“We have to stop. We can’t just keep wandering around in this heat,” Jennifer said.
“But the trail has to be right here. We only stepped off it for a second,” Alice replied.
Alice and Jennifer’s adventure to Craters of the Moon had turned into a frantic search for the trail they lost. To get a better sense of the landscape, they made a brief excursion off the trail over the a’a lava mounds; piles of sharp, clinking, rubble with no tree, bush or grass growing anywhere for miles. The mid-day heat was oppressive, and Alice and Jennifer were getting tired and dehydrated.
They were both enjoying a gap year: working service jobs, partying and sharing a studio apartment in Boise’s North End. Neither had been to Craters of the Moon, so on a whim they packed up their hiking gear and headed out to see the fleeting wildflower bloom; the black ash cones and normally desolate landscape lights up with a carpet of brilliant, tiny flowers for just a few weeks.
When the first non-Native Americans encountered the a’a lava fields, they didn’t have a name for what they found. It was impassible, cutting up their shoes and the feet of any animals they brought along. Although the lava was not longer hot, it was just as dangerous. Rough and sharp like piles of upturned broken glass, you couldn’t sit or lay on it without the risk of being punctured or sliced. The lava quickly chewed through any fabric, and unless someone had a metal or wooden cot, there was no respite from its bite.
Alice and Jennifer squatted on their heels to rest, trying to orient their bodies under the shade of their wide-brimmed hats. Heat waves rose off every surface giving them a Vaseline-lens appearance; liquid, distorted, blurry and surreal. The women took to leaning against each other in their squat position, to try and recover some of their strength. They hoped that as night came, the coolness would allow them to walk their way out of peril.
Temperatures at night drop dramatically in the high desert. The heat of the day is sucked into space through the cloudless, inky skies; by morning, frost can form on rocks which the previous day would have roasted a lizard on the spot. Once the sun was down, Alice and Jennifer donned their lightweight pants and jackets and used their phones as night lights. They moved cautiously over the jagged, volcanic glass, careful to plan each step with care. With the stars overhead they were able to at least find a fixed point and follow it.
Alice stepped on a seemingly stable boulder, which gave way under her weight. She crashed down one of the debris heaps, crying out from the multiple injuries she took on the way down. At the bottom of the pile, she was a wrecked victim, bleeding and torn with a freshly broken ankle. Jennifer scrambled over the lava to help, righting Alice and moving her onto the least cutting of the jagged rocks, assessing her lacerations and the ankle that twisted off at a sickening angle.
“You have to go for help,” Alice said. “You have to go now.” She felt dizzy and cold.
“You’re going into shock, I can’t leave you. Have some water.” Jennifer unscrewed the cap of her forty-dollar water bottle, suddenly reflecting on how she lingered over which color of bottle would look the best dangling off her backpack.
“You have to go now!” Alice protested, pushing away the bottle. “If you don’t find help, we’re both dead.”
Jennifer left the bottle with Alice, held her phone at arm’s length, and wobbled over the lava fields stacked like truckloads of abandoned clinker bricks.
Alice attempted to wriggle into a more comfortable position, but each adjustment brought new pain. She gave up and simply lay still, watching the stars overhead. The air was cool, and she was shivering. The throbbing lance of pain in her ankle overrode the discomfort of the jagged stones, and she tried to take deep, slow breaths in through her nose and out her mouth. She imagined she was floating, disconnected from her body, up near the stars. Laying so still, her eyes fixed on one spot, she noticed the slight flutter of the stars, some a bit blue or bit red; a satellite moved steadily across her view and she thought for a second maybe she could signal it with her phone, but dismissed the idea. The dark now was total, and lava field was silent. Alice more and more felt like she was dreaming, floating just above the ground, her ankle feeling further and further away.
