walked further than he’d suspected.
“What the...?” he muttered.
It seemed that his path up the
mountain had meandered quite a bit.
There might be a quicker route back
to the Jeep.
When thoughts of shortcuts come to
mind, McDonnell looks at his left hand
and remembers a little mishap he had
in Hawaii. He and Joanna had taken
a once-in-a-lifetime vacation for her
80th birthday. They needed an extra
bag, so he walked along a sidewalk to
a nearby store, then realized he could
get back to the hotel quicker if he
jumped a barrier and scrambled down
an embankment. But he tripped and
broke his wrist and hand. With pins
now bolting the hand together, he was
lucky he could still use the thing at all.
But on this day, McDonnell
couldn’t help himself. I’ll just be extra
careful, he reasoned, and began cut-
ting his own path.
before his descent, McDonnell had
picked up a call from Joanna. “Who
might this be?” he’d answered.
“Sounds like you’re still alive,”
she’d said.
McDonnell figured he could drop
into the valley, hunt a bit, tackle the
next ridgeline, then maybe hunt a bit
more. But the further he snaked down
through the forest, the thinner and
deeper the ridges became. Before
long, the canyon narrowed to a rock
chute. Next thing he knew, he was
looking straight down from the top of
a waterfall that was 30, or maybe 60,
metres high.
He glanced to his right and saw a
six-metre-high wall of nearly vertical
rock. Behind him, the ravine he’d fol-
lowed down the mountain looked
steeper and longer than he’d thoughtit was. To his left, the wall was slightly
less vertical, more creviced and more
covered in thick laurel roots.
He knew what he should do: go back
up the ravine. But if he scaled that rock
to the left, he could continue across
and down the ridgeline. He would
make it to the Jeep in time.
McDonnell began the climb, care-
fully plotting each step, grabbing the
fattest root, tugging it to test its sturdi-
ness, then heaving himself up to reach
the next solid perch, and the next one
and so on. He tried not to look down.McDONNELL PUSHED UPWARD UNTIL,
FINALLY, HE HURLED HIMSELF ONTO THE
SHELF ATOP A ROCK WALL.rd.ca 53