“Out of the Clouds”
Haley Hinze
Everything was sticky–the tent, my sleeping bag, my clothes, all of it was covered with a thin layer of condensed respiration. Rebecca was snoring, and there was an uncomfortable rock underneath me, pressing into my hip bone. My air mattress had deflated, just as it would continue to do every night for the whole trip. The first day I had caught it on a thorny branch, forming a small hole that slowly let air out. Everything here had thorns. I briefly considered letting my tent-mates sleep in longer, but it was morning and I didn’t want to deal with my damp surroundings anymore, so I spoke up.
“Guys this is gross.”
My two tent mates woke up. I got elbowed in the face as Rachel rolled over, her coarse dark hair sticking to her face. The three of us had decided to do this backpacking trip for midterm break—well, really Rebecca and I had decided, but Rachel had overheard us talking about it in the student lounge at our school in Budapest and “decided” to join. We had picked Corsica as our destination because it was getting into late fall and most other mountainous areas in Europe would run the risk of snowstorms. Corsica, being an island off the southern coast of France, would still be warm enough this late into the year. Additionally, it was a fairly unpopulated island, and I was yearning for some fresh air and freedom from city chaos.
Once I crawled out the tent door, I realized why everything was soaked. Rachel had laid all of her clothing out to dry on top of the tent, blocking any water vapor from escaping through the vents. We dutifully spread our things out to dry, hoping the sun would hit us soon. In the meantime, we were starving.
Last night, while setting up camp in the dark, Rebecca the delegator had given Rachel the task of finding a safe place for the food. There were no bears, but wild boars have been reputed to trample camp sites in search of a meal.
“Rachel, where did you put the food?”
“The end of the road.”
“You put it in the road?”
We had intended for her to put our stock of trail mix, canned fish, and bread in a safe location, like a tree. After three days on the trip, we thought she’d learn. Instead, she chose the old logging road that dead ended at the start of our trail. With a growing sense of worry, I started walking back down the trail toward the road. The thick pine trees towered over me, making the path tunnel-like as it cut across the mountainside. Suddenly the trees cleared, and warm morning sun hit my face, drying away any remembrance of the uncomfortable morning. I stepped on the logging road and looked out at the tall red crags jutting from the ground–rugged peaks that merged with sparse clouds.
The food was gone. I had heard a car door slam earlier in the morning–probably some do-gooders who picked up our gallon of trail mix and breakfast, thinking it was garbage. I would have done the same. Why they were driving up an old logging road that dead-ends partway up a mountain is a mystery, although I speculated that they came to watch the sun rise. I watched the shadows slowly shrinking as the sun rose higher over the mountains, then took a deep breath and relaxed, so freed from the stress of city life in Budapest that the lack of food seemed trivial.
Rebecca examined the maps and informed us that we had four long hours until the next town. She was always looking at the maps, always rationing water, always assigning tasks for setting up and taking down camp. She hurriedly started telling us what to do to help pack so we could get moving toward the next town and food as quickly as possible. I had a small supply of m&m’s that I was keeping a secret. I wanted to surprise everyone with them when we reached the highest peak of our journey in the evening, so I stubbornly hid them away. Everything else consumable was gone.
***
“I could eat four hamburgers.” Rachel is a swimmer with a massive appetite. We had been hiking for nearly three hours, and all she had done was talk about food, despite my best efforts to distract her by pointing out the scenery. Rebecca was far ahead in an attempt to distance herself from Rachel’s complaints. That was her usual role during the hiking portion of the trip: the backpack in the distance.
I pointed. “Look, we’re so high you can see the Mediterranean.” It was so far away that it looked smooth as glass.
“A steak would be so good right now.”
I tried to ignore Rachel. Focusing on food wouldn’t help her hunger, and there were so many better things to focus on, like the mountains towering in the distance, so I tried to point them out to her.
“Those mountains are so beautiful.”
And they were. I have never been anywhere as rugged and enticing as Corsica, l’ile de beaute, the mountain of the sea. The mountains interfere so thoroughly with the climate that one minute you’ll be walking through a leafy forest and the next you’ll be dodging prickly pears and bushwhacking through sagebrush. There were palm trees, dense jungles where you had to constantly keep your hands in front of your face to push away thorny vines, pine forests, eucalyptus forests, chestnut forests. Corsica had it all, and we intended to see it in five days, traversing 77 kilometers and ascending approximately 3500 vertical meters of elevation.
“I didn’t even like nuts before this trip, but they sound so good right now.”
Rachel’s constant complaints were really beginning to bother me, especially since it was her fault we were all hungry. Gradually I could feel some of the stress I had managed to shed on the trip coming back as I got more and more annoyed by her speech. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and continued on, recognizing the importance of maintaining a good group dynamic on a long and stressful journey.
