V
Found
VI
Survival
VII
Self-Reliance
Acknowledgments
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Many a pedestrian on reaching these woods is incredulous of the danger which he is told will menace him if he ventures out alone to indulge in his favorite pastime. But let him rest assured that there is no question as to the reality of this danger—the danger of losing himself in the forest. That is the only thing to be dreaded in the Adirondack woods!
—From “Lost in the Adirondacks: Warning to Visitors to the North Woods; What Not to Do When You Lose Your Way and How Not to Lose It,” The New York Times, March 16, 1890
How quickly, I reflected, peril could be followed by beauty in the wilderness, each forming a part of the other.
—From Woodswoman by Anne LaBastille
I
Barbara
Louise
August 1975
The bed is empty.
Louise, the counselor—twenty-three, short-limbed, rasp-voiced, jolly—stands barefoot on the warm rough planks of the cabin called Balsam and processes the absence of a body in the lower bunk by the door. Later on, the ten seconds that pass between sight and inference will serve to her as evidence that time is a human construct, that it can slow or accelerate in the presence of emotion, of chemicals in the blood.
The bed is empty.
The cabin’s single flashlight—the absence of which is used, even in daylight, to indicate that campers have gone to the latrines—is in its home on a shelf by the door.
Louise turns slowly in a circle, naming the girls she can see.
Melissa. Melissa. Jennifer. Michelle. Amy. Caroline. Tracy. Kim.
Eight campers. Nine beds. She counts and counts again.
At last, when she can no longer defer it, she lets one name bob to the surface of her mind: Barbara.
The empty bed is Barbara’s.
She closes her eyes. She imagines herself returning, for the rest of her life, to this place and this moment: a lonely time traveler, a ghost, haunting the cabin called Balsam, willing a body to appear where there is none. Willing the girl herself, Barbara, to walk through the door. To say she has been in the washroom, to say she forgot the rule about taking the flashlight, to apologize disarmingly, as she has done before.
But Louise knows that Barbara won’t do any of these things. She senses, for reasons she can’t quite articulate, that Barbara is gone.
Of all the campers, Louise thinks. Of all the campers to go missing.
• • •
At 6:25 a.m., Louise walks back through a curtain into the space she shares with Annabel, the counselor-in-training. She’s seventeen, a ballet dancer from Chevy Chase, Maryland. Annabel Southworth is closer in age to the campers than she is to Louise, but she stands upright and infuses her words with irony and in general works to ensure that everyone recognizes the firm line between thirteen and seventeen—a line made manifest by the plywood partition that separates the main part of the cabin from the counselors’ corner.
Now, Louise shakes her awake. Now, Annabel squints. Crooks an elbow over her eyes dramatically. Sinks back into sleep.
Louise is becoming aware of something: the smell of metabolized beer. She had assumed it was coming from her own body—from her own skin and mouth. She certainly drank enough last night to feel the effects this morning. But standing over Annabel, she wonders whether the smell, in fact, has been coming from Annabel’s side of the room.
Which concerns her.
“Annabel,” Louise whispers. In her tone, she suddenly recognizes the sound of her own mother. And in some ways she feels like her mother—her bad mother, her irresponsible mother—in relation to this girl.
Annabel opens her eyes. She sits up and winces immediately. She meets Louise’s gaze and her eyes widen, her face becomes pale.
“I’m gonna be sick,” she says—too loudly. Louise shushes her, grabs at the first vessel she can reach—an empty bag of potato chips on the floor.
Annabel lunges for the bag. Retches. Then raises her head, panting, groaning lowly.
“Annabel,” Louise says. “Are you hungover?”
Annabel shakes her head. Scared.
“I think I,” she says—and again Louise shushes her, sitting down on the girl’s bed this time, counting to five in her mind, the way she has done since she was a small child. Training herself not to react.
