Page Springs Campground had no hot showers and no flush toilets. No nearby convenience store stocked cold beer and potato chips. Instead, the Donner und Blitzen River chuckled a lullaby, several of the sites were tucked secretly among tall junipers, and the campground was located at the southern end of Malheur National Wildlife Refuge, where every western birder would take up residence if he could.

Including Jake Borglund.

Twice around the loop road, and he realized he wouldn't find a site better suited to him than the last one in the trees. It sat at the foot of a steep cliff, almost totally concealed from the road, and both neighboring sites were vacant. He pulled in.

Jake set up the canopy over the picnic table, knowing that it would be sufficient to hold the campsite while he was absent. Driving your house--an ancient but reliable VW camper--was great for convenience, but you had to leave some semi-permanent fixture at your campsite or lose it. He piled the grub box and duffels holding his gear on one bench and set his binoculars beside them. Finally, he went after firewood. Jake had a propane camp stove, but nothing beat the flickering light of an open fire. It satisfied primitive needs, as well as giving food a unique flavor.

As soon as camp was set up to his satisfaction, he reached into the icebox for a beer. "Ahhh." The cold hit his belly with a feeling almost like pain, and he imagined the bubbles carrying the alcohol into his bloodstream.

Maybe now he would finally relax. He rubbed the back of his neck with his free hand. He could feel the hard knots of tension that had resided there since he'd returned from the Arctic, eight months ago.

For at least the next two years, he would be living in Burns, Oregon, thirty miles north of Refuge headquarters, and spending much of his time in the Alvord Desert, a barren, alkaline wasteland a hundred miles from almost everywhere.

It sounded like heaven to him.

From the corner of his eye, Jake saw a dusty black motorcycle gliding along the narrow, dirt road. Its rider wore black boots, black leather jacket and pants, black fringed gloves with silver studs at the knuckles, black helmet with a mirrored faceplate. The hairs at Jake's nape twitched, tried to stand erect.

"Damn!" But he didn't say it loud enough for the rider to hear. Some bikers were good neighbors, and some weren't. This guy might not be very big, but he could be mean.

With almost a whole campground to choose from, the biker pulled into the site next to Jake's. He sat on his bike for a long moment, looking around. The featureless, reflective face aimed toward Jake for several seconds, and again he was aware of a stirring at the back of his neck.

Finally the throaty purr ceased. A hawk's scream seemed almost loud in the sudden silence as the rider dismounted. Jake saw just how small the fellow was as he stood, slim and not too tall, beside his big motorcycle, removing his gloves.

A slender hand reached to remove the visored helmet. The ivory throat emerging from a half-zipped, turned-up collar supported no masculine head, nor was that softly rounded chin subjected to a razor's caress each morning. The woman turned, and he saw a heart-shaped face, a sweet, pouty mouth. Before he could pretend he hadn't been watching her, she smiled.

"Hi! Isn't this a lovely place?"

"Yeah." He didn't need a chatty neighbor, no matter how she raised his temperature. Jake picked up the journal he'd been leafing through and made a great show of interest in it.

Perhaps it would have been better if he'd gone directly out to the Alvord Desert. He needed to reconnoiter the area where he would be conducting his Snowy plover study next spring, to find a place he could camp, and to mark in some preliminary transect locations on the map. Instead he had come here, to clear his mind and refresh his soul. Tomorrow he would arise with the first hint of dawn, and go deep into the Refuge to be alone with the calls of birds and the soft whisper of wind among the willows.

For a moment, sharp regret gripped him. His sons would have enjoyed camping here. He could have taken them hiking up the river, maybe taught them to fish. Early in the morning, he would have coaxed them from their sleeping bags to drive the Central Patrol Road, up the center of the Refuge, hoping to see deer in the willows, eagles soaring overhead. He'd been forced to discover the wonders of nature by himself, but he'd always planned to show them to his sons.

Where had the years gone?

