CZM Book Club: An excerpt from "An RVer's Guide to the American West" by Carrot Quinn

anyone I know. One of the other things she does is she leads hikes, right Like, if you want to go on a week long you know, women only through hike, you can. You can go with Quinn, Carrot. You can go with Carrot, Carrot, Quinn. So I'm really excited about this upcoming, this up there, I mean, post apocalypse.

is that Carrot's coming. Actually a lot of through hikers come from quit their office job and go hiking, and Carrot comes from hopping freight trains and hitchhiking to going and being like the through hiker.

The road crests arise, still wooded, though still no view, and I can see that it drops down and then curves out of sight below. Okay, maybe we'll descend now, maybe we'll get off this goddamn mountain. I coast downhill, picking up speed, letting the wind ruffle my hair, letting my tired legs rest. How good it feels to just be carried like this. The down tree is hidden behind a curve in the road. I don't see it soon enough. I hit the brakes, but it's a huge tree, broken

branches everywhere, and I'm going too fast. I can't even make sense of what happens next, except there's a terrible grinding noise. I'm going over the handlebars, I'm bouncing, sharp pain in my body, and then everything is still. My first thought is the dog. I pull myself up. There's some blood on the fabric of my dress. My bike is tangled and twisted wood, the handlebars bent backwards. The pannier with a dog in it is facing up. But

it didn't get smashed under the bike, thank god. And I open it up and the dog jumps out, looks around, wide eyed, startled, shakes himself with vigor. He's okay. I'm weeping with relief. How stupid I was, being so so stupid? Why would I go so fast like that on this janky ass road. I almost killed my best my only friend. I'm sitting on the ground now openly sobbing my chest, heaving a tender pain starting to make itself known. There a stabbing burning. Each time I take a breath, I

can't stop crying. Though the dog stands next to me, curious watching me cry. I'm blubbering incoherently at him. He has everything in the world that I have, and he's so small, and it's my responsibility to keep him alive out here in this big, dangerous land. Snot is running down my face, and I lift the blood stained skirt of my dress to wipe it away. That's when I see the cut on my leg. A sharp ended branch

must have dragged its way across my thigh. The cut is rough looking and messy, but not too deep, and the blood is already starting to clot. When I stand, the leg feels tender and a little fresh blood is out. I rub my hands over the rest of my body. I feel bruised and maybe a broken rib, but otherwise okay, lucky, I got lucky. My bike is mangled, though one of the rims bent the wheel. Rubbing against the frame and walking is painful, and in addition, now that I'm around

the bend. I can see that the road does not continue to descend. It climbs back up onto the ridge. The ridge, though, the clear, open ridge. I can see it ahead of me, cast in soft yellow light. The road goes up there, and there should be a view. The view I wanted there is that at least, better get there before the stiffness settles in, before my rib becomes all the way painful, and pushing a bike is

too much. I make my way gingerly up the hill, the dog trotting along beside me, the slowness of my bent bike matching the slow, painful movements of my body. The road tops out in a rocky clearing, and I can see the valley spread out in the light below. The road ends. Here. There's a small house, a sort of one room shack, up high in the air on stilts,

with a long turning staircase leaning up to it. I stand for a time watching the shack, watching for movement, but there is none, no sounds either, just the stillness of this peaceful evening. I lean the bike against one of the metal supports, pull off my panniers, and begin to mount the stairs. One two, three, four, flights. I grab the guardrail to support myself, WinCE at the pain in my leg and chest. With each turn of the staircase, the mountain recedes below me, and I can see farther.

I can see the ridges leaning away from this one. I can see more of the valley far below. The dog is right behind me, heaving himself up each metal step. After six flights, the staircase ends and there's just plywood above my head. Nowhere else to go. I press the plywood up. It sticks, and then it comes free, revealing a square opening in the floor of the shack. I pop my head inside. I see a row of wooden benches, a metal table, some shelves, a small cot, a wood stove.

