Of course, these people may do the exact same thing—with portable DVD players, you don’t even need to get out and set up the antenna—but that’s all right by me. They’re insisting on taking me all the way to the cabin, about thirty miles out of their way.
I had to make up a story for them about how my brother’s car broke down on the way to town. We can’t get phone service at our cabin, I said, even cell phone, and I had to get back home to tell my mom what’s going on. They scolded my brother for sending me, but I said he’s the only one with any hope of fixing the car.
“Silly kids,” said Dan, the driver. “Don’t you know better than to split up?”
Sherry wanted to know why I wasn’t in school, so I told her I was home-schooled. They approved of that, saying they had taken the boys out of school because they’re house hunting—and doing some sightseeing—in Woodland Park.
“We’re looking for something more like the home-school lifestyle ourselves,” said Dan.
“Actually,” I said, “speaking of school, I have some writing that I have to do, an assignment.”
“Don’t let us stop you. You got your education to think about. Boys, get down off that table and let her set up on there and do her work.”
So I’m sitting at the table, drinking a Snappy Tom, eating corn chips, and writing. These people are great.
Or not. I had just written that and been offered ham and swiss on rye, and a soda, and some chocolate, when Dan says to me, “Yeah, we think we might like it up here.” He looked around as he waited for the light in the middle of Woodland.
“Things are going to hell in a handbasket down in our neck of the woods.”
“We’re worried about Brandon,” Sherry said.
“I keep expecting him to come home with his jeans hanging off his ass and callin’ his old man ‘home-boy.’” Dan shook his head and hit the gas. “It’s time we got on out of there.”
He looked back in the mirror at me and grinned. “I hear there ain’t but one African in Woodland Park.”
African? I thought, and it began to dawn on me. Does he mean …
“Too cold up here,” Dan said. “That jungle blood runs thin.”
He does, I thought. He means African Americans! And one of the boys, Donny, not Brandon, whispered to me, “They don’t like Africans.”
“Thanks,” I whispered back, though I had just figured that out for myself.
The next thing I expected the guy to say was, “Now I ain’t prejudiced, don’t get me wrong … ”
“I sort of have to get to work on my writing,” I said, before he had the chance. “I’ll be in trouble if I don’t get it finished.”
“Get off there and onto your bunk, Donny, and leave her alone,” Dan said. “She’s got work to do.”
I feel like I should have spoken up, but what could I say? If I had any guts I would have asked them to pull over and let me out. “You’ve been kind to me,” I would say, “but when you insult people just because of the color of their skin, it insults me as well.”
Yeah, right.
It made me sick and I didn’t want to have anything more to do with them, but I’m as big a coward as anybody else. Is it any better that I am prejudiced against RV-ers? I can hear myself in twenty years, “Now I ain’t prejudiced, it’s not that they’re all racists—it’s not that they’re all beer-bellied, Rush Limbaugh-listening nature-haters, but from my personal experience, most of ’em are.”
Okay. So I’m a bigot. Whatnever. I have to make nice here, we’re almost at my bus stop. The thing that freaks me out is that they’re so nice. How can they be that way? Putting themselves out to take care of a stranger, but hating other people for no reason?
Much later, at my campsite:
After I was dropped off by the kind racist family, I hiked up the road to the cabin and planned my next move. It was pushing one o’clock by then, and in a few hours I was going to come up missing. I’d figured that Mom wouldn’t look in my room until I didn’t come home from school, so I’d left a note in there. Just to keep her heart from stopping, I wrote in blue marker on the outside of the envelope: DON’T WORRY! I’M OK!!!
Inside, I wrote something to this effect:
Dear Mom and Dad,
I need a short break from things and some time to myself, so I lit out for the territory (temporarily). I won’t tell you not to try to find me (I know you will, but you shouldn’t because you won’t find me, and I’m coming back in a few days anyway.) but please don’t worry. I’m not going to hurt myself—I just need to get away from school and home so that I can figure things out. I guess I know you’ll worry too, and I’m sorry about that. Please forgive me, I’ll be okay, but I really need this.
See you in a few days,
Love,
Cassie.
P.S. I really am not going to hurt myself. Do not worry about that. I will see you soon, alive and well.
As I thought about them discovering that I had run off, I realized that my little reassurances wouldn’t help a bit, and I started to feel guilty. Dad would rush home, Mom would cancel rehearsal, they’d panic. One would call my friends, I figured, and the other would rush up here. Where else would I go? Because I felt so bad about freaking them out, I considered hitching to a phone or staying at the cabin until they showed up. But that would be pointless. I had come this far, and I intended to take at least a few days on my own.
So, I needed to get in and out of the cabin as fast as I could. I had the perfect campsite in mind—not too far, but very hard to find, with some shade, some sun, water. What else did I need?
I unlocked the cabin with the hidden key, then I gathered up what I needed. Sleeping bag, tent, and water-filter for starters. I’d hoped to make it seem like I hadn’t been there, but it would be obvious, so I stopped worrying and took whatever I needed. Last weekend, Mom had cleaned the place out and taken most of the food. There were a couple of cans of beans and jars of pasta sauce, but she brought home the tostada shells, pasta, and other stuff that’s not mouse-proof. I took jars of sugar, coffee, tea, and half a bottle of whiskey—just like in “The Last Good Country.” From home I’d brought peanut butter, jelly, fruit, some tortillas, a jalapeño pepper, soy cheese, and half a loaf of bread. And a giant bar of dark chocolate. Mom’s going to miss that!
