The Area of a Circle

“Are you sure you’re going to be OK up here by yourself?”

The two men had left Salmon, Idaho, a little after eight that morning. Their fifty-mile drive took them more than two hours. After crossing the river on a one lane bridge west of town they bumped over ever-narrowing gravel roads, crossed a ridge, and dropped into the Panther Creek drainage. For the final eighteen miles the rocky track twisted up hogback ridges and through narrow saddles as tree branches pinstriped the sides of their four-wheel drive pickups and the forest changed from stately yellow-barked Ponderosa to Lodge Pole Pine and Douglas Fir. Turnouts for passing other vehicles were spaced every half mile, but were unneeded. It took them a half hour to shovel their way through a snow drift on a shaded curve a mile above the small clearing where they now stood in front of a sixteen-by-sixteen-foot A-frame cabin.

The taller man, dressed in the neatly creased brown shirt and green trousers of the Forest Service, took a hard look at his volunteer. He saw hands with palms turned red-raw from their recent contact with a shovel handle. Narrow shoulders. Arms enough to swing a splitting maul, but how many times before they tired? Grey hair drifted from beneath the back of a baseball cap and draped over the frayed collar of a blue denim shirt. He guessed the shirt and jeans had been purchased at a thrift store, but the footwear was new. Leather hiking boots. Good quality.

The volunteer continued to take in the cabin, the two corrals, and the grey crags that pierced a sky so blue it seemed to sparkle.

“I feel like I just came home, Charlie.”

He turned and smiled.

“I’m sure I’ll be just fine.”

They walked through the campsites while Charlie explained what was expected of a Crags Campground host. They ate their brown bag lunches at the heavy wooden picnic table in front of the cabin, and it was time for Charlie to start back.

“Now, you understand your duties?” he asked as he climbed into his pickup.

“Well, I think so. Clean the outhouses and talk to people.”

Charlie nodded slowly a couple of times.

“Yeah,” he said. “That’s about it.”

He looked at the volunteer through the open window for several long seconds.

“I probably won’t be able to make it back very often, so the camp’s pretty much yours for the summer. Stay safe.”

The truck turned left at the first corral and dissolved into the forest. The dust settled. The new camp host eased himself into the camp chair on the porch of his new home and let out a long breath.

Over the next few days he got some sheets and blankets on the lumpy mattress, tossed saws, shovels, hammers and other tools in the corner to the right of the door, stacked books on the floor, and suspended pots and pans on nails above the wood stove. It would take a while but eventually everything would find its proper place. He split some firewood. He talked to a scatter of hikers and stockmen. Occasionally he cleaned the outhouses. Much of the time he sat on the porch, reading and watching the ground squirrels play tag.

One afternoon during his second week he set his detective novel down and considered the trail from his cabin to the wooden footbridge that led to the hikers’ parking lot. The trail had been eroded by a rain cell that passed through the previous evening. Someone ought to fix that, he thought. After a few seconds it occurred to him just who that someone was.

He needed a buck saw, a shovel and some downed Lodgepole, all of which were handy. After placing water bars in the trail to the bridge he noticed some loose rails in the corrals. He put them aright with a three-pound hammer and the nine-inch “ring” nails he found in a metal feed bin. In the days that followed the half-inch plumbing connections from one of the foot lockers on the upper deck allowed him to repair a broken faucet near the number ten campsite. He reattached the front steps to the porch, cleaned out the campsite fire pits, and built a buck-and-rail fence, book shelves, and a bed frame from fallen Lodgepole Pine. He put up signs with the words “Camp Host” and an arrow pointing to the cabin. Possibilities multiplied. The more he did, the more he found to do.

After getting used to the altitude he began hiking the half mile down to the nearby lake where, with some advice from one of his rare campers, he learned to catch trout. He regularly reeled in Rainbow, Cutthroat, and occasionally, a California Golden. After that he enjoyed trout for breakfast three or four times a week, fried along with potatoes and onions in a cast iron skillet. He extended his hiking to overnighters, and acquainted himself with the mountain trails and several of the meadow-fringed lakes and tiny cirques tucked in among the rocky peaks. The lakes had names like Paragon, Ram’s Horn, and Barking Fox. He made notes in a stout little black book he carried in his shirt pocket, the better to advise his visitors. He kept track of trail conditions, distances between watering stops, and where fish were biting and on which type of lures. He made sketches of his favorite camping spots. He included a few lines of blank verse now and then.

