Animals We Are

by Valerie Brandy

  Nature is the kind of place where you can meet yourself, all over again. It’s a chance to shake your own hand and ask not just what kind of person you are, but what kind of person you want to be.

  For the first time in hours, I take my hands off the saddle and open my arms wide. My chest rises as I breathe in the cold mountain air, my lungs tingling with the infusion. Maybe I’ll leave here as a new version of myself. A Zoe who doesn’t say “yes” when she really means “no.” A Zoe who doesn’t hide her needs. A Zoe who is definitely not afraid of horses, not even a little bit afraid of—

  A dip in the trail gets caught in Molly’s hoof, and she stumbles like a drunken sorority pledge in five inch heels. A yelp escapes my lips as my numb fingers clutch the saddle again. At the front of the line, Brock snickers, “Got ‘ya there, did she?”

  Mike turns around, brow furled, silently mouthing the words, “You okay?” I shoot him a thumbs up, waiting for him to turn back around before I whisper in Molly’s ear, “Lay off the sauce, alright? It’s a long trip.” Her mane shakes from left to right; the horse-version of a shoulder-shrug.

  Our caravan winds its way through the lower segment of the mountain, enjoying the beauty all around us. Sequoia trees soar toward the heavens like sky-scrapers, their roots deep, their trunks wide. Shafts of light slip through their branches, reminding us that the sun is still up there, hidden behind a blanket of green. Birds hum a song in rounds, each picking up where the other left off. Brock turns around every now and then, piping up with various bits of information, both about Yosemite, and our itinerary. His voice is grating. I tune in and out. The forest is more interesting.

  “Right now we’re still in the tourist areas,” Brock says, swaying in time with his horse. “The valley gets, oh, say about five million visitors a year or so. But by tonight we’ll have reached backcountry, and boy, are you folks in for a treat. The backcountry is reserved for serious campers, and the park only gives out so many permits per season. Only a few people at a time allowed out there. Probably one of the last places in the world you can really be alone for miles.”

  “You obviously haven’t been to Barstow,” Logan jokes, but Brock doesn’t hear him. When Logan speaks, his voice is deeper than I expected. His face says “college student,” but he could be older than he looks.

  “You’ve chosen a great time of year to visit. Park services only gives out a handful of permits in the winter, and this group right here represents ‘em all. We’re expecting some snow later in the week, so I hope you all packed accordingly and brought your cameras. You’ve never seen anything more beautiful than backcountry in snowfall,” Brock looks up at the horizon, wistful. “Now, there’s not a whole lotta cell reception once we get to backcountry, so if you have an important call to make, I recommend you do it within the next couple of hours,” he adds. Ken Hardinger frantically takes his cell phone out of his pocket, but Sue rides up beside him and grabs it away before he can check his email. She’s good on a horse.

  “You folks will get the chance to see Yosemite Valley in a way tourists hardly ever do. We got a few stops planned, and most of ‘em are off the beaten trail, with the exception of Tenaya Lake. You all have got yourselves a very exclusive itinerary.”

  “Guess that explains the price-tag,” Ken mutters, still upset about his phone being taken away.

  “We’ll visit a waterfall, clean enough to drink right out of,” Brock rambles on. “And we’ll take a look at the fissures on the back of Taft Point, the side folks people don’t see as often.”

  “What are the fissures?” Mike asks, genuinely interested. Mike always looks at the world like he’s seeing it for the first time. It’s one of the most lovable things about him. He searches for ways the world can show him beauty, and I search for ways it can hurt me. He is a princess. I am an ogre.

  “The Fissures are a topographical feature— very rare. It’s a bunch of deep crevices in the earth. Some of ‘em even go down as far as three hundred feet,” Brock answers. “We won’t get there for a few days though. ‘Gonna spend the first part of the trip riding trails at the base of the mountain, giving all of you who come from the lowlands a chance to adjust to the elevation.”

  Sue Hardinger clears her throat.

  “Sue?”

  “How do the horses handle the increase in altitude?” she asks, petting her horse on the neck.