Each of the four walls is made up of huge windows, looking out in every direction. I lift the dog up and set him inside, and then climb in after him. It's nicer inside the shack than out. The walls block the wind, and the huge windows gather the warmth of the sun, shelter, my God, shelter. Something inside of me releases some tense little ball on furls, just in time to enjoy these sweet, sweet interruptions in the form of advertisements, and we're back. I drop my panniers on the floor.

I should take inventory of the shack, see what is useful here? But I'm overcome with an unnameable exhaustion. I carefully lower myself onto the cot, curl up into a ball, and shut my eyes. When I wake, its afternoon and the light is heavy. I slept more deeply than I have since leaving Maud, and I fight the urge to close my eyes and fall back asleep, to sleep for a hundred years. The dog is sitting right in front of my face, staring at me. You're right, dog, I say,

I should get up and put things in order. I roll onto my back and WinCE in pain. I'm thirsty. Did I put any water out for the dog? I fish a bottle from one of my panniers and fill a jar lid that serves as his water dish, set it in the corner. Anticipation percolates through me as I open a wooden cabinet above the metal table. It's the same anticipation I felt in the city, opening up abandoned apartments with Georgia. The time before mine was a period

of unimaginable abundance of goods. Always I am mining that time, salvaging its leftovers, hobbling them together to make my own spare of life. What hold over treasures will I discover here? The first thing I see is a pack of matches and a lighter and a roll of toilet paper half used up. This already is a bonanza. I've been lighting fires with my flint and the dry inner bark of pine trees. I learned to make fires of the flint in the city using paper trash's kindling, and Maud's group

taught me about the tree bark. This lighter in matches will make things go so much faster. That'll be nice until they run out, and then it's back to the flint and toilet paper. I can't remember the last time I had toilet paper in the city. Toilet paper was for rich people. We use trash paper dampened with water, the water squeezed from cheap plastic bottles to make a bidet. Since leaving the city, I've used moss grasses folded over

into a bunch smooth stones. There's a deck of cards, a handful of dirty dice, a few pencils, and some scrap paper, A small red zippered pouch with a white cross on it, a first aid kit. These often don't hold much that's truly useful. Some safety pins gauze things like that, but you never really know. Lastly, there's a note written on a scrap of paper, Lottie Moonlight at the end of the world, with you falling in love

among the stars, yours Alfonso. I run my fingers over the words, place the note carefully back in the cabinet. Other people's sadnesses years gone. There's a long wooden storage box under the metal table, and I lift the lid. Plastic bags, packages seemingly intact. This box must be mouseproof. I rifle through them. A ziplock of broken noodles, a cardboard box of instant mashed potatoes, some cans their label's gone,

likely too old to eat without risk getting sick. And then some thick plastic packages that are still sealed freeze dried meals, faded and old but not yet expired. These are gold. They last decades. This is a major score. We're eating good tonight, I say to the dog, who is busy sniffing at every corner. He lifts his leg and lets a stream of urine run down the table support. Hey, now, I say, this is inside. You can't do that. He looks at me curious. In the bottom of the metal

band is a notebook, and I flip it open. It's full of entries. The earliest dated fifteen years ago. Fifteen years Apparently this place operated as something called a fire lookout tower, a place to watch for wildfires, back when

there was still state infrastructure beyond the cities. Someone lived up here and looked out these big windows and watched for smoke and recorded their observations every day, and if they saw a fire, they contacted some sort of authority, and those people would send out helicopters to fight the fire, helicopters way out here. I can't imagine the infrastructure that used to exist to move all that fuel all this way. Just the work it would take to clean the fallen

trees off all these roads must have been staggering. Elsewhere in the shack I find a metal lantern lacking fuel, an enamel plate and cup, a couple of forks. On the window sill is a pair of binoculars, a plant identification book, a book on local birds. A plastic tote on the floor holds an old roll, a sleeping bag that smells pleasantly of mildew, and a couple of paperback Westerns. There's a large blue water container that's empty. A wave

