It is 1972. Neil Countryman is from the high school in north Seattle. He slumps at his desk all day and gets high in the park at lunchtime. John William Barry is from Lakeside, a private academy for the more privileged of Seattle's youth. When their lives collide for the first time, it is the beginning of a friendship that is both fraught and intimate. They both have a taste for the wilderness, exploring the most remote areas of the mountains. But as they grow older, John William's craving for isolation marks him out as an eccentric, while Neil has started on the radically different path with a wife and a steady job.