  “Just fine,” Brock answers, with a tone that says he doesn’t really give a shit. “Might get tired a bit quicker, but we’re not asking too much of them. Most of the trails we’re taking need a gentle gait anyway. Wouldn’t ask them to gallop up the mountain.”

  Ken reaches out and touches Sue’s hand, offering a reassuring nod. She sticks her tongue out at him, and pockets his phone as if to say “nice try, but you’re not getting it back.” Ken laughs, his eyes lighting up like he’s just met the woman he wants to spend the rest of his life with. They’ve spent decades together, but the Hardingers are still madly, totally, completely in love. Mike catches my eye, and it makes me smile, because we’re both thinking the same thing.

  “We’ll make camp by a smaller lake tonight, head onward in the morning,” Brock continues. “Over the course of our trip we’ll climb to about 3,300 ft.”

  “Will we get to climb Half Dome?” Logan asks, his voice dripping with anticipation. Maybe I had him pegged wrong. Maybe he’s a dare-devil.

  “On day five, we’ll reach the base of Half Dome,” Brock answers. “It’s the highest elevation of our trip. You all are welcome to stay there and explore the campsite; check out the natural hot spring if you like. But under no circumstances are you to attempt the cable walk. Rangers shut it down this time of year, because the trail’s too dangerous, what with the ice and snow.”

  “They shut it down completely?” Sue pipes up, curious.

  “The trail up there, ‘Mist Trail,’ stays open all year,” Brock answers. “You’re welcome to climb it at your own risk. But the cable walk is a non-starter.”

  “What’s the difference between the trail and the cable walk?” Ken asks, suddenly looking like he might want to give the hike a go. Sue rolls her eyes, her face betraying her thoughts: my husband can barely handle the walk from his car to the dinner table, and now he wants to scale a vertical cliff face.

  “Mist trail is an average climb that takes you up the base of the dome,” Brock answers. “But it can only take you so far before the incline changes, and you need rock-climbing equipment to get up the rest of the mountain. To make the dome more accessible, Yosemite Park Rangers installed a cable walk. It’s a trail with two steel cables on either side to hold onto, hopefully with gloves, if you don’t want to shred your fingers. It’s a steep grade. So steep you gotta tie your bags tight so they don’t come loose. One misstep and you could find yourself tumbling down the curve of the dome. But going up is the easy part…”

  “It is?” Mike asks, and I silently pray he has no intention of making the trek. I’ve finally found a great guy, and I’d have an existential crisis if he fell off the side of Half Dome and ended up a human pancake.

  Brock nods. “Coming down the grade is the really challenging part, especially if there’s rain or snow. The cable becomes too wet to hold onto, and the rocks freeze over. Makes it real easy to slip. We had ten deaths last year alone, and that was in good weather. The views at the top are somethin’ else, and I’m sure it’s a sight to be seen in the snow. But there’s just no attempting it this time of year. You folks can try Mist Trail if you really have a hard on for it, but my recommendation is to stick to the itinerary.”

  Mike looks at me and shakes his head.

  “I love you,” he says. “But there’s no way I’m climbing up that mountain.”

  At the front of the line, Logan watches us, and I’m certain now that he’s a lonely college kid with nothing better to do over spring break. His face has the pained expression of someone who just got dumped, and I imagine him holding two tickets to the horse-tour, alone in his dorm
room.

  “Fine,” I sigh, pretending to be disappointed. “I won’t make you.”

  The trail stretches onward, taking us deeper into a dark patch of forest where the trees grow closer together, blanketing the earth in complete shadow. Brock takes a hard right, asking us all to follow, leaving the familiar trail behind and heading straight into the forest, deeper and deeper into the Wild. The Sequoia branches weave around one another so tightly that they form a wall, shielding the rest of the forest from view, closing us in like sardines in a can. Molly shudders, her gait quickening, and it makes my hair stand on end, as if Molly knows something she can’t tell me.

  Our progress slows, and we proceed one step at a time, Brock assuring us all the while that it’s perfectly safe to leave the trail behind— necessary, even, to experience something special.

