“Dad,” he said, completely oblivious to the journalist, “we should order some fried ice cream.”

I giggled, and Caleb looked bemused. Shaking his head, he lightly flicked Marshall’s menu, which made Marshall look up with a start.

“Marshall,” Caleb said with a tone that suggested he was annoyed with his son’s standoffish behavior. “Yesterday at this time we thought you might be gone. Really gone. Dead. We were in shock and devastated.” He paused, letting his words sink in.

Marshall cautiously held his dad’s gaze, and slowly nodded. Caleb continued, “I’m thrilled beyond belief that all nine of us are sitting at this table safe and healthy. I’m glad that your appetite is raging. I’m happy to feed you all night. Please pay your mom and me some attention, Marshall. Put the menu down and mentally check in to the present. You know, be here. For real.”

Marshall blushed and lowered his gaze. “When you put it that way, I guess I have been pretty absent-minded,” he admitted. “I guess I didn’t think about how you and mom felt when we were gone. Since I knew we were safe and together, and Lydie’s condition was stable, I was thankful for how we fared, but I didn’t consider what you all thought based on the satellite messenger. Sorry, Dad.” Caleb smiled.

“One more thing,” Marshall added and Caleb gave a warm expression, summoning the usually-quiet Marshall to keep talking. “I was extremely embarrassed to have lost my pack. Just ask Marlee,” he gestured at me, and I gave a knowing nod, remembering our conversation when he and I tried to reach the ranger station on our own. “When I unbuckled my pack, it was for survival. I was terrified and in that instant with the wave of white crashing toward me, I wasn’t sure I had a chance at all. So I dumped my pack.” Marshall looked down, still ashamed. A moment of silence, and he went on, “Then after it roared past, I didn’t see anyone else in the group. I thought I was all alone without a pack, without my brother, without my parents, and without any pretty girls to keep me company.”

Everybody was surprised to hear Marshall talk about girls, but we appreciated the comic relief as we listened to Marshall’s emotional memory.

“This whole time, I’ve felt like a failure. Everybody else survived with their packs on their backs. If I’d kept it on, you wouldn’t have had to think we were still buried. We would have had food. You would have found us way sooner.” Marshall actually had a tear threatening to roll out of his eye. Our moms were already crying.

Caleb walked over to Marshall and put an arm around his shoulders as he squatted to his eye level. “Marshall, look at me.” Marshall met his dad’s eye contact. “Playing the ‘what-if’ game is an endless cycle that will only make you second-guess every decision. Your pack is replaceable. You made it out alive and unharmed, and that is what matters. Your backpack is gone, but you’re here. It is a miracle you all survived.” Marshall still looked glum. “Where is your pack now, Marsh?” Caleb questioned.

“Lost out in the snow. All that valuable gear is gone. Including your expensive satellite messenger,” Marshall annoyingly answered.

Caleb nodded, “And that is exactly where you could be too. You know, often we need to make split-second decisions. Frankly, whether or not to keep a traditional backpack on in an avalanche is debatable. Some say it’ll protect your body, and that large debris rises to the surface. Others say a backpack will drag you down deeper into the snow. Obviously I’m not talking about avalanche airbag packs here. We don’t always know what the best decision is. I’d say this time, since your pack is gone and you’re here, you made the right decision.” At that, Caleb gripped Marshall in a firm hug and cried softly into his son’s hair. The emotions of the moment made me lean toward my mom and rest my head on her shoulder. She tightened her hold on my shoulders.

By now, the journalist paused his interview with Sawyer and Ellie. For a second he looked like he was tempted to turn his voice recorder toward Marshall, but he apparently decided that this part of the rescue was too emotional, too raw, too real to be in the headlines, and he clicked off the recorder on his phone and slipped it in his pocket.

After another minute, Caleb and Marshall composed themselves. The journalist shook each of our hands, asked us our names and ages and hometowns, took down a few more notes, and excused himself.

