The Steepest Mountains

On Tuesday morning, Nolan Solomon is out back feeding the chickens in the Quonset. One minute he’s opening a new bag of feed, and the next everything’s shaking, shaking, shaking. A maelstrom of organic scratch grains, Rhode Island Reds, and splintered boards coat him. Hours seem to pass as the quaking continues. In the end, it is only thirteen minutes. Thirteen unbroken minutes of trembling earth. It registers at 7.1 on the Richter Scale, the epicenter just ten miles from Feldspar, Indiana—Nolan’s home.

When the quake finally subsides, the chicken carcasses pile in the southwest corner of the building—Nolan and the Quonset having tipped to a thirty-degree angle, like a capital letter ‘D’ that has tumbled out of the alphabet. Nolan clings to the thick electrical conduit overhead, the metallic spine running down the center of the little building, his lengthy legs just reaching a broken joist below him. Cautiously, he climbs down.

Upon exiting the Quonset, it is the silence that strikes him, the earth resting like a newborn babe after the tumult. All two-dozen of the chickens are dead—some from broken necks or impalements, the rest from shock. Nolan exits the Quonset and brushes all manner of residue from his jeans and Carhartt jacket. He ruffles his sandy brown hair, matted with chicken shit and feed, and gives his considerable nose a wipe. His next thought is for his father. His father.

“Dad?” Nolan calls loudly in the direction of the farmhouse—he’s already sprinting across the expanse between the chicken shed and their home, letting the screen door slam behind him, searching every room of the old split-level, still calling for his father. Nothing. He flies out the back door in the direction of the fields, his lanky legs closing the distance fast, his fear propelling him. He feels one more thing, too, but tamps it down fast.

Ahead, he sees a figure. “Dad!” The portly silhouette ahead doesn’t move—just keeps meaty hands on hips, facing away from the boy. When Nolan finally nears his father, he sees the trouble. There rests the Farmall Super M, tipped over on its side like an impossibly red Hereford cow. The tractor’s coloring matches a patch of fresh blood on his father’s left calf.

“You okay, Dad?”

“Mmm,” grunts the old man, still trained on the tipped tractor, gears turning as to who might have the towing capacity to right the 5600-pound machine. His own truck wouldn’t do—a pea-green, twenty-year-old Toyota Hilux from the 1970’s.

Only then does Nolan look to the south, where the view is obstructed by massive brown clouds that do not resemble the usual cirrus and cumulus. Later, Nolan would think back to this moment and make the connection.

The two Solomons plod back to the house in silence. This isn’t unusual. Nolan’s father is a man of few words. His sister as well. It was understood that the silence should be filled by Nolan—and before she had left, his mother, too, filled the void. God gave you two ears and one mouth. Try using them in proportion, his father was fond of saying. 

Naturally extroverted, Nolan can’t stand it. He makes an attempt to rile up his father, asserting that a John Deere is the only tractor worth owning anyway, that they should just leave the Farmall to rust in the field. His father doesn’t take the bait. Nolan smiles on in the quiet and calculates how many steps his father must take to keep up with his own gangling legs. He feels a quiet flash of white-hot fury that fades to ambiguous resentment toward his old man, then distracts himself by looking for the angle that casts the largest shadow of his aquiline nose.

Back at the house, the two do not go about their usual chores. Instead, damage is assessed, the Quonset is cleared of detritus, the burn pile out back kindled with irreparably broken beams and planks. They discuss what to do with the bird carcasses. Having no way to process them on-site, in the end, they too are added to the blaze. In the afternoon, the old man makes a dozen calls, leaving messages on answering machines. Finally, he secures the help of their neighbor, Bo Wheeler, who owns a brand-new ’96 Ford F-250 with a towing capacity of some 7,000 pounds. He’d be over in the morning for the tractor. 

Nolan fixes up the usual Friday night meal. After dropping his freshman year classes at Ball State to move back home, the boy had picked up the kitchen duties that had been vacated by his mother. He doesn’t mind, though. The cooking, that is. He opens a can of baked beans and adds tablespoons of ketchup, mustard, and brown sugar. Then he microwaves a hot dog, cuts it up, and throws it into the saucepan of beans. Every Friday night. The boy never complains about making it. His dad never complains about eating it. 

