The gas station was a single pump set in the middle of an unpaved lot. There was a shed where a teenaged boy leaned his chair against the wall and waited to be paid for the gasoline. Other than that, all that could be seen was the road stretching away and the surrounding evergreen forest.
Christopher leaned against the car and lit a cigarette. He wore loafers, loose white slacks and an argyle sweater. He dropped the lighter into his hip pocket and blew out a cloud of smoke.
"Do you have to smoke here?" asked Johnny, "You're standing next to a gas pump."
Christopher shrugged, and got back into the car. He held the cigarette over the ashtray. "Hurry up," he said.
Johnny finished filling up the car and walked over to the shed to pay. He wore hiking boots, fleece pants and a padded lumberjacket. While waiting for his change he raised his head and sniffed deeply. A recent rain had brought the scent of forest loam into the air. He felt more relaxed already.
Once in a while, a little voice spoke inside of Johnny's head. It told him to find somebody who never left the city and bring them out here, to his favourite bit of wilderness, and introduce them to the charms of camping and canoeing.
Christopher was Johnny's latest project. A junior accountant in a law firm, his life was nothing but paychecks and investments and restaurant reservations. The man never seemed to relax for one moment. This was going to be a challenge.
At the parking lot Christopher wandered around looking disapprovingly at the forested hillside across the lake while Johnny loaded the camping gear into the canoe. Christopher began one of his non-objective monologues.
"These trees are a waste of space," he said, "I look at one and I see a telephone pole. Strip off the darn branches and the silly bark and you've got yourself a useful object. But here they are all clustered together in their millions, and where's all the wires? They should all be strung together, carrying phone calls and faxes and stuff. But instead they stand here doing nothing. You know, that valley across the water there, with the hills and the dales and all that, all covered with trees, you know what that valley says to me? It screams, `Golf Course!', that's what. If you raze ninety percent of the silly trees, and leave just a few clumps here and there, you got yourself a wonderful golf course. Of course, these water hazards are way too big. Overkill. But a few truckloads of gravel and you make yourself some island greens. Way difficult. A world class course. Exclusive as all hell. And across the road here? A five-star hotel, with jacuzzis in every room and a conference hall, and beauty parlors for the golfers' wives. Lots of beauty parlors. Yeah."
Johnny, finished loading the packs, was sitting in the stern of the canoe, holding it against the dock so that Christopher could get in. "This is a national park, dude. Hop into the boat, okay?"
Christopher proved to be more hindrance than help, when it came to paddling the canoe. He held his paddle with both hands in the middle, and seemed to think that the water would propel them forward, if he were only to beat it hard enough. He slapped. He splashed. He lost his grip, and the paddle floated away.
"Tell you what, dude," said Johnny, changing course in order to fetch the errant paddle, "You just relax for a while and I'll do the paddling."
"Good idea," said Christopher, "My arms were getting sore anyhow." He leaned back, lounging across the waterproof backpacks, and instantly fell asleep. Johnny paddled solo and lost himself in the peace and fresh air, as time floated gently by.
Hours later, they rounded a peninsula and reached a branching point in the lake. Johnny paused and laid his paddle across his knees. "Which way?" he thought, "Which bay would be nice, this time? Which campsite?" He lightly pressed his fingertips against his temples, and closed his eyes. He would let nature decide.
And after a few seconds of concentration the decision was made. It appeared in his head, like deep green text on a mahogany background. "Go right," it said, "Sickle Bay."
Johnny lifted his paddle and turned into Sickle Bay. This was a shoreline made up mostly of big granite slabs, with a brushy, immature pine forest perched on top. The granite sloped sharply down into the lake so that the water was deep right next to the land, and this provided many places where a camper could dive into the lake directly from his campsite for that chilly, refreshing morning swim. But which campsite should they use? Let nature decide? Johnny smiled and closed his eyes, concentrating again.
A message appeared on the blackboard of his mind, in deep green text again, on a mahogany background again. "At the end. On the left bank. The one with the fallen white spruce."
Johnny paddled to the end of the bay, and there it was on the left; a big raised campsite set on top of a huge half-submerged boulder, with an old broken spruce tree leaning down into the water. This was a nice campsite. Had he been here before? He could not remember. He brought the canoe sideways up against the boulder, in a spot where the rock curved horizontally to provide a stepping-off place. Expertly, he made the canoe slow to a stop without scraping on the rock.
"Christopher, wake up. We're here."
Christopher sat up and rubbed his eyes. He climbed unsteadily out of the canoe and stepped up onto the soft needle-carpet next to the firepit.
"Well, that wasn't so bad, was it?" he asked, "I slept well. You know, you could have slept too, if you'd just buy a motor for this silly boat."
Johnny was left speechless by this logic. He smiled at Christopher and shrugged, then climbed from the canoe and tied it to the fallen spruce. Christopher sat on a rock and began to recount a seemingly endless anecdote that had something to do with mutual funds. Johnny let him talk and unloaded the canoe. He set up both tents, tied a tarp shelter over the firpit, and arranged all of their equipment. Then he wandered back and forth in the forest, collecting fallen branches for firewood. Christopher followed him around, still talking.