She woke as the sun peeked over a pile of black, stony rubble and warmed her face. The warmth was welcome, but the shock of opening her eyes to the sunlight brought back all the pain and trouble of her situation. Her body had stiffened in the night. Her ankle was swollen and was colored like the skin of a plum. She started to move from her crippled position, and pain rang out from every quarter. Her shifting weight brought new stabs from the angular lava and after a few moments she gave up trying to right herself and tried to again concentrate on her breathing.
Within an hour, the sun Alice welcomed had become uncomfortable. She couldn’t turn to give her skin any rest from the glare and was beginning to sweat from the heat building up on her clothes. The sweat collected on her skin, mingling with the cuts; a stinging insult in her time of misery. She again tried to move, managing to roll a bit to one side, gasping from the new pain in her ribs, instinctively moving from it by lifting herself from the ground which shifted the bone fragments in her wrecked ankle. She cried out as a flash of pain rippled through her, and then sobbed against the warming shards of stone.
Alice had landed in a gully, which had kept her sheltered from the wind at night and delayed the sun reaching her. But now, as midday approached she felt she was laying in a frying pan with heat attacking her from all sides. She gulped warm water but could not slake her thirst. Drifting shadows started to move across her as vultures circled between her and the oppressive sun. Shade that would have been a welcome respite now filled her with dread. Through her crusty, squinting eyes she saw at least a half dozen black birds calmly drifting high above her. Alice yelled out, “Help! Help!” but her dusty voice never left the lava-strewn hole. She kept yelling until the effort to be heard made her pass out of consciousness.
She woke to a scraping sound. It was the vultures’ oily wings shifting against themselves as the giant birds stepped along the rim of the gully, attempting to find comfortable footing. Alice could feel the burning of her skin, the throb of her useless ankle, and the tiny knives of the lava jabbing her as her breathing became labored. She remembered her companion Jennifer, her LED shifting in the dark as she gingerly went for help. Was she alive? Had she made it out? Was she at a Ranger Station planning her rescue? Or would they simply follow the flock of hooked beak birds in a few days to reclaim the remains? The sky was still lit, and her gully was in shadow yet still felt like a freshly opened oven. Do vultures like cooked carrion? The silhouetted scavengers squawked occasionally, the flaps of a new arrival causing them to call out in protest and shift position again, scraping as they went. Alice tried to yell out, but could only produce a whispered hiss. She weakly threw the empty water bottle, which comically bounced around the pointy stones, unnoticed by the still gathering birds.
Jennifer did not find the trail, but instead stumbled upon a lava tube. The river of molten rock that once flowed through the cave smoothed the walls, which now trickled with fresh water, raising the humidity to comfortable levels. Jennifer slept well, protected from the cold outside and from the a’a above ground. In the morning, she attempted to get her bearings, but the mounds of jagged rock spread out in all directions. She knew her best chance for survival was to stay put and let the Rangers find her. But Alice’s injuries didn’t give her the luxury of time. She wasn’t even sure where Alice was amongst the rubble, but was sure a search plane could quickly spot her. Jennifer decided to head out again once the sun dropped below the horizon.
At dusk, she left the cool humidity and hiked up the jumble of jagged lava, trying to keep the cave in sight. This time she went in a straight line toward the setting sun. She slipped and fell but caught herself with her hand, which now bled from several deep cuts. “God Dammit!” she cried out, as she wrapped it in a bandanna. Her legs were shaky, both from adrenaline and from not eating for more than a day. As she crested another heap of broken shards, she saw countless identical piles all around. She stood for a long time as stars began to appear in the sky. Finally, she decided to return to the safety of the cave. Walking back, struggling to keep her footing through tear-filled eyes, guilt washed over her like a lava flow. She waited in the cave for nearly a week before she heard the whistle of a search party volunteer.
Alice had been found first, revealed by the continual arrivals of vultures circling in for a share of the meal. Since she lacked a tough hide, they made quick work of her; just her feet remained, protected by her heavy hiking boots. The coroner took photos of the site, and collected the remains in a plastic garbage bag camouflaged inside a knapsack.