of dizziness reminds me that I'm actually quite hungry. At the table, I rip open one of the freeze dried meals. The plastic is brittle and breaks apart in my hands. I empty the contents into my pot with some water from one of my bottles, and set it to boil

on the small canned woodstove. I've been gathering twigs in the morning and carrying them with me in case I an I camping in a spot without trees and need to cook dinner, and I'm happy to have those twigs now so I don't have to climb down all those steps. While the water heats, I close my eyes, allowing myself to enjoy the absolute stillness of this space. This safety is an illusion, I know. For true safety, I need a source of water, some way to get more food,

and ideally other people. But now that my bike is broken, we're just going to chow here for a bit and rest, I say to the dog, who is napping in a sunbeam on the worn wooden floor, and then we'll figure out what's next. I think the meal was supposed to be lasagna, or some approximation of lasagna. Now it tastes rancid and the textures are all wrong, but the dog and I eat it anyway. The drowsiness that follows is a force that cannot be stopped, and I lay down

on the cot with the dog. The mildewed sleeping bag pulled over us as well as our own. I imagine that I can sense that other time in the cabin's sleeping bag, that previous world, Lottie and Alfonso, smelling of flowers and pine pitch and warmed over sweat, falling in love at the end of the world. When I wake, it's dark and cold. The dog is whining at me. He has to take a shit, most likely, while that's

consider of him to want to do it outside. The moon is still fairly large, and the table and woodstove are cast in silver. I try to move and I can't. I pin to the cot with pain tensing my abdomen. To sit up causes a stab in my rib cage, as though there's a sword running through it. Fuck, I say aloud, God, fucking damn it. The dog lifts his ears and looks at me, whinds again. Slowly, slowly, I roll to my side, push myself into a sitting position

using my arms. It's excruciating, but not impossible. My leg is sore, but walking as slowly is tolerable. However, lifting anything, including the wooden hatch on the floor that leads to the staircase, creates another sword of pain in my chest. I'm crying by the time I set the dog on the stairs beside me. I look at the dog. Maybe I can send him down by himself, but he's so small and there are predators openly sobbing, I make my way down the stairs after him, gripping the guard rail.

By the time I reach the ground, I feel as though I'm going to throw up. Not that though, vomiting would be horrifically painful. I want to laugh, but that would hurt too. The dog noses his way around the shadows, arcs his back produces one tiny, perfect shit. My bike is there, leaning against the steel supports of the tower, glinting in the moonlight. I touched the metal so cold it's almost frosty. I'm cold too. I'm starting to shiver, and that hurts. The dog is already bounding his way

back up the staircase. I turn to follow him. I'll deal with my bike tomorrow. The dawn comes long and red, the cold bite of nighttime banished by the slow warm of the morning. I woke when it was still dark and lay for hours in the sleeping bag, watching the night fade. The dog curled against my belly. When I am still, the pain is still, but every time I move, it hollers at me again. Now I close my eyes, feel the morning sun on my face. I've got to

figure out what to do. With great effort, I get myself upright and make my way to the table to heat some water for breakfast. Putting weight on my leg feels worse today, and in a strange way. I lift my skirt and press my cool palm to the skin around the gash, which is scabbed over. The skin is hot to the touch and red and swollen. Sort of hard. Wait did I clean this yesterday? Did I even fucking clean this? I holler in the tower, letting my voice

carry out over the bright, vacant world. The dog glances up at me, curious. How could I have forgotten to clean the cut on my leg. How for all I know, it's got fucking sticks in there. I was so excited to find some stupid fucking matches and freeze dried meals that I forgot to clean a fucking gash on my leg. No, no, no, no no, I say to the tower, to the sky, to the whole uncarrying universe that spirals around itself into cold,

