Ranger

I said that some of them had been hiking alone and some had been hiking with groups and that none of them had done anything wrong and that the mountains were still good country.

and that what had happened to their people had not been their fault, or the fault of the country, but the fault of one man, and that the man was now accounted for.

I said I was sorry it had taken 25 years.

I did not say the rest of what I was thinking, which was that Dale had been my father's friend, and that I remembered him laughing at our kitchen table when I was 10 years old, and that I did not understand how a person became what he had become, and that I was not sure it mattered whether I understood."

I stopped working as a backcountry ranger in the spring of 2024.

My arm healed well enough, but the tendon repair made it hard for me to do some of the physical work the job required.

I took a desk position with the district as a training coordinator.

I teach new rangers about search and rescue protocols, weather assessment, and conflict de-escalation.

I don't go up to Elk Pass Outpost anymore.

I understand it is still in use.

The shelter has not been renamed.

I don't think it should be.

Places don't need to carry the weight of what happens inside them.

People carry that weight.

Places are only places.

Trent Weller and Elise Varga both testified at Dale's sentencing hearing.

I testified too.

The three of us had breakfast together the morning after the hearing at a diner outside the courthouse.

We did not make a habit of staying in touch after that, but we exchanged holiday cards for a couple of years, and I know they are both well.

Trent went back to firework in Montana.