We were silent for a moment, each simply exchanging glances, smiling gratefully at each other. Lydie broke the silence, as usual. “Mr. and Mrs. Miles,” she addressed Caleb and Julia. “Yes, dear?” Julia smiled at Lydie.

“How often does your family eat Mexican food?” Lydie innocently asked. Sawyer, Marshall, Ellie and I burst into laughter, but Lydie maintained a neutral expression. Dad and Mom gave me a questioning look, and I playfully rolled my eyes in response.

Caleb and Julia looked back and forth between the five of us with curious eyes, and finally, Julia cleared her throat, shrugged, and answered, “Maybe once every month or so we make tacos or enchiladas for supper. Why do you ask, Lydie?”

“Oh, just curious,” Lydie said, again in that goofy innocent voice. “It was a good choice to take us to this restaurant. Some of my memories from the last two days are a bit hazy, but I vividly recall lots of talk about Mexican food.”

Finally Marshall spoke up, “Nobody disagreed with me that a table-full of Mexican food would have been splendid up on that trail!”

“Any food would have been splendid,” Lydie countered with a tease in her voice. Now our parents were laughing, too. The waitress delivered our meals just then, and I laughed when she set not one, not two, but three plates in front of Marshall. When he noticed our stares, he shrugged and said, “I’m hungry.”

Warm food never tasted so good, although the increasing busyness of the restaurant began to bother me. I was oh-so thankful to be back with our families, but I looked forward to being back in nature. After an hour of slightly-heated discussion, it was finally agreed upon that we could camp tonight. My parents thought that with Lydie’s broken leg, we should rent a hotel room for our last night in Colorado before beginning the drive home tomorrow. Lydie begged to camp and rattled off umpteen reasons why we should not even consider a hotel.

“I can’t sleep in hotels. They’re noisy,” she said. “With a broken limb, sleep is crucial. I sleep best in the wilderness.” Mom looked partially convinced.

“We came to backpack. If we wanted to stay in a hotel, we could have stayed seven miles from home.” At that, Dad halfway nodded his head.

“But you and Sawyer need to regularly ice your injuries, as the doctors explained, and hotels have free ice,” Dad stated.

“Gas stations affordably sell bags of ice. Don’t let my injury ruin the trip for the Miles family, or for me,” Lydie said with a mock pout-lip. Dad and Mom exchanged a glance.

Caleb laughed and Julia said, “I don’t think it would be bad parenting to spend one more night in the tents. Unloading at a hotel would be about the same amount of work as setting up camp. And she has a good point about sleep.”

“And with my leg in a cast, I can’t swim anyway, and everybody knows that a swimming pool is the only reason to stay in a hotel,” Lydie proclaimed.

We shook our heads and laughed at her candid reasoning. I was secretly very glad that we would be able to camp once more. Being immersed in nature is such a rich experience. Because it was now close to dusk, and hiking was obviously out, we chose to find a mountain meadow very nearby to set up our final camp.

As we drove onto the gravel trail where we could easily access the site, the sun was glowing orange-pink in the west. The air smelled pure, and I could hear songbirds. I sighed happily. Mom helped Lydie situate an ice bag on her leg, and Sawyer casually placed an ice bag on his lower leg, too. Seeing Mom with Lydie made my heart bubble with joy.

As all nine of us sat in a circle for our traditional end-of-day talk, I felt a genuine contentment wash over me. I loved our adventure, but it sure was good to be with the familiar routine again!

“I have to ask,” Dad looked at us kids, “how was the view?” We knew without explanation that he was referring to the view from the peak during the full-moon summit.

All five of us nodded, trying to remember back two nights ago. In a way it seemed much longer ago than two nights. “It was going to be perfect,” Sawyer wistfully said.

“What we saw was perfect,” Ellie reminded him.

“We were at the last false summit, and it’s a good thing we stopped to enjoy the view there,” Sawyer recalled. “We figured we had one hour to go before we stood on top.”