infinite space. My head is a rush of noise. I see the table and break sticks on thinking, stuff them into my stove. I pour water into my pot, shake the empty bottle that's the last of my water, and light the sticks. Without comprehension, I unFocus my gaze at the blank windows and the blue sky beyond. Wait for the panic to pass. The water boils over, scalding my hand, brings me back into my body. Yesterday I ate a

flake from the box of instant mashed potatoes. It tasted like nothing, as though the plant matter had been replaced by dust, the way bones and rock are replaced with minerals to make fossils. Oh well, I'm eating the potatoes anyway. I dump the contents of the box into the water, remove the pot from the heat set it aside. I put my head on the cool metal table, close my eyes, think, I've got to think. And you know what she thought of? She thought of these great ads she invented all.

one in the group with some basic medical knowledge. If someone stepped on something sharp or twisted their ankle jumping down from a chain link fence, she was there. Hospitals were great places to get disappeared, so people like Georgia were crucial. It wasn't always possible to help every problem, like with Rick and his abscessed tooth, and how impossible it was to find antibiotics. But Georgia and others like

her did what they could. Now spooning tasteless potato mush into my mouth, and this isolated fire tower far from the last vestiges of a dying empire. I wish that I had taken the time to learn basic wound care from Georgia. What an idiot I am. I dropped some potatoes on the ground for the dog, and hehrks them down, and then he licks the wooden floor clean. I've got to get more water. What would kill me first, dehydration or my infected wound?

It bubbles from up from underground streams and springs, likely replenished by snow melt. When traveling with mods group, we found it by watching for different kinds of plant life. There'd be dry slopes of yellow grasses and stiff woody brush, and then in a fold in the mountain, a riot of green. We'd make our way to this drainage and follow it downhill or uphill, sometimes splitting into two groups to go both ways, until we heard or smelled water. It just rained a ton. I think back to my

night under the tarp, so that should help things. I eyeball the blue plastic five gallon water container that sits in the corner of the tower. I should take that thing with me on my search for water. Empty, it'll be light enough, but how will I even lift it once it's full with my injured ribs. One thing at a time, I say out loud to myself. In the cabinet, I find the first aid kit and rifle through it,

not expecting much. There's some ancient band aids that glue, likely useless, a roll of gauze, some sterile wipes, and then, good God, an amber colored pill bottle. It rattles in my hand. It has pills inside. The label says doxy cycling, a fucking antibiotic. I can't believe my luck. I up end the bottle that doesn't or so. Pills in my palm are brown and oblong and have eye dash too etched into them. These are not antibiotics, their ibuprofen. I take a deep breath and tip the pills back into

the bottle, setting four aside. These will be helpful for the pain. At least they'll make my water gathering trip a bit easier. It takes a while to get down the stairs. My body has grown stiffer as the day has progressed. But by the time I'm walking along the ridge away from the tower, following the faint jeep track overgrown with weeds that heads more or less in a westerly direction, the ibuprofen is kicked in, and the pain

feels a little farther away. Isn't so sharp as to make me want to throw up my mashed potatoes, which is good because I wouldn't want to waste what little food I have. The dog is trotting beside me, happy to be walking in the sunshine, not a care in the world. My leg has begun to throb, and I try to ignore it, repeating the mantra one thing at a time to myself and take it breaks whenever I

need them. Sitting on the water jug and staring out over the valley below, I don't know how fast I'm walking, or how much time has passed exactly, but it's afternoon when the jeep track ends and a single footpath continues on along the rocky ridge. The footpath drops down into a cluster of trees, and I see a promising sight, a depression filled with green grass. I dig with my fingers in the grass. The earth is dark and moist here,

but there's no standing water. Damn. Below the depression is a cleft in the trees, dropping down, filled with rocks and boulders. I should follow this. The going is slow, though, with my jug and my injured legs and my ribs. Each small drop down from a large boulder, dragging the banging water drug after me makes me dizzy with pain and hunger now too, and it takes me time to steady myself for the next obstacle. My pace slows to