Later, after a supper of barbecued steaks and Caeser salad, something seemed to come over Christopher and he began to notice his surroundings. He began to talk again, but at a more relaxed pace, and he spoke on the subject of wild animals, something that Johnny could relate to. Johnny listened, and his friend treated him to his own unique perspective on endangered beings in endangered places.
"What these bunnies and raccoons need, is to get wired," said Christopher, "They can't compete with us human beings because we have more brains, and we have technology. This place is pretty, I guess, but face it, in a few years it'll be a parking lot for a Wendy's. That's not sad, that's just Darwin at work. If a moose can't cross the street without being totalled by a tractor-trailer, then the moose are on their way out. But here's my point; you take that moose and equip him with a cell phone and a Web page, you give him a fax machine and a beeper and a voice mail system, and he can adapt or he can go to hell. It's up to him. Evolve or go extinct; that's what Darwin told all these little rats and goats back in the beginning when he created them. And the way to evolve nowadays is to get electronic. If they can't be bothered to save themselves, then why should I lift a finger to save them?"
Johnny did not argue. He figured that for Christopher, even this extremist viewpoint seemed like a step in the right direction. He yawned loudly.
"Your theories are quite stimulating, dude," he said, "but I'm beat. I'm gonna hit the hay, okay?"
Johnny showed Christopher how to get into his tent, then after a pause, explained how to unroll the sleeping bag and blow air into the mattress. Once his friend seemed comfortable, he retired to his own tent, and soon two sets of snores reverberated through the forest.
After a while, when both men were soundly sleeping, a dark shape moved silently through the bushes and into the campsite. A hulking black bear appeared in the light of the dying campfire, and moved up to Johnny's tent, where it sniffed deeply. It moved on to Christopher's tent and sniffed again, then used a sharp, hooked claw to poke a hole in the nylon wall. The claw moved downward, slitting the light fabric with a soft swishing sound, and the bear pushed its head into the opening. Shuffling backward, the bear backed away from the tent, pulling Christopher out through the torn wall with his foot gently clasped in its jaws.
The events of the next few minutes became rather noisy, but Johnny slept so deeply after the day's exertions that he never woke up; just snorted and rolled over a couple of times. The small animals of the nearby forest were the only ones to hear, as Christopher's voice and the snarls and grunts of the bear united to form a dialogue of man against nature:
"SNARL...Hey, whazzat? Whazzup?...GROWL...Hey, who are you? What are you? Ouch! Stop biting me!...ROAR...Yow! Lemme go! That hurts!...GROOOWWWLL...Aaah! Johnny! Help! A bear's got me!....SNARL...Hey, stop eating my quadriceps, I worked out for months to develop those! Eeeek. Aaaah!...CHEW CHEW CHEW...Omigosh, stop eating my arteries, I need my arteries to circulate my blood. Hey, stop drinking my blood!...BITE CHOMP RIP TEAR...Please stop! I feel weak. Cold. So cold...CHEW REND RIP...Choke. Cough. Gurgle. Rattle...CHEW CHEW GRIND RIP CHEW CHEW CHEW .........BURP!"
Satisfied for the moment, the bear rested for a while, then dragged what remained of Christopher's body into the woods, leaving behind nothing but a pool of blood that quickly soaked into the moss, and a few drying pieces of intestine that Johnny would mistake for macaroni the next day.
When Johnny got up the next morning he moved around silently so as not to wake Christopher. He thought, "Sure is quiet around here. The woods are so peaceful in the morning." Later he went to Christopher's tent with a cup of coffee, only to discover that his friend was gone. "Oh, gee," he thought, "I wonder if he got up before me and went for a hike." After drinking his own coffee and eating a hearty breakfast, he thought, "I hope Christopher is okay. Should I go ask the park rangers to organize a search party? Hmm. I know, I'll let nature decide." He pressed his fingertips to his temples and closed his eyes.
In a nearby cave, the bear sat hunched over in front of a computer terminal. The screen was split in half to form an upper window and a lower window. As the bear watched, words began to appear in the upper window, in blue text on a white background.
"Sure is quiet around here. The woods are so peaceful in the morning," said the text.
The bear leaned back and began to pick at his fangs with a splinter of Christopher's thigh bone. Something was stuck between his teeth. After a couple of minutes, more text began to appear in the upper window on the screen, and the bear leaned forward to read it.
"Oh gee. I wonder if he got up before me and went for a hike," said the text.
The bear leaned back again. Still picking, he grunted in relief when the obstruction was dislodged. Withdrawing it from his mouth, he looked closely and saw that it was one of Christopher's thumbnails. He flicked it out the cave door where it landed in a pile of bones. More words began to appear on the screen. The bear peered closely at them and read silently, his lips moving.
"I hope Christopher is okay. Should I go ask the park rangers to organize a search party? Hmm. I know, I'll let nature decide."
The bear sprang into action. Using the tips of his claws, he typed and a new set of words began to appear on the bottom window of the split screen. The text was a deep green colour, set against a mahogany background.
"No search party," it said, "He got bored and walked home. Don't worry. Go get somebody else."