As is their custom, the two Solomon men do not speak at dinnertime. Instead, the father turns on the little 12” wood-grain TV, already tuned to the news. They pick up the channel from Midland City. Tonight, they’re covering the earthquake. Or what Nolan had assumed was an earthquake. 

The newscaster is claiming that colossal limestone peaks have sprung out of the Indiana farmland. The shots are all dust clouds and haze behind her. The young correspondent has a good cadence going in her lilting midwestern reporter-voice, but Nolan catches only three words. Mountains. Mile-high. Millard. It is the last of these that grabs for his attention.

“…the farming village grew up around a natural spring in the 1850’s. It took nearly a hundred and fifty years to grow this quiet town, and thirteen minutes to erase it from the face of the earth.” 

Nolan glances at his father to see how he’s taking this. The old man’s brows are furrowed, eyes locked on the small TV, and he’s just chewing, chewing, chewing. 

“Dad. Naomi.”

It’s enough to break the spell. The elder Solomon shifts his gaze to his son, bovine and slow, still chewing. For a moment he says nothing. Then he swallows. “She’s on that trip to visit your mother. Left yesterday.” 

Nolan had forgotten. This was the first time any of the family had gone out to see Kathy since she’d moved out to Boulder the year before. Where they’ve had mountains for seventy-five million years. His sister, Naomi, talks to their mom regularly on the phone, so it made sense to Nolan that she’d be the one to visit. Kathy doesn’t really call this house. No guarantee which of us would pick up.

Nolan and his father watch the rest of the newscast. Geologists from all over the world—Columbia University and Harvard, but also China University Geosciences, Oxford, and Utrecht University—were now flocking to Indiana to study the unprecedented appearance of new mountains. The National Parks Service had already ousted the local DNR, putting up barricades at all major roadways that lead to the phenomenon. Search-and-Rescue crews had also been deployed for the residents of Millard, ground-zero for the sudden range.

The reality of the geological marvel sets in. Mountains—right here in Indiana. Ten miles from our house. A shiver of energy ripples through the young man. And something else he cannot shake—why hadn’t his sister called, if only to assure them of her safety? Knowing the fate of Millard, Nolan does not try calling her landline. But then—what is there to lose? He punches seven digits for a local call into the corded phone in the kitchen. Dial tone.

In the morning, Bo Wheeler meets them out in the field. The two aging farmers exchange morning pleasantries, clap each other on the shoulder, then waste no time in wrapping the towing chain around the chassis of the tractor. Nolan’s father Clifford gives the chain a tug for good measure while Bo starts up the truck. Clifford gives the thumbs up. Bo gives it gas, and slowly, very slowly, the Farmall pulls to standing. The truck engine quiets, more claps on the shoulder, and then the two farmers lapse into banter about the price of corn and whether they’d ever see anything like last May again—$4.82 a bushel. Neither mentions the new mountains, for this would acknowledge change.

Nolan takes it all in while also feeling the small anxiety of uselessness. Noticing this, his father remarks that they could use some coffee and a few old towels to clean up the muddy tractor. Nolan’s on it, already trotting back to the house.

Upon arriving, the first thing he notices is the blinking red button on the answering machine. Nolan taps it. Listens. Then stills his breath to catch every word. He plays it a second time. He’s not afraid. He is concentrating in order to relay the message to his father.

Kathy had called, asking after Naomi. Apparently, Naomi had cancelled the trip for reasons unknown. She’d seen the news. Her voice is ostensibly calm in the message, but Nolan perceives the worry underneath, betrayed by the quickened pace of her words. 

As he plays the message a third time, Nolan’s thoughts drift to Millard. A whole town, pushed skyward like a geyser, scattering the lone gas station, the Hoosier Saloon, the courthouse, the quaint brick buildings. Strewn over the mountains like sprinkles on a hot fudge sundae. That’s how Nolan thinks of his sister in this moment. Like a pink sprinkle. 

Now he has to tell his father. His father, who was already grieving the flight of his wife. The old man would never admit it, but Nolan saw how his father’s every motion had slowed this past year. How he would brush his teeth until his gums would bleed, stuck in a loop. How he’d sit on the boot bench and stare at his Caterpillars for minutes before pulling them on. And, of course, the chewing. His grief was taking the form of slow-motion. What shape is mine? Nolan wonders, absently looking around the farmhouse, out through the windows, out at the young corn. Then he sprints back toward the field.

