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On his thirty-sixth birthday, May 18, Travis Cornell rose at five o’clock in the -sleeved, blue-plaid cotton shirt He drove his pickup south froo Canyon on the eastern edge of Orange County, south of Los Angeles He took only a package of Oreo cookies, a large canteen full of orange-flavored Kool-Aid, and a fully loaded S the two-and-a-half-hour trip, he never switched on the radio He never hu to himself as men alone frequently do For part of the drive, the Pacific lay on his right The ly dark toward the horizon, as hard and cold as slate, but nearer shore it was brightly spangled with early light the colors of pennies and rose petals Travis did not once glance appreciatively at the sun-sequined water

He was a lean, sinewy man with deep-set eyes the same dark brown as his hair His face was narroith a patrician nose, high cheekbones, and a slightly pointed chin It was an ascetic face that would have suited a ellation, in the purification of the soul through suffering God knows, he’d had his share of suffering But it could be a pleasant face, too, warh not recently He had not s time

The Oreos, the canteen, and the revolver were in a sreen nylon backpack with black nylon straps, which lay on the seat beside hilanced at the pack, and it seeh the fabric to the loaded Chiefs Special

Froe County, he turned onto adirt lane At a few ht-thirty, he parked the red pickup in a lay-by, under the i-cone spruce

He slipped the harness of the small backpack over his shoulders and set Out into the foothills of the Santa Ana Mountains From his boyhood, he knew every slope, vale, narrow defile, and ridge His father had owned a Stone cabin in upper Holy Jim Canyon, perhaps the most remote of all the inhabited canyons, and Travis had spent weeks exploring the wild land for miles around

He loved these untamed canyons, When he was a boy, black bears had

roaone now Mule deer could still be found, though not in the great nuo At least the beautiful folds and thrusts of land, the profuse and varied brush, and the trees were still as they had been: for long stretches he walked beneath a canopy of California live oaks and sycamores

Now and then he passed a lone cabin or a cluster of them A few canyon dwellers were half-hearted survivalists who believed the end of civilization was approaching, but who did not have the heart toMost were ordinary people ere fed up with the hurlyburly ofor electricity

Though the canyons see suburbs Within a hundred-mile radius, nearly tencoroas not abating

But now crystalline, revelatory light fell on the untamed land with almost as much substance as rain, and all was clean and wild

On the treeless spine of a ridge, where the low grass that had grown during the short rainy season had already turned dry and brown, Travis sat upon a broad table of rock and took off his backpack

A five-foot rattlesnake was sunning on another flat rock fifty feet away It raised its e-shaped head and studied him

As a boy, he had killed scores of rattlers in these hills He withdrew the gun from the backpack and rose from the rock He took a couple of steps toward the snake

The rattler rose farther off the ground and stared intensely

Travis took another step, another, and assuun

The rattler began to coil Soon it would realize that it could not strike at such a distance, and would atteh Travis was certain his shot was clear and easy, he was surprised to discover that he could not squeeze the trigger He had come to these foothills not lad to be alive, but also to kill snakes if he saw any Lately, alternately depressed and angered by the loneliness and sheer pointlessness of his life, he had been wound as tight as a crossbow spring He needed to release that tension through violent action, and the killing of a few snakes-no loss to anyone-seemed the perfect prescription for his distress However, as he stared at this rattler, he realized that its existence was less pointless than his own: it filled an ecological niche, and it probably took an to shake, and the gun kept straying froet, and he could not find the will to fire He was not a worthy executioner, so he lowered the gun and returned to the rock where he had left his backpack

The snake was evidently in a peaceable mood, for its head lowered sinuously to the stone once more, and it lay still

After a while, Travis tore open the package of Oreos, which had been his favorite treat when he was young He had not eaten one in fifteen years

They were alood as he remembered them He drank Kool-Aid fro as the cookies To his adult palate, the stuff was far too sweet

The innocence, enthusiasms, joys, and voracities of youth can be recalled but perhaps never fully regained, he thought

Leaving the rattlesnake in co his backpack once e into the shadows of the trees at the head of the canyon, where the air was freshened by the fragrant spring growth of the evergreens On the west-sloping floor of the canyon, in deep gloom, he turned west and followed a deer trail

A few e California sycaether to forht poured into a break in the forest At the far side of the clearing, the deer trail led into another section of woods in which spruces, laurels and sycaether than elsewhere Ahead, the land dropped steeply as the canyon sought bottoe of the sunfall with the toes of his boots in shadow, looking down that sloped path, he could see only fifteen yards before a surprisingly seamless darkness fell across the trail

As Travis was about to step out of the sun and continue, a dog burst fro and chuffing It was a golden retriever, pure of breed by the look of it A h it had attained the better part of its full growth, it retained sohtliness of a puppy Its thick coat was daled, snarled, full of burrs and broken bits of weeds and leaves It stopped in front of him, sat, cocked its head, and looked up at him with an undeniably friendly expression

Filthy as it was, the ani Travis stooped, patted its head, and scratched behind its ears

He half-expected an owner, gasping and perhaps angry at this runaway, to follow the retriever out of the brush Nobody caht to check for a collar and license, he found none

"Surely you’re not a wild dog-are you boy?"

The retriever chuffed

"No, too friendly for a wild one Not lost, are you?"

It nuzzled his hand

He noticed that, in addition to its dirty and tangled coat, it had dried blood on its right ear Fresher blood was visible on its front paws, as if it had been running so long and so hard over rugged terrain that the pads of its feet had begun to crack

"Looks like you’ve had a difficult journey, boy"

The dog whined softly, as if agreeing hat Travis had said

He continued to stroke its back and scratch its ears, but after afro, purpose, relief froave the retriever a light slap on its side, rose, and stretched

The dog remained in front of hi for the narrow path that descended into darkness