Jain Elliott

Snake Waits

Snake was sealing the seams of her tent on the floor. She'd cleared piles of her landlady's books and miscellaneous artistic debris and more piles of her own camera equipment and camping gear into mounds against the walls to afford herself enough open space to spread it out, but there wasn't any space left to walk on, so when the phone rang she was stuck. It rang three times, and theshe walked on the tent to answer it.

"Is anyone bringing brewer's yeast?" It was Mariah, one of her soon-to-be traveling companions, one of the women who'd answered her ad for "adventurous women for a strenuous trek in the Everest region of Nepal," and who, like Snake, was making last minute preparations for their departure the next morning. "I read that if you eat a lot of yeast the leeches find you less attractive," she said.

"Like mosquitoes?" asked Snake, with interest. "I'm leaving in a minute to pick up Jain," she said. "We can get some on our way back from the airport."

"Thanks. Get a lot," said Mariah.

Most of the group had turned out to be experienced travelers and climbers from the San Francisco Bay area, like Snake, but Jain was an old friend who lived in Oregon now, drove trucks for a living, and had been persuaded to come on this trip with some difficulty. "I can't take a month and a half off from work," she'd protested, the summer before, on one of their midweek backpacking trips in the Cascades.

"Can't you do it if you plan ahead?" Snake had asked. They'd been at Green Lakes, resting in the beautiful basin under South Sister, thrilled and dizzy with the sweet clear air. "Imagine walking through mountains twice this high, in every direction, all around us. Imagine being completely immersed in another culture, on the roof of the world. You know you'd love it," Snake had urged her. Jain had imagined, and finally agreed.

Some of the logistics would have been easier, Snake thought now, if Jain had been willing to arrive in San Francisco a day or two earlier, but, as usual, she'd insisted she had to work until the last minute to be sure everything would be covered at that warehouse she thought so much of while she was gone.

Snake suspected she also didn't want to leave Dale, the guy she'd gotten involved with that summer, any earlier than she had to. She hadn't told Snake much about him, but he sounded pleasant. He liked to play in the woods, which was nice. Jain's hippie boys tended to merge into a somewhat indistinguishable unity, from Snake's perspective, but she always seemed very fond of them while they were together, and was usually touchingly loyal when they'd parted ways.

Now she'd be arriving in an hour, to spend their last night packing and planning, reminiscing over the adventures they'd shared in the last six years, and anticipating the new ones ahead of them. She left the tent spread out to dry, picked her way carefully to the door, and left for the airport to meet her.