It was a grand contrast to the computers, deadlines, and critical oversight that made the last few years of his job as a government hearing officer so difficult. During that time an increasing number of his decisions were overturned by his director. Three of those cases were appealed to the Federal District Court, where all three of the hearing office’s decisions were reinstated. This did not, apparently, raise the director’s estimation of the hearing officer, who was thereafter required to submit all his decisions for approval before they were published. Rewrites were constantly demanded, with the result that he began missing deadlines. His periodic performance evaluations became less favorable.

By then his kids were married or in college. His wife took a job in another state and filed for divorce. The house sold quickly and there was enough equity to cover future college expenses for the children and to pay off all other outstanding obligations. The property settlement attached to the divorce decree was equitable: neither party was satisfied. He calculated he would still be able to enjoy an acceptable life style, at least until he needed to replace the aging Honda Civic included in his part of the settlement.

The apartment he moved into proved to have thin walls and he began having trouble getting a good night’s sleep. He lost weight. Every flu bug that came by seemed to find him and he exhausted his sick leave. When his agency unexpectedly offered buyouts for early retirement, he was the first to apply. On the day he shut the door of his office for the last time he was $20,000 richer than he had planned to be. It was enough to buy the slightly used 4X4 Ford Ranger that was necessary for his journey up the mountain where there were plenty of things that needed to be done, but no one to tell him what, or how.

Near the end of his second month, after a morning with a shovel improving the drainage in the lower corral, he was sitting in the sun on his porch, a Robert F. Parker novel open on his lap, when the sound of a vehicle grinding its way up from the campground broke apart his nap. Karen and Rulon Stillson stepped down from a big, black SUV. They had been the hosts at the Crags for the previous five summers and were back to see friends in the area and to visit their former summer home. He invited them in and heated some water for instant coffee.

As the three of them sat at the table, Karen presented him with four-and-a-half pages of instructions she had printed out on her computer. While she went over the list, item by item, Rulon attempted to fill in any oversights. They informed him which drawers of the chest he could use for his personal items and which were for Forest Service publications, where to put the tools, and the proper place for kitchen items.

“The cups go on that shelf,” said Karen, pointing.

“We usually put the matches over here,” said Rulon, and rose from the table to make the correction.

The current resident of the cabin bit the inside of his cheek, smiled wanly, and occasionally nodded. He said very little. He asked no questions.

Karen explained that while neither she nor her husband had ever ventured more than a mile or so from the cabin, she fervently believed that hikers going into the wilderness, sometimes for a week or more, deserved one last decent place to relieve themselves. She went on to describe the correct use of the long-handled toilet brush in some detail. After the coffee and the lecture, the Stillsons took him on a walking tour of the three outhouses. Karen left a small plastic flower in each.

“They may never see us,” she said. “But they’ll know we care.”

She and Rulon delivered additional admonitions, mostly about the condition of the outhouses, and a battery of test questions.

“What do you say when you approach a camper?”

“How would you handle a noisy camper?”

“What do you do if you meet someone on the road pulling a stock trailer?”

Back at the cabin the Stillsons climbed into their black SUV.

“Just one bit of advice,” said Rulon. “I’d take down those ‘Camp Host’ signs. You don’t want campers bothering you every hour of the day.”

He stood in the parking area until their dust drifted away. Once back inside he picked up the four-and-a-half pages of instructions and dropped them into the wood stove. His black notebook was also on the table. He slipped it into his left breast pocket. He retrieved his fishing gear from the pick-up and hiked the half mile to the lake.

The fish decided to ignore his red and gold Thompson lure, no matter how deep he let it sink or at what speed he reeled it toward the bank. After about twenty minutes he stripped down and dove in. It took a few seconds to recover from the icy shock before he adopted a leisurely side stroke and swam straight out for a good fifty yards, much further than he usually ventured.

The nearest campers were probably no closer than Harbor Lake, seven miles west. The Stillsons were at least as far as Porphyry Creek by now, eight or nine grid squares away on the topo map.

A = π r 2

Area equals pi times radius squared. After a rough calculation he concluded he was the only human being within a circle of over one hundred and fifty square miles.

He filled his lungs, threw back his head and spread his arms. His chest rose above the lake’s surface with each deep intake of mountain air. Columns of pine and fir wove in and out among the cliffs above him. Craggy, grey peaks. Puffy, white clouds. He floated, suspended between solid earth and the blue, ethereal sky.

THE END