“Now just make sure you don’t try to start it ‘til tomorrow. Probably got oil leaking out the crank case and seeping out past the piston rings, filling the cylinder,” Bo is reminding Clifford as Nolan approaches. Bo gives a friendly nod even though Nolan’s come back empty-handed. 

“Dad—Naomi didn’t go to see Mom after all.” He’s winded from running.

His father makes a guttural sound none of the men recognize, like someone preparing to spit chewing tobacco. Nolan waits for him to say something. He doesn’t. 

“Real sorry, Cliff. I’ll let you get to it. Let me know if there’s anything I can do to help.” Bo shoves his hands into his jean pockets and wears a pained expression as he looks from Nolan’s face to the old man’s. In normal circumstances, they’d have invited Bo in for some fresh eggs and pear juice from last year’s canning. Instead, his utility spent, Bo gets in his truck and drives off. Nolan watches the rising trail of dirt kick up in the truck’s wake.

Once more, it is Nolan, his father, and the early morning sounds of rural Indiana. Nolan’s eyes lock onto the enormous dust cloud still hovering in the distance, mountains underneath, supposedly. The old man is examining his boots like they might tell him what to do next. 

“Dad, we have to go find her.”

“No, we don’t.” The small words are still directed at the earth.

“What?” 

“She’s gone, Nolan,” his voice is controlled and quiet, but he looks at Nolan straight in the eyes now. The old man frowns and moves his tongue around in his mouth like he’s counting his teeth. “We have to stay here and—”

“And what? Feed the chickens?” The malice in Nolan’s voice is novel.

The old man looks into his boy’s eyes for a prolonged moment, then wordlessly walks away. The distance between the Solomon men grows. Nolan goes back inside the farmhouse. The old man walks further out into the fields.

The farmer looks around, taking in the farmland—his farmland, ever since he was barely a man, ever since his own father had passed it on, all those years ago. After the liver failure. Rows and rows of young corn, not quite a foot tall in late May. His daughter Naomi had been hinting at him to sell it ever since Kathy left. His eyes scan past the upright red tractor, over the long gravel driveway, and back toward the house. On the far edge of his eighty acres, standing over the field of fledgling corn, he heaves a sigh, nods. That’s it. That’s as much agreement as he can muster. The walk back to the farmhouse takes him twenty minutes instead of five.

Nolan is a blur, gathering his gear. Sleeping bags. Inflatable mats. Water bottles. Camping stove. Utensils. Swiss army knife. Camping tent for two. Nolan tosses in a dozen packets of dried camping food. Everything from just-add-water chicken and dumplings to dehydrated peach cobbler. Flashlights. All of the gear he’d bought with his own money in preparation for the Ball State Backpacking Club trip to Red River Gorge, before he dropped out.

He loads up the hiking backpack and then puts most of the food in a smaller second pack for his father to carry—he’d turned 67 earlier that year. Nolan tosses them into the small pickup with the rest of the gear. When he comes back inside, his father has poured them two bowls of Cheerios—the closest Nolan has ever seen him come to cooking. This was his way of saying he was coming.

Then they’re off and driving south down SR-231, leaving Feldspar in the rearview. A mile down the road and they crest Buford’s Hill, where the boy had grown up sledding. As the small pickup crests the hill, the two Solomon men see the mountains for themselves.

“Whoa.”

“Would you look at that?”

Rising before them, the dust and haze cleared by time and gravity, are the seven peaks of what would become Hoosier Mountains National Park. They are stunning, for the same reason that the Tetons are stunning, inspiring lonely French trappers to compare them favorably to other ‘peaks’. They come out of nowhere.

Eventually, the peaks were all given names—maybe you’ve heard of them. The tallest of the peaks is Mount Harrison, named for the only U.S. president to be elected from Indiana—Benjamin Harrison. It clocks in at 6,589 feet tall, on par with Clingman’s Dome. The range is only a few miles in width, the other six peaks dipping somewhat evenly on each side of Mount Harrison, three and three. Letterman, Madame Walker, and Grissom Peaks on the left. Mount Evans, Vonnegut, and Martone on the right. 