"Any wood around here?"

Jake turned. It was the biker. Her smile was as broad and friendly as before. Couldn't she take a hint? "There's a wood bin up at the other end." He gestured in that direction. "Two bucks a bundle. Put your money in the box."

"Thanks."

Jake turned back to his contemplation of a nearby juniper tree. Evading another's eyes as a means of avoiding conversation was second nature to him.

Although he still had a house to find and arrangements to make for Matthew's care when he was out in the field, they could wait. First he would explore the Refuge and remind himself that there was still beauty and peace in the world. The past eight months had been as close to hell as he'd ever come.

It took Delilah Grey about an hour to set up camp, but by the time she was done, she was ready to go again. Unfriendliness radiated from the next campsite like an almost physical force. If she hadn't been specifically instructed where to camp, she would probably have moved to the farthest site from his. Instead she went up the mountain.

She had left Burns early Wednesday morning, needing time alone before meeting the motorcycle club at Page Springs. The rest of them weren't planning to go up on the Steens, and she wanted to. In her whole life in the Burns area, she had never been to the top of the massive fault-block mountain that dominated the skyline to the south of town.

The Steens Mountain Loop road was said to be a challenging drive. Delilah was quickly convinced. After the first mile of loose gravel, ruts, dust, and washboards, only sheer stubbornness kept her fighting her way to the top where, it was said, she could see a hundred miles in any direction.

An hour later, and only a couple of miles short of the summit, she turned onto the Kiger Gorge spur, her arms shaking from the strength it took to steer, inwardly condemning her own bullheadedness.

Delilah spent the next hour sitting on the edge of nothingness, tossing pebbles down the almost sheer cliff. Her eyes registered the spectacular scenery, the scattered patches of color on slopes far below. Her mind ignored her surroundings. She had decisions to make, and she wasn't even sure what they were.

All she knew was that she couldn't face thirty or forty more years of empty nest. Of empty life.

She couldn't seem to think straight any more. Ever since Liza had decided not to come home this summer, she had felt at loose ends. Adrift.

She tossed a whole handful of pebbles, listening to them clinking and pinging down the sheer black cliffs for six hundred feet and more. A fitful breeze pulled strands of baby-fine brown hair free from the long pigtail tucked into her leather jacket. Warmth soaked into her shoulders, even though the wind had a cold bite to it. She was alone in the universe, except for half a dozen swallows hunting with long carefree swoops.

Alone.

Maybe that was what was really bugging her. Absently her hand scrabbled for more pebbles, but she'd picked the ground around her clean this past hour.

Alone. Her daughters had lives of their own, now. Marilyn was wrapped up with Chuck and the coming baby. Liza was so far away. This was the first summer she hadn't come home from college, the first summer Delilah had to accept that her own baby had left the nest for good.

"I've already got an apartment, Mom," Liza had announced last May. "One of the grad students will be going back east in August, and I can have his. It's exactly what I can afford."

"You'll come home at Christmas, won't you?" Delilah had tried not to let Liza see how hard it was to let go, how much she wanted to plead that her younger daughter come home and fill the empty house with her laughter.

"I won't stay away too long. Promise. Cross my heart."

Delilah could almost see the solemn expression on Liza's face as she went through the motions of swearing an unbreakable oath. She smiled. A woman grown and a thousand miles away, Liza still understood her mother better than anyone.

Alone. The saying that life began when the dog died and the last child left home was a pile of B.S. That's when loneliness began.

It wasn't being alone that frightened her. "That's right," she told herself in a soft whisper that the desert breeze carried away as soon as it was born. "Admit it. You're scared. Scared of empty years, without anyone to mother, to fuss over. Without any one to love."

Delilah sighed and pulled herself to her feet. Shadows were lengthening in the gorge. It was time to go meet the rest of the club.

The words she hadn't spoken lingered in her mind. Without someone to love me. To love me. Love me....