Page 43 of Capture the Moment
“I found her, Tim.”
Tim’s voice conveyed a stern warning. “Make sure the Zoo Girl knows she shouldn’t be taking chances. Thunderstorms are no joke.”
As lightning lit the sky, following by thunder, Kate nearly jumped. She cast a glance at Coop.
“I think she realizes that,” Coop said with a grin. “Over and out.”
“Did you actually tell Maisie you were going after theZoo Girl?”
“I ... might have. Tim’s bad on names. I knew he’d remember that.”
Kate tried to frown, but she couldn’t keep it up. A smile tugged at her lips. That terrible nickname was stoking her inner fire to prove people wrong. There was still a story to be told about a grizzly named 399, and she was going to go after it.
And the handsome ranger with the seawater eyes was going to help her get it. Fingers crossed.
The Jenny Lake Visitor Center was packed while everyone waited out the thunderstorm. Tim was answering a day hiker’s questions when he saw Sally approach him, a concerned expression on her face.
“Tim, I need you to check on a nearby campsite. Campers have overstayed their permit, and I wonder if the rain has caused them some trouble.” Sally’s eyes scanned the storm outside. “Can you handle it?”
“Sure thing,” Tim said, reaching behind the counter for his rain jacket. “I’ll take Frankie with me.”
“Aww,man,” Frankie said, disappointed. “Haven’t I done enough hard labor for one day?”
Tim wished Sally had heard Frankie, but she’d already moved on to another task. He thought it would be good for her to get a sense of the responsibility she’d dumped on Coop for the summer. “Maisie, stay here at the visitor center until we get back.”
To his surprise, Maisie didn’t ask to come along. He couldn’t blame her. The rain was coming down in sheets.
Twenty minutes later, Frankie followed Tim through the rain-soaked campground to the specific campsite Sally had mentioned. No vehicle, no tent, but piles of discarded items littered the campsite, food wrappers scattered everywhere, and a campfire pit filled with half-burned logs. The campers had gone but left their trash.
Frankie made a face of disgust. “If I were part of the Wildlife Brigade, I wouldn’t let this happen. What happened to the ‘leave no trace’ principle?”
“If you were part of the Wildlife Brigade, you’d be dealing with animals, not campsites.”
Frankie kicked at a pile of empty beer cans. “So much for that old saying.”
“What old saying?”
“The closer you are to nature, the further you are from idiots.”
Tim chuckled.
“You’d think so, anyway.” Frankie turned in a circle. “Man, people are so messed up.”
“Not all people.”But some sure were.Tim surveyed the campsite. “I’ll get the trash bags out of the jeep.”
Frankie groaned. “You mean, we’ve got to clean it up? In this rain?”
“More campers are due in. We don’t want them to have to face this, now do we?”
“Yeah, actually. We do. Maybe it’ll stop ’em from messing up the park.”
Tim chuckled. “Better still if they leave it the way they find it.”
They spent the next half hour cleaning up the campsite. Tim tied up the last bag of trash and tossed it in the back of the jeep.
As they made their way back to the visitor center, the rain began to ease up, and a faint rainbow appeared in the sky. Frankie didn’t say anything, but his eyes were on it. Tim hoped he felt some satisfaction in being a steward of the park. He sure did.
Inside, he spotted Sally at the far end of the room, bent over a table with Maisie, their heads close together as they pored over a stack of topographical maps. “Hey, you two,” he said, hanging up his raincoat on a coat tree.
