Henry gets lost in the Utah wilderness and Lydia finds him

Henry gets lost in the Utah wilderness and Lydia finds him during a camping trip that begins as an uneasy effort to appease her. After he wanders away from the camp and loses his bearings on Vance Pastures, the prospect of being stranded strips his independence down to fear and practical need. Lydia tracks him using his discarded red notebook, finds him near a trailer, and brings him back—though the reunion ends not in tenderness but in another demonstration of their combative, familiar bond.

Background and Departure

Henry agrees to accompany Lydia to Muleshead, Utah, where her sisters are camping on land inherited from their father. Glendoline is already there in a tent, working on a novel, and Henry and Lydia arrive first with a pup tent of their own. Their first night is uncomfortable, with mosquitoes crowding into the cramped shelter. The trip takes Henry out of Los Angeles and away from the urban routines he understands, but he is not simply a willing convert to the wilderness: he later says he went along to pacify Lydia.

The next morning, Glendoline and Lydia prepare breakfast over a campfire. Henry has brought $40 worth of groceries, including several six-packs of beer, which he cools in a mountain spring. After the meal he helps with the dishes, then listens as Glendoline reads from her novel. Henry judges the work unpolished and objects to the assumption that listeners will automatically be fascinated by the writer’s life. The camp’s literary conversation and its anti-beer atmosphere leave him feeling out of place; he takes beer from the spring and later walks off alone with his red notebook.

The Shortcut and the Loss of Bearings

At Vance Pastures, Henry writes in the red notebook and approaches a lake. He enters the cold water, then follows the lake’s edge and goes through the woods toward the sound of a waterfall. After watching the water, he decides to return by a different route, a shortcut toward camp. He writes another poem along the way, but the expected landmarks do not appear. He cannot find either the camp or the lake, and realizes that he is lost among mountains, trees, and brush, with no clear point of reference.

The change from wandering to danger is also a change in Henry’s sense of himself. He imagines that he may die in the woods and be remembered in a newspaper as a minor poet whose last work was found in a small red notebook. He throws the notebook away, picturing it as a remnant that might be discovered with his remains. The episode turns an object associated with his writing into something he abandons while trying to survive; his fear is no longer literary or performative but attached to the possibility of not getting back.

Searching for a Way Out

Henry continues through a bog, where his legs sometimes sink to the knee, and reaches a barbed-wire fence. Knowing he should not climb it, he does so anyway, then cups his hands around his mouth and calls for Lydia. There is no answer. His calls do not restore the familiar connection of the camp; he remains alone and must keep moving.

Later, he finds running water spilling from several cement pipes into a reservoir. He sits by the water, removes his shoes and stockings, rolls up his pants, cools his legs, and drinks cautiously. A metal box locked to a pier suggests the possibility of a telephone. Henry breaks the padlock with a rock, injuring his hand in the attempt, but discovers switches and heavy cables rather than a phone. He operates the switches, releasing large flows of water from the dam, then returns them to their normal positions and closes the box. Even while imagining that a flood might bring rescuers, he stops short of leaving the dam open. The search for help is improvised and risky, yet he reverses the one action that could have made his predicament worse.

He leaves the reservoir and follows another road. Exhausted and barely able to see, he meets a frightened young girl in a blue dress and white shoes. He tells her he is lost and asks her to take him to her parents; she points him toward a trailer and a parked car. Henry calls out that he is lost and relieved to see someone. The route out of the woods comes not through his imagined literary models or a telephone, but through a child who can direct him to a nearby household.

Lydia’s Rescue and the Return

Lydia steps around the trailer wearing red curlers and tells Henry to follow her. He asks her to kiss him, but she refuses and keeps walking. She moves quickly and vaults over a barbed-wire fence; Henry cannot follow at the same pace and becomes tangled in the wire. The difference between them is physical and practical: Lydia knows the way and crosses the obstacle, while Henry is caught and has to call her back.

Lydia returns and helps free him. She explains that she tracked him and found the red notebook, then accuses him of getting lost deliberately because he was angry. Henry denies doing it on purpose and describes himself as an incomplete, stunted city person with little to offer. Lydia answers that she already knows his shortcomings. Once she frees him from the last barb, he follows her and is back with her again. The rescue closes the immediate danger, but it does not settle the dispute about why he wandered off or transform their relationship into a peaceful one.

Significance

The episode reverses the usual direction of Henry and Lydia’s dependence. He leaves camp alone, convinced that a shortcut will bring him back, but becomes dependent on a sequence of strangers, roads, water, and finally Lydia’s knowledge of the landscape. The red notebook first records his poems, then becomes the clue Lydia uses to locate him; discarded in fear, it remains the trace that connects his disappearance to his return.

The return also makes the scene more complicated than a simple rescue. Henry’s self-description acknowledges his vulnerability and lack of competence in the wilderness, while Lydia’s blunt response suggests that this weakness is not new to her. She finds him, frees him from the fence, and leads him home, but their exchange retains accusation and resistance. The camp, which had felt to Henry like an alien world of anti-beer talk and literary pretensions, becomes the place to which he must be restored—and Lydia, despite their conflict, is the person who brings him back.