“Sorry,” he said when we were safely out of range, taking his hand from my arm. “Didn’t mean to manhandle you.”

Manhandle away, sir. I came out of my haze. “Oh no,” I said. “We’re missing the musical genius that is ‘Tender Ess’— Oh Jesus, nope. I can’t say it out loud.”

“Don’t worry,” Sean said. “We’ll just get it on Tidal.”

Oh, we will, will we?

He stooped to fill his water bottle at the spigot in the ground. “Have I mentioned yet today how glad I am you’re here to avoid him with me?”

“You have now.” I liked happy Sean, but pissed Sean was his own kind of delightful. His eyes went to the name tag on my boring, stupid T-shirt.

“Did you make that up?”

“My name?”

“The spelling.”

“That’s what they called me.”

“Wow,” he said. “I’m kind of a Pinchot guy myself, but I mean—Muir. That’s cool.”

Pinchot. Gifford Pinchot, John Muir’s nature nemesis. Sean was the son of a park ranger; where was the Pinchot nonsense coming from? I frowned.

“And what would that entail?” I asked. “Being a ‘Pinchot guy’?”

“Just that I…align with his ethics.”

While John Muir was giving his life to fight for preservation of delicate, singular natural places, Pinchot was fighting for conservation—meaning the forests owned by the federal government should be managed and used for public recreation, logging, mining, scientific studies. So Muir’s national parks are often surrounded by Pinchot’s national forests. Park Service. Forest Service. Muir saw nature as a transcendental temple humans were obligated to cherish and protect, while Pinchot was in the Bible-minded “humans at the apex” camp and felt nature existed solely to be manipulated for human consumption. In short, Pinchot? Not a fan.

Still. In all my life I had never met another person who knew enough about either, let alone both, of those names to have any kind of opinion about their ethics.

“Yeah,” I said, sort of into my empty water bottle, and knelt to take my turn at the spigot. “Considering without Muir there would be no Yosemite, no Yellowstone, no Rainier, and also considering the fact that Pinchot is completely full of shit, I guess Muir is pretty cool, but I mean, you’re totally entitled to your own questionable opinion.”

I looked up at him, standing there holding his open, forgotten water bottle.

“Right,” he said. “That’s…you’re right.”

“But that’s a fight for you to lose another day.”

“Name the time and place.” He just stood there looking at me. With—was it admiration?

Muir and Pinchot, and he’s seventeen and beautiful and here with me.

Too much.

I filled and capped my bottle. “Let’s get these kids worn out and lost.” From my day pack I pulled a brass compass and offered it to him. “Want to lead?”