Sure, they’d seen them on the news. But this was altogether different. The same Indiana limestone hauled away for the construction of the Empire State Building now poked out of the ground at five times that scale, rugged and sharp, the peaks not yet worn by water and wind and time. There they were—seven spires rising from the cornfields like a set of trophies, glistening and new, putting Indiana on the proverbial map. Maybe people from the coasts would no longer confuse Indiana with Iowa.

But they’ve swallowed my sister. I don’t know if I can forgive them for that, thinks Nolan.

They take SR-231 eight miles south until they spy the first road closure from afar, manned by several flashing law enforcement vehicles. Nolan’s father turns well ahead of the blockade, down gravel roads that only the locals use, right angles toward the base of the mountains until the road ends. The outskirts of town. They park directly in front of a shimmering emerald sign that no longer tells the truth. Millard, Population: 437. Beyond the sign, the road dips into a wide and newly minted crevasse and disappears from view. Mountains. Chasm. Emerald sign. Father and son. The scene looks like a post-apocalyptic postcard.

The two sling packs on their backs and look up at the mountains towering above them. They look strange. Stripped. In the coming years, trees would begin to cover their bare shoulders. But right now, the peaks are naked in their browns and grays. The geologist they’d interviewed on TV was right—they resemble the limestone peaks in China, sharp spires protruding from the ground like tiger teeth. Nolan and his father weave around the chasm and begin the ascent.

Trails wouldn’t be constructed by the National Park Service for months, so the journey is slow-going as the two Solomons begin to pick their path through the upturned boulders and scree that litter the mountainside. There isn’t a lot of foliage to get in the way, but the ground hasn’t quite settled. Steps are treacherous in the loose rock. Stretches of dirt are more predictable.

After just a few hundred feet, they find boot prints in a section of packed earth. 

“Keep an eye out,” is all Nolan’s father says, nodding at the patterns forced on the soil. Nolan hadn’t considered the consequences of skirting the barricades to perform their own search and rescue, and still doesn’t now. The rock dust kicked up by their boots makes Nolan’s substantial nose itch. 

Not many people in the history of the world have had the opportunity to smell new mountains. Non-volcanic ones, anyway. But Nolan does. How to describe it? There’s a scent of damp cavern. And another note—warm and earthy. Like smooth loam skirting a pond. Or like the bottom of the compost pile, but sweeter.

The last time Nolan had smelled mountains of any kind was their lone family vacation—all four Solomons in attendance. This was the summer that Naomi had graduated from Indiana University, some five years back. Their father wasn’t much for vacations—Kathy had planned the trip to Maine. Nolan thought his mom and sister might never leave Portland, both being artists of one kind or another. Four years after that, Kathy had fled to Boulder, leaving behind family and farm to begin a Masters of Fine Arts in ceramics. Soon after, Naomi split off and moved to Millard, above a coffee shop that displayed her photography.

Nolan gives his nose a quick wipe. Now it was just Nolan and his father. Maybe it will always be just Dad and me, thinks Nolan, pulling his left leg from a small pile of sliding rock. With that idea ringing in his mind, Nolan decides something right there on the mountainside. We have to talk.

Dad, what do you miss most about Mom?

How did you and Mom even meet?

Why did Mom leave after all those years?

Nolan considers his options.

“Dad, what’s your favorite tractor?”

The rhythmic sound of boots on loose rock follows this for five seconds, ten. It’s in this moment that Nolan notices the lack of animal sounds. No birds or insects. No scurrying of little critters. Looks like the surface of the moon, horizon tipped on an angle. 

“Guess I’d have to say my dad’s old 1934 Fordson Model N,” the old man finally muses. “It was a deep navy blue with these red-orange metal wheels. I can still picture him in his overalls, plowing the fields every March.” Their walking finds a natural pace and rhythm as they continue. Their words do not. Nolan waits to see if his father might say more. He doesn’t. They hike on, angling up the new canyon to the right of Mount Harrison, his father in front.