a crawl as the afternoon lengthens. I try not to let panic cloud my decision making as I push on down the boulder choked ravine. The ibuprofen is long since worn off, and the last of the light is fading. When I smell minerals and feel the air change on my skin, I find the pool in the lee of a large granite boulder, clear water, about elbow deep in the middle, dancing with water bugs. In this moment, the rest of my worries drop away, and the pain and

panic induced fog clears. In this moment, I have solved the greatest and most basic of life's puzzles, and I want for nothing. I am happy in the purest sense. I fill a water bottle and guzzle the entire thing. Now for the hunger, I pull a freeze dried meal from my backpack and laboriously crunch up and swallow a few handfuls of the dried contents, which tastes like salt and not much else, followed by another bottle of cold,

perfect water. The dog drinks his fill and gets part of my meal too, and then settles down in the warm sand, ready for bed through the trees. I can see the molden orange of the sunset, and I allow a moment of perfect contentment to pass before I ask myself what exactly I mean to do now? The cold is coming and I'm already chilled the heat of the day.

Escaping into the atmosphere, I brought my sleeping bag with me, and I decide to sleep here next to the water and figure out what my next steps will be in the morning when the sun returns. Animals will want to use this watering hole in the night, most likely, and I don't want to spook or be spooked by them, So I walk a little bit into the trees until

I find a flat, dry patch of ground. I'm more than exhausted, my broken body aching in new ways from trying to compensate for its injuries while I hike down this ravine, and it feels blissful to escape into the warm depths of my sleeping bag. The dog like a hot water bottle against me, and cinch the hood closed over my face, leaving just my nose sticking out. It's warm in my down cocoon, and the forest is peaceful

and still, and sleep comes easily. My sleep is full of nightmares, and I wake multiple times in the night, unsure at first where I am some part of my body uncomfortable or in pain. I roll over with difficulty and drift off, only to wake again in a new kind of pain. I'm relieved when the first of the light begins to bleed into the sky, and I lay there, eyes open, listening to the sounds of the forest aching and almost but not quite warm enough, and wait impatiently

for the warmth of the sun. Dawn finds me sitting on the sand next to the pool, shivering slightly, using one of my water bottles to fill the five gallon jug. Soon most of the pool is inside the jug, water, bugs and all, and I am contemplating how to get the beastly heavy thing back up the ravine to the ridge. Lifting it is out of the question, just one half hearted try, and my ribs are screaming at me. But

maybe I can drag it. The dog sits a little bit away in a patch of sun and watches without judgment as I use my knife trim the hem of my dress in one long, spiraling strip. The fabric twists easily into a small rope that is not I decide strong enough to pull five gallons of water, and I reluctantly return half the drug to the pool. Although I am disappointed, this turn of events pleases the water bugs greatly.

One end of the rope ties to the handle of the water drug, and the other I wrap around a fixed stick, which will be easier to hold onto than the rope itself. I take a few tentative steps up the slope, my feet digging into the deep pine needles. The jug tugs me back, and then a bright pain as my core engages moving my broken rib, plus the dull, throbbing pain in my leg. Fuck, there is no way I can pull this drug uphill. My head turns to static again, and I sit on the sun warmed ground

and try to gather myself. I mustn't panic. The situation is very bad, but panicking will make it worse. I must not make things worse. Dog pads over to me and climbs in my lap, curls into a doughnut, and shuts his eyes. He's not worried. He trusts in my ability to figure things out. Oh that I was as clever and powerful as my dog thinks I am. I shew the dog off and ease myself up again, slowly so as to not jostle my ribs, and stare at the water jug, willing myself to solve this puzzle. I

can't carry the jug. I can't drag the jug. What can I do? The water sloshes as I pour the rest of it back into the pool. I chug a leader and fill the two bottles in my backpack. These two leaders are all I can carry, but at least it's more water than I had yesterday. The ravine looks completely different on the climb up, and I recognize almost nothing. I chastise myself for not noting more landmarks, but my experience on the way down was clouded heavily by thirst, exhaustion,

