“You’re almost there,” he says from the top.
“Anything but that,” I say, grabbing a tree the same thickness as my wrist.
“Sorry, forgot,” he says. “It’s true, though.”
I pause, looking for something to grab onto with my other hand.
Finally, I see a tree root, just a smidge out of reach. I dig my toes into the ground, hold my breath, and reach for it.
I works. I close my hand around it, use the leverage to brace my feet, look for another handhold.
Then it breaks.
“Shit!” I yelp, already sliding. I throw my hands out, grabbing at dirt and leaves and pine needles, both knees landing hard on the ground and scraping along.
I slide directly into a patch of underbrush and in trying to stop myself, I manage to grab a rock with one hand and then sort of flop half-over, grabbing at nothing with my other hand.
I’ve got one leg in the air, the other covered in dirt, and my backpack snagged on something and is now over my head and it took my shirt halfway with it.
“June!” calls Levi, alarmed.
“I’m fine!” I shout, kicking at the plants and twigs and leaves and vines entangling me, trying to free my arm before Levi gets down here so I can please God please pull my shirt back down.
I kick. I roll over, onto my stomach, and I shimmy my backpack and shirt back in place, kneeling on the angled ground.
“Are you okay?” Levi asks, sliding to a perfect stop right next to me, both feet and one hand on the ground.
“Totally fine,” I say. “Just discombobulated, I promise.”
I look back down the hill. It’s steeper than most hills one climbs, but it’s not really steep enough to justify my dramatics.
As I catch my breath, I decide to blame the pine needles. Slippery little fuckers.
“It’s your shoes,” he says, nodding at my feet. “Running shoes don’t have as much gripping power as hiking boots. Thus the sliding.”
He holds out one hand and I take it, silently thankful for the excuse.
Levi nods at a tree stump above me.
“That one’ll hold,” he says. “Here.”
I push off his hand with my right arm, grab the stump with my left.
“You got it?” he asks.
“Got it,” I say, pushing my feet under the bed of pine needles and finding the nice, solid, grippy dirt underneath.
I continue up the slope, more carefully this time, testing everything I grab before using it to hold any of my weight.
I manage to get to the top where it flattens out without anything else embarrassing happening, and Levi offers me his hand. I take it without thinking, and he pulls me up.
“That was exciting,” I say.
“You’ll get the hang of it,” he says, adjusting his pack. “You sure you’re all right?”
He gives me a long, slow look from head to toe, and I clear my throat, brush off my shirt, look away because it feels like he’s doing more than checking for injuries, but I know I’m wrong.
“I’m fine,” I say. “A couple of knee scrapes, but I’ll live.”
“I’d say we’re almost back to the trail, but you hate that,” he says, half-smiling like he does. “So I’ll say we’re less than a quarter mile away.”
I laugh.
“Thank you,” I tell him, and we start walking.About a mile after we get back on the trail, my back starts to feel weird, like my pack is rubbing me the wrong way or something.
About a mile after that, a spot right by my shoulder blade starts to itch. I stop and adjust my pack, pulling it higher on my back. That doesn’t help. I release it so it sits lower, but that doesn’t help either and the itch is slowly escalating.
I check my pack, to see if something is caught on it that’s tickling me. I check my shirt as well as I can. Nothing.
As we hike, the itch gets bigger and bigger, spreading out from my shoulder to my ribcage. Something tickles on my hip, just under the waistband of my running shorts, and the back of my left arm.
I deal with it. Probably bug bites from being near that pool of water in a damp area, which means they’ll go away soon enough, provided I don’t scratch them.
“I did once work with someone who insisted on keeping a stash of willow bark,” Levi is saying as we come within sight of the trailhead parking lot. It’s late in the day, so everything is in shadow. There’s just his truck and one other car there, no one else present. “She insisted on chewing it to cure headaches, so sometimes you’d be talking to her and she’d just pull a piece of it from a bag and start chomping on it like crazy. Reminded me of a mad beaver.”
“Did it work?” I ask, laughing, thankful that this is at least sort of keeping my mind off the itching.