“I don’t know much about my grandpa. What was he like?” Nolan is dimly aware of a growing frustration. This past year, Nolan’s had to tamp down so many words when his father has none. This time, though, his father answers straight away as the two snake around a boulder the size of a combine.

“He was a hard man. Hardworking, sure. I learned that from him. But hard in other ways too. He’s the reason I don’t drink or smoke or swear, if you catch my meaning.” There’s a short pause in his speech that stops his body as well. He looks back at Nolan. “Especially the drink. When he’d drink, he’d get to swinging. I vowed I’d never be like that with you kids.” As he inhales, an apology begins to well up in the old man, but he stifles it, closes his mouth. He turns and resumes the climb.

For once, it is Nolan who can think of nothing to say. 

A new color breaks into the palette of their scenery. There are whole swaths of upended vegetation. What had clearly been forests are now toppled over like spilled Lincoln Logs, down to the last tree. Next, what had been a field of corn—nearly identical to the one outside Nolan’s bedroom window—is now a spray of decaying plant matter, a few stalks poke up here and there like unruly hairs.

Often, they must use their hands to traverse fresh piles of limestone, jutting like incisors protruding from the gums of the earth. This takes considerable time, especially for the elder Solomon. Nolan looks back at his father, who is falling further and further behind. The golden hour is settling over the new range, casting long shadows. We need a water break. And we might need to start looking for a place to sleep.

“Rest here?” Nolan calls, pausing at a rocky outcropping at the mouth of a wide chimney, limestone walling both sides. It’s a good place to stop. The chute provides some shade, and also limits their visibility to anyone below them.

“Okay,” wheezes his father, off-loading the small pack, sweating like he does when he’s bailing hay. Nolan tosses him something plastic and they both drink long gulps from the twin 1992 Team USA Olympics bottles, the colored rings nearly worn away to white from four years of use. Nolan’s muscles burn with the exertion of the day. It feels good. He is not thinking of his sister. He looks out over the vast swaths of Indiana cropland, stretching golden and green, an earthen quilt disappearing into the horizon. This is the first time Nolan thinks of his state as truly beautiful, not just quaint or pretty. Then he squints up toward the peak. That’s when he spots it. The first signs of Millard. 

“Dad.” Nolan nods in the direction of the rubble above them. A pile of white bricks and torn blue cloth are strewn in the shadows of the opposite side of the narrowing valley. Nolan kicks at a stack of ruined cups that bear the White Castle emblem. The two waste no time in picking through the rubble. His father is calling her name and Nolan is lifting up the remnants of awnings and checking every crevice he can find. 

“Here!” his father calls. Nolan’s heart beats double time as makes his way over to him. Has he found her? Nolan looks to where the old man is pointing and his stomach drops. A battered arm sticks out of a pile of bricks and warped metal. Carefully, they pull off what debris they can until they see what they need to see. A man. Barely recognizable as such, given the blood that has now dried in place, like someone had cracked a deep red egg above his head. Out of curiosity, Nolan feels the hand. Cold. The two living men do not look at one another. They do not say anything. Nolan looks around for something to mark the impromptu grave.

His search is interrupted by a most unexpected sound. Barking. Both men look up to see the source. There, sprinting toward them on three of its four legs is a medium-sized dog. A front paw is held aloft, giving the impression of gentility, the way a tea-drinker might stick out a pinkie. Coming closer, the front-left paw is bloodied through the fur. Who knows what color the dog had been, but now it’s a dusty brown color. Its very existence, though, bolsters their meager hope. The dog beelines over to the old man and goes straight into licking his jeans, just over the spot where he’d gashed himself the day before. Reflexively, Nolan’s father strokes the dog, little clouds of dust wafting in the air.

Then the dog straightens, as if suddenly remembering something. Nolan sees its eyes for the first time—the icy blue that some Australian Shepherds have. Then the dog takes off running, right back up the mountain. The dog stops and barks—just once—and takes off running again. The message couldn’t be clearer. They follow.

At first, they try to keep pace with the dog. But after several hundred feet, the two begin to fall behind, particularly the old man, their significant age gap apparent now. A sharp cry of pain issues from behind Nolan. He does not recognize this sound, more animal than human. He looks back to see his father reduced to the ground on all fours. Without a word, Nolan scrambles back to his father. The old man’s head is down, his body unmoving, like he’s waiting to retch. He swears once, twice. His right ankle disappears beneath several large, loose rocks. Nolan lifts the rocks away from the injury. The old man says nothing more, makes no sound. Finally, the ankle is exposed, bloodied and twisted. 