***
Like most Corsica towns, Quenza was a quaint cluster of gray stone homes with orange roofs that emerged from the mountainside. At first we thought it was strange that the villages weren’t in valleys near water, but then we realized that Corsica has no valleys. One mountain just turns into the next one, occasionally sandwiching small icy mountain rivers that are difficult to access with steep and rocky descents. Rebecca waved down a woman walking along the quiet street. In my broken French, I asked her where we could buy food. She told me we couldn’t. Quenza was too small to have a grocery store or restaurant. Many of the towns in Corsica have food delivered every morning by white cargo vans that drive from village to village along twisty mountain roads, stopping for five minutes at each town while its residents purchase produce, meats, and croissants. We had missed the morning delivery.
It was nearing 2:00, and Rebecca informed us that Levie was the next village we would pass through. I tried to ask a passing elderly man where Levie was, but he thought I was asking for “La ville,” and kindly pointed me toward the fountain of spring water that occupies the central point of each village. It took me 15 minutes to communicate that I was referring to the town of Levie and 10 more minutes to calm Rachel down when we learned it was another three hours of hiking. Rebecca had settled in and begun hiking with a stern determination.
***
What were these spiny things? Now even the ground had thorns. They were sticking to my shoelaces and carpeting the forest floor. Big brown masses of spikes, so thick they were hard to gain footing in. I kicked one, and underneath it was a nut. I picked it up and examined it. Round, shiny, golden brown–a chestnut. I remembered the vendors lining the streets of Budapest, selling roasted chestnuts in paper cones. I had tried eating one once and been thoroughly disgusted. I soon discovered that these spiny masses were the outer coverings of chestnuts, and that we could find a morsel of food inside each one. I turned and showed Rachel. Throughout the trip, the thorns had been on of Rachel’s top complaint topics, but now that they signaled food she was learning to appreciate them. I didn’t understand why she ever disliked them. They were a part of the wild landscape, not yet eradicated by herbicides and cement walls. We yelled to Rebecca in excitement, and she came running back. Rachel began cracking the nuts open with rocks and gorging. They were slightly chewy, slightly crunchy. Much better than the roasted variety. Rebecca collected as many as she could to store in our backpacks for later. Rebecca and I both knew that we had a huge ascent before reaching Levie, but neither of us had ventured to tell Rachel that yet.
She found out soon enough as the chestnut trees merged into pines and we began climbing. Our stomachs were still rumbling. The chestnuts had been a good snack, but we were reluctant to eat too many of them for fear that a diet consisting solely of raw chestnuts may make us sick. Rachel was still talking about food. Rebecca, slowed by the vertical, had fallen back and was hiking with us, and with each word out of Rachel’s mouth I could see her frown get tighter. In a desperate attempt to keep Rachel from complaining and to keep Rebecca from snapping, I decided it was time.
“Anyone want some m&m’s?”
They didn’t believe me until I pulled the bags out of my backpack pocket. I thought Rachel was going to start crying in relief, and Rebecca’s scowl lost about half of its intensity. I didn’t eat any in hopes that the more the others ate the happier they would feel and the less they would intrude on my nearly calm state-of-mind. Too soon, the chocolate was consumed and we had to resume our climb.
***
As we emerged from the trees and entered a clearing looking over a cliff, my hunger was forgotten. We were in a foggy area, but as the wind blew, craggy peaks were revealed, mysterious, scary, and beautiful. We sat, piecing together the bits of our surroundings as we spotted them through the fog. Gradually the sun emerged, and we realized it wasn’t fog. We had been inside a cloud, and now the cloud had passed we could see the whole island. The Mediterranean was glistening in the evening sun. We could see the coast where we had begun the hike, and the coast where we would end it. Mountain ranges stretched for miles like monoliths, monuments to the power of earth, geology, Corsica. Birds were chirping, and the wind felt cold against my sweat-drenched spine. I felt small and powerless, and still basked in my sense of accomplishment as I saw how far we’d come. Being away from city smog and loud industrial noises was such a calming feeling.
Rachel piped up “You don’t happen to have any more m&m’s, do you?”
Even Rachel couldn’t ruin the beauty of this moment. I was getting used to her constant need for conversation. Instead of replying, I just shook my head and tried to accept that her priorities were different than mine. Rebecca jumped up and pulled a bag of the chestnuts out of her backpack, eager to help make this moment perfect for everyone. And then it clicked. The view only made this moment perfect for me. All along I had expected this trip to bring the same peace and solitude to all of us, but we all had different priorities. Rachel wanted to settle the rumbling in her stomach. Rebecca wanted to be capable and strong. I wanted to appreciate the wilderness, to escape from the city, to breathe. Right at this moment, we each had what we needed.
***
We sat on the beach, watching the sun go down the day after the successful completion of our hike. It was a melancholy feeling, knowing we would have to leave this place soon, but for now we were camped on the beach, stretching our aching muscles and cooling our blisters in the sea water. Rachel broke the silence.
“When Haley pulled those m&m’s out of her backpack. Best moment of the trip. Or maybe it was later that day when we went down to that village and the grocery store was open even though it was pretty late.” Rebecca laughed, pulling some first-aid cream out of her backpack and handing it to Rachel to re-bandage her blisters.
I smiled, shook my head, closed my eyes, and imagined I would never have to go back to the stress of the city.