“And then we heard a roar,” Marshall added.

“And Marshall yelled to try to swim,” I said. “And a wild minute later, all I saw was black.”

Dad and Caleb looked serious, and Mom looked like she might get sick. Julia didn’t look much better.

“We’ll come back to this story,” Sawyer said, realizing that the memory was too fresh, the fear too strong, to discuss now. “Next question is for Mr. Stanley,” Sawyer looked squarely at Dad. I gulped. Ellie looked curious and shy.

“Forrest,” Dad said, “You can call me Mr. Forrest.”

Sawyer nodded, “That’s what I don’t get. If I had daughters who snuck off with some guy on a crazy adventure that was potentially deadly, I would resent and despise the guy. How are you not furious with me?” He plainly, and I thought quite bravely, asked.

Dad sucked in a breath, and for a second his jaw tightened, which happens when he is upset. He looked thoughtful, and Sawyer looked nervous for his response. Finally Dad let out a breath, looked right at Sawyer, and slowly answered, “First of all, you’re not some guy. You are Sawyer Miles, you are my best friend’s son whom I have known and liked all your life. You are trustworthy, experienced, and your sense of adventure reminds me of your dad and me. At first I was upset. Furious, even. When I saw my girls’ tent empty, in that moment, I could have reamed you out. Taking my girls, in the dark, not so much as leaving a note with your plan – that all made me mad. But I knew that my girls would not have gone with you unless they wanted to go, so the anger wasn’t exclusively targeted at you. When you didn’t return when we assumed you’d be back, the anger gave way to fear. Horrible, immense fear. After that, we were all in shock as we began to initiate the search.” Dad paused, deep in thought.

Still looking at Sawyer, he continued, “I’ll tell you this, Sawyer: as the Search and Rescue formed and you five kids were lost, all I could think about was finding you. All of you. And praying desperately that you were all safe. I learned from this that anger needs to be low on my priority list. I could’ve spent the last two days thinking up my lecture for you, feeding my anger. Or I could put my energy into finding you. It didn’t take me long to determine which was more important. At the end of the day, what would my anger at you accomplish?” Dad waited a moment for us to think about what he’d said. I was impressed with this long monologue. We remained quiet.

“Sawyer, I’m not mad at you. Nor am I angry with any of you kids. Honestly, I can’t even say that I’m disappointed with what you did. Now,” his voice suddenly was stern, “next time, you’ll leave us a written plan of your itinerary.” We all nodded solemnly. Dad’s voice softened, and he continued, “I can see why you didn’t tell us what you planned to do. You were right to assume that we probably would not have allowed you to go alone. But, had you asked us, we would have gone along, so you would have been allowed to go.”

I knew it! We could have had our dads with us the whole time.

“Of course that’s not to say that in that instance all of us would have been in the avalanche, and who can say how that would have turned out. The outcome of this is a tremendous blessing. But getting back to the point, I can understand why you didn’t ask permission to go, but as a professional guide, you will be expected to always leave a detailed itinerary, and as a man with sense, you will do that from now on,” Dad instructed Sawyer.

“Yes, sir,” Sawyer respectfully replied.

“Besides,” Dad said in a lighter tone, “your dad and I know you don’t need a lecture. This incident taught you plenty. You flirted with fire and reaped consequences.” Sawyer nodded seriously.

“I echo what Forrest says,” Caleb spoke up. “I felt like my heart stopped when I realized you left. But when I found your thorough packing list in the corner of your tent and saw that you had taken the satellite messenger, I was glad that you were smart about it. And like Forrest said, the longer we waited and searched, the more the anger and disappointment faded.”

Our moms silently cried through the conversation. We all sensed it was time for the discussion to move on.

“Next question is from me, and it’s for Sawyer and Ellie,” Dad cautiously said, slowly glancing back and forth between the two of them.

Ellie blushed, and Sawyer gave her a nervous smile. They were sitting next to each other, which was an unusual happening.