I said that I did. Rog would take the dirt bike up to a campground on the reservoir a few miles north of the conference grounds. He might be around the conference from time to time but if I saw him, he wasn’t really there, okay? Anyway, I probably wouldn’t see him, he was pretty good at keeping under cover.

I said I was cool with it. I didn’t know if it was reassuring or not, the idea of Rog patrolling the perimeter with a knife in his teeth, or whatever. But at least the two of them seemed like genuine outdoors people, and I was glad for that.

I asked Gil about the people at the conference, what were they like, and she said, “About what you’d expect. They flap their gums a lot. Take out their own trash? Not so much. Writers. Huh.” Gil fixed me with a critical eye. “So what is it you do?”

“Landscaping,” I said.

Gil told me to watch out for this one guy, she thought he was going to be here again this year. He kept showing up at women’s cabins and claiming he needed to have sex to help his bad back. “I forget his name. Sinner, maybe?”

“Spinner.” Ken Spinner, novelist and one of the bigger big deals attending. Okay, pig alert.

From Placerville we got off of U.S. 50 and followed a two-lane road east. It wound through horse farms, tree farms, vineyards, apple orchards. The pines grew closer as we approached the national forest, the trees shading the road surface. The view ahead, when you could get an unobstructed look, was solid green, the land climbing. Five years ago, the King Fire had started just north of Pollock Pines and burned 97,000 acres. They took fire prevention seriously around here. They had to.

Now we came to a junction and we were traveling the old Pony Express Trail, unrecognizable as such except for the signs announcing it. Businesses selling chain saws replaced the orchards as the trees closed in. We passed gas stations, propane services, white roadside crosses marking fatalities. The air was cooler in the tree shadow. The road became the main street of Pollock Pines, with its tourist-ready painted storefronts. Gil’s truck signaled a left turn and I followed them away from the highway and into the deeper woods.

People had built big, tree-shaded houses on the hills, but now these dwindled, and we bumped along on a grass and dirt road. We stopped at a gate, chained shut, marked el dorado retreat—private property. Gil got out and unlocked the gate and waved us through. Up another hill, then the trees opened up and I saw the timbered lodge building I recognized from the pamphlets, and the long path of lawn leading down to the mild river.