Someone came up behind him, tread so light as to be almost undetected. “Excuse me.”

He twisted his torso and stared at the blond woman. She smiled down on him. She was at least six feet tall. “Yes?” he asked, swallowing most of a mouthful of half-chewed apricot.

“Did you see a man here, a little taller than I, with a very black full beard and wearing a red parka?” She indicated the man’s height with a hand held level above her head.

Edward hadn’t, but the woman’s worried expression suggested that it would be best if he paused to consider before answering. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “There aren’t many people here today.”

“I’ve been waiting two days,” she said, sighing. “We were supposed, to meet here, at the Emerald Lake, actually.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Did you see anybody like him down on the valley floor? You came up from there, didn’t you?”

“Yes, but I don’t remember any men with black beards and red parkas. Or any with just black beards, for that matter — unless he’s a biker.”

“Oh, no.” She shook her head and turned away, then turned back. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. May I offer some tea, fruit?”

“No thank you. I’ve eaten. I carried food for both of us.”

Edward watched her with an embarrassed smile. She seemed unsure what to do next. He half wished she would go away; his attraction to her was almost painful.

“He’s my husband,” she said, staring up at Liberty Cap, shading her eyes against the hazy glare. “We’re separated. We met in Yosemite, and we thought if we came back here, before…” Her voice trailed off and she made a negligible shrug of her shoulders and arms. “We might be able to stay together. We agreed to meet at Emerald Lake.”

“I’m sure he must be here someplace.” He gestured at the lake and trail and the Nevada Fall.

“Thank you,” she said. This time, she did not smile, simply turned and walked back toward the head of Vernal Fall and the descending Mist Trail. He watched her go and took a deep breath, biting into his second sandwich.

He stared at the sandwich ruefully as he chewed. “Must be the white bread,” he told himself. “Can’t catch a beauty like that with anything less than whole wheat.”

At three, the meadow and the perimeter of the lake, the falls and the trail below, were empty. He was the only human for miles, or so it seemed; might even be true, he thought. He crossed the bridge and lingered in the trees on the other side, with only the roar of the falls above and below and snatches of birdsong. He knew rocks of any description but little about birds. Red-winged blackbirds and robins and jays were obvious; he thought about buying a book in the general store to learn the others, but then, what use applying names? If his memories were soon to be scattered fine-ground over space, education was a waste.

What was important was finding his center, or pinning down some locus of being, establishing a moment of purity and concentrated awareness. He did not think that was possible with people all around; now was a chance to try.

Prayer perhaps. God had not been on his mind much recently, a telltale void; he did not wish to be inconsistent when all the world was a foxhole. But consistency was as useless now as nature studies, and not nearly so tempting.

The valley was still in sun, Liberty Cap half shadowed. The smoke had cleared some and the sky was bluer, green at the edges of the haze, more real than it had been.

“I am going to die,” he said out loud, in a normal tone of voice, experimenting. “What I am will come to an end. My thoughts will end. I will experience nothing, not even the final end.” Rising rocks and smoke and lava. No; probably not like that. Will it hurt? Will there be time for pain?

Mass death; God was probably busy also with mass prayer.

God.

Not a protector, unless there be miracles.

He shuffled his booted feet in the dry trail dirt. “What in hell am I looking for? Revelation?” He shook his head and forced a laugh. “Naive sonofabitch. You’re out of training; your prayer muscles, your enlightenment biceps, they’re all out of shape. Can’t lift you any higher than your goddamned head.” The bitterness in his voice shook him. Did he really want revelation, confirmation, assurance of existence or meaning beyond the end?

“God is what you love.” He said this softly; it was embarrassing to realize how much he believed it. Yet he had never been particularly good at love, neither the love of people in all its forms nor the other kinds, except perhaps love of his work. “I love the Earth.”

But that was rather vague and broad. The Earth offered only unthinking obstacles to love: storms, rock slides, volcanoes, quakes. Accidents. Earth could not help being incontinent. Easy to love the great mother.

The wind picked up and carried droplets of mist above the Vernal Fall and over the forest, landing cool and lightly stinging-tickling on his cheek. He thought of down on his cheek and not whiskers, and of wanting his father to stay with them, even then knowing (truly did he realize it then?) that the unknit would soon separate.

That time, in Yosemite, had not been altogether blissful. The memories he now recovered were of a young boy’s ignorant but sharp eye, observing a man and a woman, shakily acting the roles of mother and father, husband and wife, not connecting anymore.

The boy had been unable to foresee what would happen after the separation so obviously but so deniably coming.

He squinted.

Earth = mother. God = father. No God = no father = inability to connect with the after.

“That,” he said, “cuts the fucking cake.” He swatted at a gnat and hefted his pack higher on his back, descending along the wet dark gray rock steps carved out beside Vernal Fall, and then following the path above the foaming, violently full Merced.

Pausing with a slight smile, he left the path and stood on a granite boulder at the very edge of the tumult, contemplating the lost green volumes of water beneath and between the white bubbles. The roar seemed to recede; he felt almost hypnotized. He could just lean forward, shift one foot beyond the edge, and all would end very quickly. No suspense. His choice.

Somehow, the option was not attractive. He shook his head slowly and glanced up at the trees on the opposite side of the spill. Glints of silver shined through the boughs and moved along the trunks. It took him a moment to resolve what he was seeing. The trees were crawling with fist-sized silvery spiders. Two of them scuttled along a branch, carrying what appeared to be a dead jay. Another had stripped away a slice of bark from a pine trunk, revealing a wedge of white wood.

He thought of the Guest, and did not doubt his eyes.

Who controls them? he asked himself. What do they mean? He watched them for several minutes, vaguely bothered by their indifference, and then shrugged — yet another inexplicable marvel — and returned to the path.

Edward was back in the valley, freshly showered and in clean jeans and white shirt, by five o’clock, as he had promised. The amphitheater was more crowded than it had been for yesterday’s meeting. No music was scheduled; instead, they had a minister, a psychologist, and a second ranger arrayed before the podium, waiting their turn after Elizabeth’s introduction. Minelli grumbled at the New Age lineup, but he stayed. There was a bond growing between all of them, even those who had not spoken; they were in this together, and it was better to be together than otherwise, even if it meant sitting through a handful of puerile speakers.

Edward looked for but did not see the jilted blonde in the audience.