Hot blood pulses through Nolan, too, fast and unseen. Staring at the ankle, Nolan feels a red fury rising up in him. Against this man. Injured, immobile. Trapped. Trapped again. Trapped with the old man. Trapped by the old man. The anger burns hot. He’s still clutching a rock. Stuck on this mountain. Unbidden, the ugly thought coalesces in his mind. I could crush his skull with this rock. Nolan can almost hear the sound of stone on bone, imagines the ruby jets released from the temple. A costly freedom. Jaw clenched, he glares dangerously at the old man’s face.

There he sees fear. And fatigue. His father has never looked so old. Moisture has gathered in his crow’s feet. The wrath drains from Nolan, who wells up with welcome compassion instead. The young man exhales and lets his shoulders down. He drops the rock.

“Can you put weight through it?” probes Nolan. The old man shakes his head vigorously. Nolan stoops and slips a strong arm under the old man’s armpits and across his back. His father wraps his own arm around Nolan’s neck and the two hobble a few paces in this new configuration, a languid three-legged race. Cautiously, the old man tests the injured ankle, wincing at the fiery pain. 

“The grade evens out just up there,” Nolan assures, nodding up ahead. His father frowns. The sun has set. They have only minutes of light left now. They will need to find a place to bed down for the night. Neither are thinking of Naomi. They do not see the dog again. 

Laboriously, they inch up the stone shaft. It now takes them quadruple the time. The shaft eventually empties the Solomons into a sort of clearing, the saddle between Mount Harrison and its shorter counterpart to the north. The saddle is flat, but filled with dozens of natural limestone spires, jutting up toward the sky like pagan ruins. Wind whips through the formation and produces a robust whistling sound, as if a great ghostly songbird were perched just out of view.
Nolan helps his father down to where the old man can rest his back against one of the spires. Then, in the leaden dusk, Nolan erects the bright blue backpacking tent, barely large enough for two children, let alone these two Solomons. It’s cold now. A fire would be welcome, but the risk of being discovered is too great. There’s no firewood here anyway. Stars are beginning to flicker on, dotting the gray-black above.

The adrenaline gives way to exhaustion. Nolan picks a limestone pillar adjacent to his father, sits and leans back against the stone. The two men drink—the older catching each drop in his mouth, the younger letting the water spill over his face and elongated neck. Nolan avoids looking at his father’s swollen ankle. A moment later, Nolan rummages in his pack for the camping stove and a collapsible tin pan. Only now does Nolan realize they haven’t eaten all day. He lights the Sterno with a match he keeps in a Ziploc, and the two warm their hands over the blue flames for a moment before Nolan empties the contents of their dehydrated meal into the pan. Beef stroganoff. The food warms.

Exhaustion and relief work in tandem on the old man, similar to what late nights and strong drink might have done.

“You’re a good kid, Nolan.” He is not looking at his son, but stares into the blue flame.

“I’m going back to college next year.” The words are hushed but steady.

“I know.” 

“Are you going to sell the farm?”

“I don’t know.”

“What will you do? For work, I mean?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you need me to stay?”

“No.”

“Do you think that Kathy—I mean Mom—”

“No.”

For a moment, no words pass between the Solomon men. Not until Nolan summons enough courage to ask his next question.

“Can I ask what happened?” 

“You can ask. Won’t do much good. Won’t change anything.”

“Did you try?”

The burning Sterno can makes almost no sound, yet there is no other sound to compete with it. The flicker of the small blue flame plays on both faces, gaunt and sober.

“Yes.” This last word is a costly one for the old man. But a valuable one to his son. 

Neither mention Naomi. Another ten minutes pass, and a waning gibbous eclipses the horizon, giving their campsite an argentine sheen. The temperature continues its descent. Nolan blows out the Sterno and assists his father to standing. The two retire to the tent without another word. They settle into their respective sleeping bags. The elder Solomon keeps an accidental vigil through the night, as Nolan sleeps a heavy and dreamless sleep.