Hiking Shell on a Garibaldi Ledge, Exposed

The parking lot was a grey rectangle three kilometers below her, small enough to cover with her thumbnail. She could see both cars — her own, and one other — and the thin line of the trailhead sign, and the two figures who had gotten out of the second car and were standing in that particular way people stand when they are deciding something. She had been watching them for four minutes. They had not yet looked up.

The granite under her was cold through her leggings, a specific cold that had moved up through the fabric and settled against the backs of her thighs. She had stopped noticing the wind, which meant she had been sitting long enough for it to become part of her. The alpine sun was direct and gave no warmth at this altitude — it only made everything visible. The rock. The open slope below. The parking lot. Her.

She had known, when she chose this ledge, what she was choosing.

Her left hand was flat on the granite beside her, fingers spread against the stone. She could feel the individual crystals in the rock's surface — the tiny irregularities pressing into her palm, each one distinct. Her right hand was in her lap, not moving yet, resting on the zipper pull of her shell jacket. The nylon was stiff and slightly rough under her thumb. She had been holding it for a while.

The figures below hadn't started up the trail.

She exhaled — not the breath she had planned to exhale, but one that came out before she was ready for it, shorter than the inhale that had preceded it, the sound of it swallowed immediately by the wind. Her thighs were pressed together. She was aware of the pressure of her own legs against each other, the fabric of her leggings taut across both, and beneath that the specific weight of wanting that had been building since the first kilometer, when she'd realized the trail was empty above her and the ledge was exactly where she'd remembered it.

She pulled the zipper down.

The sound of it was brief and decisive, and the cold air moved in against her immediately, against skin that was warmer than she'd expected — her own heat, contained all morning, now meeting the open air. The jacket's panels fell to either side. She sat with them open, hands still, looking at the parking lot.

The figures below were still deciding.

Her right hand moved to the waistband of her leggings. The moment before she moved it further was its own complete thing — the awareness of what her fingers were about to do, the cold, the open slope, the two people three kilometers below who might or might not have binoculars, who might or might not be looking at the pale shape of her against the grey granite. Her knees were still together. The space between them was potential, not yet given.

She watched the parking lot.

One of the figures turned, and tilted their face upward, and she felt her thighs begin — slowly, with full attention — to part.