  I’m at the end of our party, so I’m the only one who hears it when it happens: a twig snapping, somewhere in the distance, close enough to hear but far enough away to be hidden from view. Leaning into the darkness doesn’t help me spot the source of the sound, but then something moves, shapeless in the shadows, its form impossible to discern between layers of sequoia branches. It’s too large to be a bird, or a rodent. It could be a bear, or a human, but by the time I look again, it’s disappeared, an optical illusion or some trick of the light.

  I’m about to say something, but Brock raises a hand before I can, pointing ahead of us toward a spot where the forest separates and a flood of light streaks down from the sky. Trees disperse, making room for us, and suddenly it’s as if someone has pulled open a set of curtains, revealing a vast, infinite wild. We’re on top of a hill, looking over it all, more beautiful than a painting, so alive and untamed. Rivers weave across the landscape like vines on a fence. Brush grows in half-hearted shades of brown, defiantly ignoring the winter cold, reaching ever-upwards, thirsty for light. Peaks and valleys compete against each other for room, all of it untouched by human hands. It might be the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. Brock smiles at our open mouths, agape at the beauty, stunned and silenced, just as he knew we would be.

  “Welcome,” Brock says, “To backcountry.”

  ***

  When we finally reach our campsite, the sun hangs low in the sky, casting a golden haze over the forest. We pick a spot on the edge of a clearing, near enough to the Sequoia trees to feel sheltered, but exposed enough to have full visibility of the surrounding wild.

  We unpack our bags; each couple has been given a double-sized tent to share, while Logan and Brock have their own individual versions. With some prompting from Brock, everyone gets to work assembling their tents. Mike sprawls the pieces of our tent out on the grass, looking at them like he’s working on a rubix cube, trying to match ends to beginnings.

  “This one goes into the piece labeled, ‘B,” he mutters, reading from a guide featuring so many pictures we might as well be assembling a rocket ship. I grab the paper and flip it over.

  “That’s an eight. Don’t you design furniture for a living?”

  “After this, I might fire myself,” he laughs.

  “That’s okay, stick with me,” I answer, lashing poles together with the included plastic pieces— round semi-circles that click into place if you squeeze them hard enough. “I’m a survival pro, like Bear Gryllis, only cuter.”

  “Same amount of facial hair though,” Mike jokes, and I swat at him, because we both know he loves my face. “Squeeze this one,” I tell him, and he grips one of the semi-circles tight, causing four poles to form the outline of our frame. About fifty feet away, a heavy log rests in front of the remains of a fallen tree, and for some reason, I feel like it was meant to be ours.

  “We should take it,” I tell Mike, motioning at the log. He rolls it over, happy to be helpful again, and suddenly our little tent has become a palace with its own bench right outside.

  We stand back to look at it, and when Mike puts his arm around me, an unfamiliar feeling washes over me. It’s a sudden realization, even though it’s probably one I’ve been coming to for awhile. It seems urgent, important that I let him know, but I’m not sure what to say, or how to tell him. I almost blurt out, “I want to spend the rest of my life with you,” but then the walls around my heart harden, their vice-like grip knocking the words off my tongue. My shoes dig into the dirt, feet firmly on the ground. I remind myself of the importance of caution; homes that look steady are too often built on glass, and women who thought they knew someone wake to find a stranger sleeping next to them. The worst monsters hide behind the most ordinary of people— only time reveals the beast within. Mike and I have barely been together for more than a year. We just moved in together three months ago. For now, that’s enough.

  The moment is gone now and I won’t get it back. It’s alright, though, because when Mike leans over and kisses me like it’s the most natural thing in the world, I don’t feel the need to say anything at all.

  Our entire relationship is reflected in this moment.

  Mike is the warm, open-hearted person who feels at home anywhere, and I’m the vigilant conspiracy theorist who keeps canned goods and weaponry in the basement-turned-bomb-shelter. Mike assumes the best; I’m always waiting for the worst.

