He walked slowly up the mountainside bowed under the heavy
pack on his back, sweat plastering his T-shirt tight against his
straining flesh. The red-brown clay of the mountain, always
damp here in the Pacific Northwest, stuck in clots to his hiking
boots. He paused to wipe the sweat off his sorehead. It seemed like
forever to get to the springs, but then he was out of shape. Sitting
at a desk all day in an advertising agency didn't make for the
hard, taut bodies of the magazine ads he sold. Neither was it, he admitted, attractive to the hard, taut bodies he was attracted to….