and pain. Still, next time, I should be more careful. When I'm half way to the top, I sit for a long moment and let the pain subside. Want to sit there forever, but make myself stand again. Hunger is making me dizzy. The freeze dried meal I ate last night was the only food I brought, and I've already burned through the little bit I saved and ate for breakfast. I imagine dumpsters full of stale bread sheet cakes stolen off the backs of trucks, greasy street food, and other

abundances of the city. I imagine Georgia, her soft fingers on my scalp as she braids my hair, and the first light on the rooftop whispering to me about her dreams the night before. Would I have been better off if I just stayed yes for a little while? And then that world is behind me, I say aloud, as I brush the pine needles off my dress and pick up the blue jug again. That world is lost, and in its place, I've gained something I didn't even know

I'd been missing. These mountains, the arid valleys. I mean to try and find my mother, and I mean to make my home here, figure out what to eat and how to live and where the people are, or maybe just die trying. D D. That's the end, damn right.

clean water, or like I've gotten myself sick or hurt and now I have to figure.

this is never slept outside, never slept hard. Yeah you know that first night you're sleeping outside by yourself. No you're not. Yeah, not without a not without a sleeping bag.

or whatever. Like if I had to like crash on benches in you know, uh, airports or whatever, and like that's not really sleeping, let alone being out in the woods alone for the first time.

that's where the grass is and follow that. Yeah, and you can tell that either Carrot has and I mean I've I've read her through hiking stuff, so I know that she's run out of water on a hike before, you know, but like knows the actual answers. And I think that's really cool.

stuff on us. But like, yeah, I don't know what I would have done if I had been alone in that situation, because like I was in pain, and that's all the other thing. The degree to which like being in pain, like physically injured when you're alone in a situation like this is like an intoxication effect, right, Like not in a positive sense, but in the sense that it sort of like deranges your ability to make choices.

trains and all that stuff. But I haven't read that one yet, but I really like. Okay, I like then. The thing I like that is I like the immediacy of the writing. I like that it is written like someone who is a through hiking blogger as an apocalypse walker, you know, like you don't read a lot of present tense writing.

like inevitably degrade. And uh yeah, the fast emergencies in the moment, if you get through them, there's only so much fear that you can actually have because you you know,

you have very little time. Right You're making a choice in interacting it's the weeks afterwards when you realize, like, oh shit, if I hadn't made exactly the right choice in this one moment, like the consequences would have been nightmarish, and like you kind of ye in some cases, spend the rest of your life thinking about that.

a five or six hour drive, you know. And that's the slow motion one eighty turn sucked the next five hours where no one could I the only way out was through you know. Yeah, and you're like, Okay, this is what I'm doing.

there's some stuff I shouldn't say. But both the first, her dog fell into this very fast moving stream of water, and she, without kind of thinking, dove in after it and was it was attempting to like grab the dog, like had a hold on it as it was getting pulled, and then it got pulled down and she wound up getting pulled into the water just because of the speed of it, and yelled for me to go, like save her dog. So I started running down and then like ten feet on, I'm like, what the fuck am I?

I have to get her out of the water. And it was one of those like if I hadn't you know, done strength trained, because she weighed probably an extra eighty pounds with all of the water inflating her winter year and everything, you know, if I hadn't you know, had the physical strength to get her out, if I had run a little further down the path before turning back to come get her, like because the dog, by the way,

was fine. It's a dog, like it got sucked into the water and then and then it got it get crawled out of the water when it calmed down. But I don't know that she would have been right, Like in fact, I doubt she would have. And it's one of those things that like I haven't because we were completely out in the middle of nowhere, no cell service

or anything. We were an hour walk from our car, So it was like one of those as little like you know, it was just my decisions in that moment that we're going to have an impact on the situation. And it was fine, and it was you know, maybe ninety seconds, but it's ninety seconds that I will be thinking about for the next fifty years or you know, over long.