The Guide

Leo Martin had been leading hikes in the Canadian Rockies for eight summers, and he could usually tell within ten minutes how a day was going to go. The group waiting for him outside the hotel in Banff at seven that Saturday morning, most of whom had never hiked before, did not look promising. There was a couple from Florida wearing brand-new boots, two teenage brothers staring at their phones, a retired dentist called Gerald who had brought a folding chair, and a woman named Brenda Kowalski.

Brenda, who was from Chicago, started complaining before they had even left the parking lot. The bus was too cold. The trail map was too small. The bag of snacks provided by the company contained raisins, which she hated. When Leo explained that the hike was nine kilometers long, she asked whether anyone had measured it recently, because it sounded like a lot more than she had paid for.

The first hour was beautiful, at least for Leo. The path, winding through tall pine forest, followed a river whose bright turquoise color always made first-time visitors stop and stare. The Florida couple took hundreds of photos. Gerald set up his chair twice. The brothers, having lost their phone signal, discovered that they could talk to each other. Brenda, walking at the back, informed everyone that her feet hurt, that the river was too loud and that she had seen better lakes on postcards.

At the lake, which was the halfway point, they stopped for lunch. Leo talked about the glacier above them, which had shrunk by almost a kilometer in his own lifetime, and about the bears that lived in the valley. He explained what to do if they met one: stay together, speak calmly, never run. Brenda asked how often people actually met bears, and when he said it was rare, she said that in that case she didn't understand why he was wasting everyone's time.

It happened on the way down. Leo, who was walking in front, heard a cry behind him and turned around. Gerald, who had stepped off the path to take a photo, had slipped on a wet rock and was lying at the bottom of a short slope, holding his ankle. Leo climbed down to him. The ankle, already swelling, was clearly broken, and they were still four kilometers from the road.

Leo's radio, which he tested every morning, chose that moment to stop working. While he was trying to decide whether to leave the group and run for help, Brenda pushed past the others and climbed down the slope, complaining loudly about the mud. Then she knelt beside Gerald, took his hand and asked him, in a completely different voice, to tell her exactly where it hurt.

It turned out that Brenda, before retiring, had spent thirty years as an emergency nurse in one of the busiest hospitals in Chicago. Working quickly and calmly, she made a splint out of two hiking poles and Leo's spare jacket, checked Gerald's pulse and gave orders that nobody dreamed of questioning. The brothers, sent up the path with Leo's phone, found a signal on the ridge and called the park rangers. The Florida couple held an umbrella over Gerald's head when it started to rain.

The rescue team, arriving an hour and a half later, carried Gerald down on a stretcher. One of the rangers, who had obviously done this many times, examined the splint and asked who had made it. Everyone pointed at Brenda. "Nice work," said the ranger. "I couldn't have done it better myself." Brenda said the poles were too short.

That evening Leo found her sitting outside the hotel with a cup of tea, looking at the mountains. He thanked her. She shrugged and said that complaining was a habit she had picked up in hospitals, where nothing was ever good enough for the patients and you learned to notice every small thing that was wrong. "Noticing things is how you keep people alive," she said. "Even if it makes you annoying on vacation."

Leo still leads hikes in Banff every summer. These days, when a guest complains about the raisins, he listens a little more carefully. And the folding chair, which Gerald left behind and never came back for, still travels with him in the back of the van, just in case.