That afternoon on the flat, wide, perfectly firm sand of the Olympic coast, one of my classmates fell asleep on a log, his legs dangling, his hands held across his bare stomach. He was there for hours. When he woke up, the sun had burned his torso a furious red—and had left two fair handprints on his skin, just above his belly button. They were distinct. Sharp, even. In that moment, I didn’t quite realize how sharp those outlines were. Didn’t realize, until now—until I sat down to write—how much of an impression it had truly made on me.
At the summit of the Angel Trail—after a climb away from the calm and milky brown of Utah’s Green River, through the reeds and reddish sand of Barrier Creek, past where Mars-like sandstone rolls over into an endless table of pastureland—there’s a marker called “Doelger’s Stick.” Perhaps marker may be too aspirational a designation. It’s just a stick, really, pounded into the ground, with an overturned tin can on top. Carved into the stick are a collection of names: Lakeside seniors, all of whom ascended here in the past, sometime during the trajectory of a three-week outdoor trip — and a semester-long class—called Quest.