A Walk in the Woods

I gave a shrug that was meant to look optimistic but was probably closer to indifferent.
"We might," I said.
"But what if we don't? What if there's another blizzard? We were very lucky, if you ask
me, to escape with our lives last time." He looked at me with desperate eyes. "I've got
eighteen cans of cream soda in my room," he blurted and then wished he hadn't.
I arched an eyebrow. "Eighteen? Were you planning to settle here?"
"It was on special," he muttered defensively and retreated into a sulk.
"Look, Stephen, I'm sorry to spoil your festive arrangements, but we didn't come all the
way down here to drink pop and watch TV."
"Didn't come down here to die either," he said, but he argued no more.
So we went, and were lucky. The snow was deep but passable. Some lone hiker, even
more impatient than I, had pushed through ahead of us and compacted the snow a little,
which helped. It was slick on the steep climbs--Katz was forever sliding back, falling
down, cursing mightily--and occasionally on higher ground we had to detour around
expansive drift fields, but there was never a place where we couldn't get through.
And the weather perked up. The sun came out; the air grew milder and heavier; the
little mountain streams became lively with the tumble and gurgle of meltwater. I even
heard the tentative twitter of birds. Above 4,500 feet, the snow lingered and the air felt
refrigerated, but lower down the snow retreated in daily bounds until by the third day it
was no more than scrappy patches on the darkest slopes. It really wasn't bad at all,
though Katz refused to admit it. I didn't care. I just walked. I was very happy.
For two days, Katz barely spoke to me. On the second night, at nine o'clock, an unlikely
noise came from his tent--the punctured-air click of a beverage can being opened--and he
said in a pugnacious tone, "Do you know what that was, Bryson? Cream soda. You know
what else? I'm drinking it right now, and I'm not giving you any. And you know what else?
It's delicious." There was a slurpy, intentionally amplified drinking noise. "Mmmm-mmmm.
Dee-light-full." Another slurp. "And do you know why I'm drinking it now? Because it's 9
P.M.--time for the 'X-Files,' my favorite program of all time." There was a long moment's
drinking noise, the sound of a tent zip parting, the tinkle of an empty can landing in
undergrowth, the tent zip closing. "Man, that was so good. Now fuck you and good night."
And that was the end of it. In the morning he was fine.
Katz never really did get into hiking, though goodness knows he tried. From time to
time, I believe, he glimpsed that there was something--some elusive, elemental
something--that made being out in the woods almost gratifying. Occasionally, he would
exclaim over a view or regard with admiration some passing marvel of nature, but mostly
to him hiking was a tiring, dirty, pointless slog between distantly spaced comfort zones. I,
meanwhile, was wholly, mindlessly, very contentedly absorbed with the business of just
pushing forward. My congenital distraction sometimes fascinated him and sometimes
amused him, but mostly it just drove him crazy.
Late on the morning of the fourth day after leaving Franklin, I was perched on a big
green rock waiting for Katz after it dawned on me that I had not seen him for some time.
When at last he came along, he was even more disheveled than usual. There were twigs
in his hair, an arresting new tear on his flannel shirt, and a trickle of dried blood on his
forehead. He dropped his pack and sat heavily beside me with his water bottle, took a