After arriving at the Colorado campsite, the icy wind stabbing my face and the majestic stars illuminating the sky, I cast my gaze toward my present situation. Little though I realize, at the time I am staring at the night sky, my mom is calling in to a parental group therapy session held that evening and sponsored by the wilderness program. She shares over the airwaves that she’s concerned about what I’m doing at that moment, whether I’m mesmerized by the night sky. Yes, I wish I could tell her, I’m mesmerized by that sky, but I’m also anxious about what it portends for me over the next several months—as I’m hurled into the wilderness.

***

“Come on ladies, let’s pick up the pace!” Angie, this week’s leader, shrieks over the line of bobbing green tarp packs, whipping me back to the cruel present of crunching leaves and of the pack’s straps cutting into my shoulders.

“How much longer until we camp?” A girl, who has been here for about a month longer than I, groans.

“We’re almost there Mikayla,” answers Angie.

“My feet hurt!” A girl, who has just arrived a few days ago, yelps out in an echo.

“Lauren,” Angie chastens, “you know you’re not supposed to talk to the group until you’re in the South.”

“Sucks,” I humorously think to myself. I hated the beginning phase when you weren’t allowed to talk to anyone except staff members. It’s like they intentionally try to make you brood in silence to cultivate anger towards your family for banishing you to this freezing hell. Once you reach the South, however, you’re allowed to talk to people as long as you’re within earshot of the staff.

I let my thoughts replace the pain that nips at my cold-blue skin—a talent I’ve come to master over my two months in the wilderness—and I fall back into my trance of memories as we march on.

***

“Ok ladies, we’re here. Let’s set up camp!” Angie commands, dropping her pack with the clunking sounds of the iron skillets and cans inside. I roll my eyes. The weekly leaders are always in the North—the highest level you need to reach in order to graduate, and they always show symptoms of downing the Kool-Aid the staff daily tries to force down our throats.

I take my pack—over the legal weight a girl my age should carry on her back, that is, half her weight—and I trudge over to two closely spaced trees. I sling the p-cord around the two trunks, pulling it taut. Stooping to pick up my pack, I let the contents spill out and then heave the large green tarp over the string creating an A-frame shelter for the night.

I look out at the snowy white hills cascading down to white frosted treetops. I gaze out further to the distant city lights so far away they look like stars growing brighter as the sun descends below the horizon.

The thought of running away always crosses my mind, but I know I wouldn’t get far. The staff made sure to tell me when I first arrived that running away is pointless. You wouldn’t get far enough to see civilization before something happened to you.

Before I arrived, a girl intentionally fell from a small cliff and broke her arm, so the staff had to take her to the hospital—her intent was to escape from the  hospital—but to no avail other than she had to stay longer.

It’s ironic how spacious it is here in the wilderness and how nature is so free—yet how much it’s like a prison and how trapped I feel waking up to it every day.

My only consolation for these past two months is knowing, as I was promised by the staff, that as soon as this is over at least I’ll get to go home.

***

After setting up camp for the night and after trying to ignite a fire from striking flint rocks together over kindling and sticks so we can cook our food and be warm—the staff are instructed not to use their lighters for us—finally I succeed, to my strained relief. We sit around the fire and confess our highs and lows for the day.

I listen to each girl’s confession, and a common theme of the lows emerges as usual—“still being here”—and then I perk up when it’s my turn.

“My low was running out of granola today,” I lament. A few of the West and North girls “oomph” in empathy. “And my high is that I’m almost to the North level, which means I will get to see my sister soon.”

“Well not too soon,” Leslie, a staffer, says, tucking a strand of stringy blonde hair behind her ear.

“What do you mean?” I ask, my heart deflating.

“Well, after here, you’re scheduled to go to aftercare.”

“What? I thought I was going home?”

My cheeks flush, and I feel my eyes begin to water over. She must be mistaken.

“No, we just had a call from your mom, and she thinks it’s best for you to go to an aftercare program where you can continue therapy.”

“Away from my sister and cats?”

“Yes, she thinks it’s best for you not to return home, given the situation.”

“The situation!” My voice cracks and I can feel the other girls staring at me, but I could care less. We are in the wilderness after all. 

I can feel the hysteria rising in my body, the tears gushing down my face at full speed, and the air rapidly leaving my lungs. But I don’t care. I’m suddenly fine if there is no more air.

Margaret Marcum graduated from the MFA program in creative writing at Florida Atlantic University. Her creative writing has appeared in Amethyst Review, NonBinary Review, Scapegoat Review, October Hill Magazine, and Children, Churches, and Daddies, among others. She is the author of the poetry chapbook, Recognition of Movement (Bottlecap Press, 2023).