Page 18 of Wild About You

Ugh. I look down at the plate I’m still clutching, my own potato that’s getting colder by the second. Why do I want to take it over and sit down beside Finn, scoot close, pester and poke until he tells me what other problems of his I can solve?

No, Natalie. I start to turn back to the group sitting around the fire, but my feet won’t follow the rest of my body. But maybe…? Just for a second…?

Before I’ve processed my own actions, my feet have carried me to Finn’s secluded spot. He notices me just as he’s pulled his e-reader from his pack, and his eyes start at my sandals before tracking up to my face, slow enough to make me wonder if he’s—

“Are you ever going to eat the rest of your potato?” he asks.

Okay, so our minds are not in the same place. I huff as I sit down a couple feet from him. “I’m so sorry for putting your needs above my own for five minutes! I’ll be careful not to do it again.”

All I get in response is a beleaguered sigh before he props the e-reader against his knee and clicks it on, still chipping away at his own sorta-meal as he starts to read.

It totally doesn’t bother me while I work on my food, which is indeed pretty cold. I’m not desperate to know what kind of stuff he reads, or thinking way too much about the fact that somehow, for two vastly different personalities, we both packed the same “secret weapon.” It doesn’t get ten times more intriguing when whatever he’s reading brings him closer to actually cracking a smile than I’ve ever seen. Could the book really be more amusing than me? Frankly, it’s insulting. It’s just not right. I’m not paying attention to any of it.

“What are you reading?” I ask, because I’m a lying liar who lies to myself.

Finn doesn’t look my way nor even startle in the slightest, like he was waiting for me to ask. But he still waits, chews, and reads in silence for a few more moments before he replies.

“Have you ever heard of Grandma Gatewood?”

I pause, then say, “No…?”

He points to his e-reader, looking down at it. “It’s a book about her. She was a grandma from Ohio who became the first woman to thru-hike the AT solo in 1955, and she did it at age sixty-seven.” He squints over at me. “You kind of remind me of her.”

My face probably rotates through twelve different expressions before I settle on my jaw hanging open as I stare at him. “That…is so much to unpack out of so few words.”

Finn simply looks back to his book as if he’s resuming reading. But I’m not done here.

“I remind you of a 1950s grandmother? What, because I’m justifiably concerned you aren’t eating enough?”

He gives a lazy shrug, and I watch a smirk play at his lips.

“If the hiking boot fits.”

Chapter Seven

“I hope we’re all appreciating the irony of looking for mushrooms in a place called Devil’s Tater Patch.”

“That’s not a yes or no,” Finn mutters, to which I maturely blow a raspberry back at him. A raspberry isn’t a yes or a no either—the only words I’m technically instructed to say to my partner in this leg of the challenge—but I think any future viewers of this footage will understand.

If I thought Finn and I might’ve turned over some kind of new leaf last night, boy, was I mistaken. This partnership is the same antagonistic, dead-on-the-ground leaf it’s been since the beginning, and Finn’s mood really has me wanting to stomp down and make it crunch. Never mind the fact that my girl Ginger came through and there were plentiful fresh, filling vegetarian options on our breakfast buffet this morning. I didn’t hear so much as a “thank you.”

Now we’re back on the trail with a map that led us to our team’s assigned area for the “Fungus Among Us” challenge. The instructions had us choose one partner to forage for three mushrooms of different varieties and correctly identify them. The other partner got the mushroom foraging cheat sheet, with photos and the basics of identifying each variety based on qualities in the cap, stalk, and spores. The forager can ask yes-or-no questions of their partner with the cheat sheet, but the other partner can’t provide any additional help in finding or identifying mushrooms.

One guess as to who claimed the first job. And while he hasn’t handled the lack of information especially well, he’s still managed to find two of our three mushroom varieties. We’ll find out if we got them right when we call a producer from the sat phone to come check our work.

“Potatoes sound so good right now.” I decide to ignore Finn’s last comment and keep up my running commentary. As long as I’m not giving him any information relevant to the task, I don’t see the problem. “If we spot any, we should pick them up too. Ooh, I would kill for one of Taco Bell’s spicy potato soft tacos. Have you ever had one?”

“No.”

“So good. I swear, if all restaurants had options like that, I might just be a vegetarian too. Did y’all know Finn is a vegetarian?” I’m getting pretty good at carrying on a conversation with a camera, if I do say so myself, as I walk backward at Finn’s side and talk to the GoPro on his pack. “Pretty cool, right? I’ve thought about going veg over the years, but I just…I don’t know, I forget, and I blink and suddenly I’m halfway through a ten-piece McNugget meal. It’s convenient to be a meat eater in our society, you know? I mean, I’m sure you know, Finn. So what made you go this route?”

“Uh, it’s better for the environment,” he says in a distracted murmur, head turning back and forth as he scans a brushy field around us while we hike, like it’s one giant game of I Spy. I’m surprised he’s even answering me, but I let him keep going, afraid if I breathe too loudly, he’ll notice he’s being cooperative on camera and stop himself. “Factory farming is shitty for animals, and for humans with all the unnatural stuff you end up consuming, and greenhouse gas emissions—wait, why are we talking about this?”

Damn. It was nice while it lasted.

“That’s not a yes-or-no question,” I answer, unable to help myself.

Finn groans, and I think I see a corresponding gray hair sprout on his head.

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