The Wild Inside by Christine Carbo Page A

and flickering. I thought of my mother. I would call her and see her when I came across some time. I would have to visit my middle sister, Natalie, as well. She lived in Whitefish, a small town north of Kalispell at the base of the ski resort with her husband, Luke, and their two boys, Ian and Ryan.
    My oldest sister, Kathryn, lived in Minneapolis and worked for Merck Sharpe & Dome. She’d been divorced for over five years after finding out that her husband had cheated on her more than once over the years. Their divorce, long and ugly, ended up with a fifty-fifty split of their kids. I hadn’t seen Kathryn in about three years, but I’d seen Ma and Natalie last year for Thanksgiving. They’d be happy to know I was working within driving distance less than a year after my last visit. Although, any mention of Glacier Park usually set my mother on edge. I never discussed that actual night much with either my mother or my sisters. By the time I got out of the hospital, everyone walked on eggshells around me.
    I peeked outside. The temperature had dropped considerably. I brushed my teeth and found an extra blanket in a closet in the bedroom and went to bed. I tossed and turned until thoughts of my father pushed into my mind. I was investigating a case involving a grizzly in the park he so desperately wanted to get to know, to grow old near. He had told us on our drive to Montana in the dead of winter (we moved from Florida in time to start school in January after Christmas break) that he wanted to hike an average of sixty to seventy miles per summer, about five or six ten-mile hikes, so that by the time he was sixty-five, he would have logged over thirteen hundred miles of Glacier’s terrain under his feet. Very doable, if only he had lived past his second summer of residing in Montana. I pushed the thought away; it was no use going there.
    After his death, I never stepped foot into Glacier until I becamea junior in high school, when heading to Glacier to hike became the hip thing to do. At first it was just picnics, playing Frisbee and drinking beer and whatever else we could get our hands on in out-of-the-way places, but then I began dating a girl named Kendra, whose father loved the park and insisted every Saturday that she join him for hiking.
    If I wanted to spend time with her, I had no choice but to go along. And they were hiking machines. I ended up hiking Gunsight Pass with them, twenty-three miles in one day. I could barely walk up steps the following morning. Then Siyeh Pass, Huckleberry Mountain, the High Line Trail, Mount Brown Lookout, Piegan Pass, Snyder Lakes, and more. I was terrified of grizzlies, but we never camped and were always out of the woods by dark. I walked with my hand on the shiny black plastic safety of my bear spray attached to my belt.
    I came to appreciate the beauty of the park, and after getting in shape, the way my body felt after a long hike—the lactic acid buildup in my thigh muscles. The way the summer high-elevation sun felt on my face and the mountain air in my lungs. I felt empowered that I could jump back on the horse, overcome my fear to be in the place at all. After two summers of extensive hiking, I came to realize that the woods were a part of me. I liked to learn the names and identify the wildflowers: Indian paintbrush, fireweed, bear grass, arnica, glacier lilies, purple-and-gold alpine daisies, monkey flowers, and pasque blossoms. I enjoyed seeing the striped chipmunks, the marmots we call whistle pigs, the moose, the scruffy spring sheep and goats, the golden eagles, the elusive elk. I saw several pine martins, black bears, and even the extremely rare family of wolverines running across a snowfield. I didn’t see a grizzly during either of those summers, not even far away on a hillside or from a car in a bear jam. I considered myself protected, as if I’d done my time. I would be spared from coming across a grizzly ever again, even if I played in their backyard.
    But