ON CAMP

My breathing ragged, I stare down at my torn purple Converse, their electric blue stripes caked in dust. Fixated on one foot falling to the ground, lead-like, in front of its mate, I feel the tight sinews of muscle in my calves starting to rip, hundreds of thousands of them, starting to rip one by one. At the top of the hill, I tell myself, Ill stop. Ill stop at the top of this hill. As my right foot falls on its dusty crest, though, I see it: one more hill, taller and yet less steep! than the apparent Everest Ive just conquered, and beyond that hill... Blue. An endless, cerulean sea stretches on forever, and as its cool, salty air hits my face, a face sticky with sweat and caked in dirt, I start running. Im Hermes, running as if on Aeolus wind! down the steep incline, garnering more and more speed, leaping over loose gravel and stumbling into a landing, never stopping, until I reach the valley between the two peaks: I put on a last burst of energy, sprinting up the final mount, toes barely touching it, only to propel myself off and up, off and up, off and up, and then... I collide with Russell Henderson, sunburned and sweating, as hes doubled over, hands on his knees, gasping for breath. He looks up, and, in his unmistakable Texan twang, manages I see yave made it alright, girlie. I manage a smile as I stumble away, and, throwing all my inhibitions to the wind, I peel off my sweat-soaked tank top in an action reminiscent of Ishtars descent to the underworld and toss it to the dusty ground, where it lands with a thick, splashing sound, giving birth to a mini mushroom cloud of dust. I look back the way Ive come as I hungrily rip the peel off an orange, and see my peers Annabel Ray from New York, Brian Mazel from Tempe, and Sam Silverman from Malibu all sprinting down that last hill in an effort to join Russell and me. It is Russells breathless voice that jerks me out of my reverie: Missouri... Look. I turn back around to see him perched perilously at the edge of the cliff at the edge of these Palisades staring with wide-eyed wonder out at the sparkling azure sea extending for miles before us. Suddenly Im standing next to him, and the thousand-foot drop off less than one foot in front of me is hardly dangerous anymore. The beauty the pure, raw, infinite beauty of the endless Pacific before us, peppered with whitecaps and the other Channel islands, calms me. I look left

and right and see the land just stop, cliffs reaching for miles both ways, decorated at the top with lemonade berry, at the bottom with sea lion rookeries, and a bald eagles nest somewhere in the middle, a mother perched predatorily on her eggs. I feel Sams hand on my shoulder, trying to pull me back from the edge, but, as she sees what I see, I feel her hand go slack and whatever breath she has left escapes her lungs, and becomes one with the salty sea breeze. Im not sure how long we stood there, but, abruptly, Babbit, the chaperone of our cliffside exploits, breaks the silence with a simple we should be getting back now, and Im jarred back to reality. No longer am I Hermes, and no longer am I Ishtar. Russell isnt the ever-enduring cowboy, and Sam is no longer the newly-enlightened heiress. Were just some seventeen year-old kids going on a hike at summer camp.

We begin our trek back to the dust-caked Suburban waiting, parked by a water tower, and, like Ishtar rising from the dreariness of the underworld, I pull my dirt-covered tank top back over my blonde curls and onto my back as Russell wearily cakes zinc onto his crimson nose and Sam gulps greedily at the water in her Nalgene bottle. Babbitt, Brian, and Annabel are already out of sight, well on their way back to the water tower by now. I take one last look back, and, turning away from all the majesty, place one torn purple Converse, its electric blue stripes caked in dust, in front of the other.

Now, looking back, it seems as if we were hardly ever there that day. We had to have stood there on the Palisades, staring off the coast of Catalina, for simply an hour. Only an hour. Not only was the time insubstantial, though; we were, too. Compared to the endless ocean thatd stretched to the cobalt horizon before us, and the towering crags thatd reached for miles on either side, we were nothing. And yet, this race of nothings was destroying that same beauty just as God had Sodom and Gomorrah. Whether sun took our skin, dust took our duds, or the breeze took our breath, we five seventeen year-olds were taken that day. We werent witnesses to beauty to nature we were its captives. And now, all we can do while we wait for it to come for us again, for a last time, is do what it told us to that day, and have the responsibility to preserve the beauty in our own lives.

HANNAH PINGELTON