My inertia is keeping me still in a state of steady motion. From Santa Ynez we drove to Lone Pine, near my old home of Mammoth Lakes. We started driving in the early morning and arrived around three in the afternoon. Last minute, slapdash, we sped through the supermarket buying water, hunks of cheese and salami, and bagels. Then a quick drive to the trailhead and dump everything into a couple of packs, charge up the hill. Our "preparation" was so haphazard that two or three miles up the trail we had to seriously ask ourselves if we had remembered to bring Jim's ashes. And on we went.

Golden Trout Wilderness is a beautiful series of interconnected Sierra meadows weaving through the tall mountains south of mount Whitney. Fast, clear creeks shiver from granite peaks, pausing in the flats long enough to support some very small but extremely colorful and apparently pugnacious trout. And me without my fly rod.

Around seven that night we found some old fire rings and made camp there, burning dead wood to ward off the cold that came up behind us. That night was cold, well below freezing. I used Jo's old Snoopy Girl Scout Special sleeping bag, rated generously for temps around 50, perhaps, and an emergency space blanket dad had in the car. I curled in a ball near the fire, waited for dawn.

The next day we hiked into Tunnel meadows, where an airstrip and a ranch used to be. Clients were flown up there to the ranch, where they could fish or ride horses. That all changed with the wilderness act, but not before my dad and Charlie had had a chance to fly into there, the highest airstrip in the nation. He tells a hair-raising story about his race to depart said field against the countdown clock of an impending forest fire. I guess Jim had occasion to visit the place too, for it was here that he asked his ashes to be scattered. And so we did.

I found myself attracted, somehow, to the dry gray remains of this stranger's life. I picked up the crushed pieces of him that wouldn't burn. They were smooth, without history. Conrad talked about some sunglasses he'd just bought. Charlie lit the box on fire and we watched it catch. And that was it.