And for the first time in my adult life, I don't want an exit. I don't want the next trip. I don't want the open trail and the solo tent and the specific freedom of a man who never stays long enough to lose anything.
I want this. Exactly this. Standing on a ridge in the cold with three people who are my whole life and knowing I'm not going anywhere.
"Turn off the lights," Reid says.
Owen reaches back and kills his headlight. I do the same.
Darkness. Total, engulfing, the kind of dark that makes you aware of your own body as the only warm thing in a cold world. The stars sharpen. The snow glows faint and blue. And for a moment there is nothing but the sound of four people breathing and the distant, thin call of something wild in the valley below.
Then Reid says, quiet, like he's been waiting for exactly the right second:
"There. It's starting."
I look up.
The sky is moving.
It starts low on the northern horizon, a faint green shimmer that could be mistaken for cloud or imagination. Then it lifts. Expands. The green deepens and pulses, a curtain of light that ripples like fabric in a wind that doesn't exist, and then a second curtain appears behind the first, this one edged in violet, and the two of them begin to move together across the sky in slow, enormous waves.
The aurora borealis.
Nobody speaks.
The light builds. Green and violet become green and violet and pink, streamers of color arcing from horizon to zenith, the whole sky alive with a rhythm that belongs to something so much larger that makes you feel small and enormous at the same time.
Reid breaks the silence first. He's standing behind Maya, looking up, and when he speaks his voice is a reverent whisper.
"It never gets old," he says.
Owen is on Maya's other side. Maya's hand finds his. I see her fingers thread through Owen's under the lights.
"I've seen a lot of skies," I say. "Patagonia. Alaska. The Amazon at night." I look at her. She looks at me. Green light moving across her face. "This is the only sky I want to come home to."
She reaches for me. Her free hand, finds the front of my jacket and pulls me in and I go, and she's holding Owen's hand and reaching for me and Reid is right there, solid and still, and the four of us stand on the ridge in the light of a sky that is doing impossible things and I understand, finally, completely, with the kind of clarity that only comes when you stop moving long enough to feel where you are, that this is not a stop on the way to somewhere else.
This is the destination. This is the whole trip.
The aurora shifts above us. Green to violet to green again, rippling, enormous, indifferent to the four small people on the ridge below.
I watch her.
The way the green catches in her tears and turns them to emeralds. The way her mouth is open, just slightly, in an expression of wonder.
29
MAYA
The kettle ticks on the stove, small metallic sounds that let you know that water is almost boiling.
The kitchen is warm, and the morning light comes through the window in pale gold bars that fall across the countertop and catch the steam already beginning to rise from the kettle's spout.
Last night is still inside me. The way the sky moved, those enormous ribbons of green and violet rippling overhead like the atmosphere was breathing.
I think about this morning. The three of them getting ready to ride the snowmobiles back to town to return the rentals and pick up the truck. Jace straddling his sled in the driveway, goggles pushed up on his forehead, grinning like a kid. "Race you back," he said to Reid. Reid gave him a look. "That's a bad idea." Jace revved the engine. "You're only saying that because you know you'll lose." Reid shook his head. Then they tore off through the snow, Jace whooping, Reid steady in the lead, Owen taking a line so precise it looked planned on graph paper, and I stood on theporch and waved and laughed and the sound of my own laughter still surprises me sometimes.
The kettle clicks. The water is ready.
I pour, watching the tea bag darken the water in slow amber spirals.