  It’s one of my favorite things about him, but sometimes, it highlights a distance between us— some space I can’t cross. It’s like I’m always on the lookout for shadows he can’t see, hasn’t had to see, and will never understand, through no fault of his own.

  The gap is not just ours; we can’t claim it as a unique invention. It belongs to the girl who wants to spring for an Uber instead of walking home late at night, but ends up with her feet on the pavement because her date insists she’s safe with him there.

  It’s borrowed by the Mother who wants to get a second opinion from another pediatrician, but resists because her husband says it’s unnecessary.

  The gap rests its edges on “it’ll be fine” -s and “don’t be a worrier” -s. The gap can’t be quantified or explained. Trying to measure its diameter will just make it grow. It’s better to ignore it and hope it goes away. It’s lonely over here, on my side of the gap, and even though I’d never tell Mike, it’s a feeling I think Cassandra would understand.

  Across the campsite, Ken and Sue have expertly assembled their tent without an unhappy moment to show for it. They high-five. I wonder if Sue feels the gap, and if so, what she does about it. Maybe they’ve been together so long that they found a way to sew the gap shut, without ever having to talk about it.

  Meanwhile, Logan struggles with his tent, trying to connect the wrong ends of two poles. Brock— who had his tent up the second he stepped off his horse— practically pushes Logan out of the way and assembles the tent for him.

  We’ve arranged our tents in a circle, and in the middle dug a fire-pit, where— if I have anything to say about it— we’ll melt marshmallows and tell ghost stories. Like I said, I’m Bear Gryllis, but cuter.

  My love of the outdoors comes from years spent at a wilderness sleep-away camp, which was basically the coked up version of Girl Scouts. We’d spend three weeks each year learning how to light fires from scratch, craft weapons from sticks, set traps for fish, and survive if we ever got lost in the woods— a possibility that was, ironically, increased by our mere presence at the camp, which was run by a pair of totally irresponsible proprietors. They let us run wild, and only hired about one counselor for every twenty girls, allowing us to get away with anything and everything. It was Mad-Max, but with preteens. Needless to say, there was a lot of hair-pulling involved.

  It was sleep-away camp that made me want to go into hotel management. Something about comforting people when they’re away from home makes me think of camp.

  Brock unloads the food, which he stores in a separate pack. It’s a combination of fresh fare and some powdered instant mixes, like mashed potatoes and scrambled eggs.

  Brock approaches the pit, and— even though he’s also brought a lighter— gives us a demonstra
tion with a fire-starter, looking pretty shocked when I manage to make it flare up on my first try.

  “Summer-camp,” I say, and Brock frowns, clearly wondering what kind of fucked up camp my parents sent me to.

  The fire tosses sparks across the pit, weaving itself into spirals under a cast-iron pan, as if it resents being contained. We cook up potatoes and frozen chicken breast, dishing them out on thin metal plates. The group consensus is that the food is shockingly good. Brock and I are the only ones who don’t offer any commentary, probably because we both know that the best meal is always on the first night. By night seven, everything will be powdered, unless someone catches a fish.

  When the meal is finished, Brock offers to take everyone to the other side of the lake, to a place where the trout jump at night. It’s a ranger favorite, and everyone agrees to go, except for poor Logan, who isn’t looking so good.

  “I need to lay down,” he whispers to Brock, turning green.

  “Might be altitude sickness. Are you dizzy?” Brock asks.

  “Yeah,” Logan leans against a tree trunk. He’s feeling even worse than he’s letting on.

  Brock reaches into his pocket and pulls out a cylindrical object, about the size of a tube of lipstick. Logan flips it over, reading the label.

  “Tums?” he says, confused. “But my stomach’s not upset. I’m just lightheaded.”

  “The calcium content will help with the dizziness. Old trail guide trick. That, and some water, and you’ll feel good as new in an hour.”

  He sends Logan to his tent, adding, “If you perk up and decide you want to join us, just follow the trail down that way, and turn left at the rock formation at the edge of the lake. You’ll see us.”

  He leaves Logan with a flashlight and a radio, and our group trudges into the darkness, our eyes still adjusting to a world without streetlights.