--Ruth in Tender at the Bone by Ruth Reichl
Ruth, the former editor of Gourmet magazine, is, in this excerpt, a teenage camp counselor who is asking her fellow counselors to go explore the area around the camp with her.
I hitchhiked once. My husband and I had just finished a one way hike of the John Muir Trail (JMT), a backpacking trip through the Sierra Nevada from the base of Half Dome in Yosemite to the summit of Mt Whitney. We ended the hike at the trailhead parking lot for the Mt. Whitney climb and needed to get down the road 10 miles at 8 pm to the down of Lone Pine, CA, to begin to make our way back to our car in Yosemite.
Ruth, the former editor of Gourmet magazine, is, in this excerpt, a teenage camp counselor who is asking her fellow counselors to go explore the area around the camp with her.
I hitchhiked once. My husband and I had just finished a one way hike of the John Muir Trail (JMT), a backpacking trip through the Sierra Nevada from the base of Half Dome in Yosemite to the summit of Mt Whitney. We ended the hike at the trailhead parking lot for the Mt. Whitney climb and needed to get down the road 10 miles at 8 pm to the down of Lone Pine, CA, to begin to make our way back to our car in Yosemite.
I got a paper plate and wrote “JMT hikers to Lone Pine, please” and sat down on the curb at the parking lot’s exit for some mild fretting over the situation.
The first people to walk down from the trail were Bill and Robert, friends in their late 50s, grinning and animated by the feeling that the car is in sight, the shoes are coming off the pounded feet and the flip flops are going on. “What’s a JMT hiker?” Bill asked. He didn’t wait for the answer: “Sure, we’ll take you to Lone Pine.” Bill and Robert were there to climb Mt. Whitney. “We like to climb 14ers,” said Bill, using the in-the-know lingo for America’s mountains over 14,000 feet. “Oh, which ones have you climbed?” I asked. “Well, he’s climbed Long’s Peak” Bill said nodding at Robert. “And this one will be my first.” “Yeah,” Robert said. They smiled at themselves.
The first people to walk down from the trail were Bill and Robert, friends in their late 50s, grinning and animated by the feeling that the car is in sight, the shoes are coming off the pounded feet and the flip flops are going on. “What’s a JMT hiker?” Bill asked. He didn’t wait for the answer: “Sure, we’ll take you to Lone Pine.” Bill and Robert were there to climb Mt. Whitney. “We like to climb 14ers,” said Bill, using the in-the-know lingo for America’s mountains over 14,000 feet. “Oh, which ones have you climbed?” I asked. “Well, he’s climbed Long’s Peak” Bill said nodding at Robert. “And this one will be my first.” “Yeah,” Robert said. They smiled at themselves.
We arrived in Lone Pine in the dark and turned left on Highway 395, to find every motel lighted with “No Vacancy” signs. “Hmm” Robert said, turning the car around. “That’s OK,” Roger said, “We’re fine. We’ll figure out something.” All the motels south of Whitney Portal Road were also full. “Hmm,” Robert said again.
“It’s no problem,” I said.
“You don’t need to get involved in our situation.”
“But that’s what we do,” Bill said. “We get involved in situations until we solve them.”
“Or until we screw them up,” Robert added.
“Yeah,” Bill said. They smiled at themselves.
We repeated that we were fine until Robert dropped us off in front of a full motel. We offered him money for gas or beer as they said they were off to have a beer after finishing Day 1. They wouldn’t take it—“we already have 20 beers in our room”—and they waved us good luck as they drove off.
After I took a deep breath before getting in the car, I liked that I was having a tiny bit of an adventure. Just like Ruth, I might have thought, if her book had come to mind, for I admire Ruth for her go-for-it-ness and the interesting things her fearlessness brings her.
__________________________________________________
I saw Ruth’s fearlessness in Delia in The Cry of the Kalahari and Deborah in Kabul Beauty School.
Does this entry make you think of a book you enjoy? Or, if you like this passage but it doesn't remind you of any other book, tell me your favorite book instead.
Caroline: replacingmiddlemarch [at] gmail.com
No comments:
Post a Comment