, you old mountain man, you're a welcome sight. Where have you been?"
"I was wondering the same of you."
"Guess I missed the last watering hole?"
I nodded.
He nodded, too. "Knew I had, of course. Soon as I got down to the bottom of that big
cliff, I thought, 'Shit, this can't be right.' "
"Why didn't you come back?"
"I don't know. I got it in mind somehow that you must have pushed on. I was real
thirsty. I think I might have been a little confused--a little addled, as you might say. I was
real thirsty."
"So what did you do?"
"Well, I pushed on and kept thinking I had to come to water sooner or later, and
eventually I came to a mud slick--"
"Where you left the cigarette pack?"
"You saw it? I'm so proud. Yeah, well, I soaked up some water there with my
bandanna, because I remembered that's what Fess Parker did once on the Davy Crockett
show."
"How very enterprising."
He accepted the compliment with a nod. "That took about an hour, and then I waited
another hour for you and had a couple of smokes, and then it was getting dark so I put
my tent up, ate a Slim Jim, and went to bed. Then this morning I sponged up a little more
water with my bandanna and I came on here. There's a real nice pond just down there,
so I thought I'd wait here where there was water and hope that you'd come along
eventually. I didn't think you'd leave me up here on purpose, but you're such a walking
day dream I could just imagine you getting all the way to Katahdin before you noticed I
wasn't with you." He put on an exaggerated accent. " 'Oh, I say, delightful view--don't
you agree, Stephen? Stephen...? Stephen...? Now where the deuce has he got to?' "
He gave me a familiar smile. "So I'm real glad to see you."
"How'd you get so scratched up?"
He looked at his arm, which was covered in a zigzag of dried blood. "Oh that? It's
nothing."
"What do you mean it's nothing? It looks like you've been doing surgery on yourself."
"Well, I didn't want to alarm you, but I also got kind of lost."
"How?"