I had warm clothes in my drawers up in the loft, so I brought them. It’s cold up here. I also packed extra blankets and a foam pad and a tarp. After that I stuffed everything into Dad’s big pack and strapped on my tent with bungee chords. I had a big load, but I wanted all of it, and I only had a couple of miles to hike. Most of it uphill of course, some of it over treacherous rocks and scree, but only a couple miles.
I took Dad’s shillelagh and hit the trail up the creek. Usually I follow it to the falls, but this time I crossed and went up over the ridge to the west. That sounds easy, doesn’t it, just going up over the ridge? Actually I sweated and puffed, following deer trails and cutting across country when they petered out or went the wrong way. Near the top, it got too steep to climb, and I couldn’t find the passage through the crags and into the valley on the other side. The worst parts were gravel on rock, very slippery, and I had a couple of moments when I thought I was going to go tumbling back down. Eventually, I found the little gap between the rocks that I was looking for.
I edged along about ten feet of rock on top of a steep scree-slope, then followed a crack up the rock that was doable, but where I probably should have been roped in. I fastened my walking stick under the bungee chords on the pack, and used both hands to make it up the broken granite.
Then it leveled out and fell gradually down to the valley below. The spot where DJ and I had spent the afternoon was a hundred feet higher and half a mile south, and above that, the ridge rose to meet the high crest that Mom, Sean, and I had climbed on our way to the reservo
irs. From snowmelt on the high ridge, and maybe springs below, a tiny creek runs through the valley—just enough for drinking water but not enough to support fish. Because there’s no fishing, I didn’t think Sean and Dad came up here—even if they had managed to find the way in. At the bottom of the valley, the creek disappears into cracks and caves below a steep cleft, so the only way in is either the one I took or a steep descent from the high crest. And why would they bother with that steep descent and climb out when there weren’t any fish to torture?
Once I made it into my sanctuary, I looked for a good place to make camp. I had visions of satellite photography and search helicopters spying out my tent—from an overactive imagination, I’m sure—but I still felt I had to find a level spot under the trees. I finally found one, set up my tent, made my bed, and rigged a food cache on a rope between two trees a good distance from the tent. There’s a place for a fire nearby, but I don’t think I’m going to have one—too visible.
Well, if they find me, they find me. I couldn’t face the prospect of a night out here alone without a fire, so here I am by my cheery blaze. Stretched out with my back to the rock after a hot dinner, I’m sipping a spiced tea with lots of sugar and a little whiskey. Everything is much better with a fire. The smoke can be annoying, and the stars get a little lost in interference, but at least I don’t feel so lonesome.
There’s plenty of dead wood up here, so I gathered enough to last a couple of days. I found a few decent-sized dead aspens and managed to break them up into manageable chunks. Aspen burns quickly, even the logs, but I don’t have much else to do besides feed the fire.
After I made the wood pile and got a kettle of water, I hiked up the southern slope of my secret valley, the soft, needly ground rising gradually under the firs and pines to a timbered ridge that screened my camp from the high crest. A squirrel scolded me, and chickadees zipped in and out of the trees as I traversed eastward. Then the sun was suddenly gone, and the coolness floated down from the timberline even as the warm earth gave up a fragrant scent of pitch and dry wood.
Back at camp, I built a lean-to of sticks against one of the logs, stacking the smallest pieces across my frame, criss-crossing larger ones above, and placing a couple of logs on top. I set a match to the tiny, resinous fir twigs, which flared up, setting the bigger sticks snapping and flaming and spreading upward and out.
While the fire burned down to cooking coals, I opened my can of chili beans. Then I shaved an aspen log with the hatchet until I had a flat space to use as a cutting board. The jalapeño was smooth and shiny, deep green and almost black on one side. I held it by the stem and sliced it into rounds, careful not to get the juice on my fingers because there’s nothing quite like rubbing your eyes after you’ve forgotten you’ve got jalapeño juice on them—you remember real quick. Then I carved off slices of cheese, laying them on the board next to my peppers. Finally, I cut the core out of an apple, leaving the bottom intact. I spooned some sugar into the cavity and poured in a capful of whiskey. Then I wrapped it up in foil. I wiped the knife on my jeans and put it in my pocket.
By this time the fire had burned down, leaving some coals beneath. I shoved most of the flaming wood off to the side and set my can of beans right in the hottest coals. The apple I buried in coals and ashes near the edge. I’d left the lid of the bean can hanging for a handle, and every now and then I pulled it out, wearing a glove, and stirred up the beans. When they were hot, I put the can to the side.
Laying a tortilla on a forked stick, I dangled it over the coals and flames until it was puffy and hot. Then I set it on my cutting board, laid some cheese on it, covered it with hot beans, topped it off with a couple of jalapeño slices and folded it—side, bottom, and side to keep the beans in.
Damn, was it good—the tortilla soft and warm with little almost-burnt parts, the beans and cheese rich and spicy, and the bits of crispy pepper setting my mouth on fire.
Dad had taught Sean and me how to make these camp tacos when we were just kids, and we always had them when we camped out. I ate two more, and I couldn’t help but think back on good campfire times with Sean and Dad, and Mom, too. I wondered if Sean and Ally knew I had taken off. I also wondered what Mom and Dad were doing, how they were handling it. Were they down at the cabin, just a couple miles away? Or were they sticking to the phone at home?
And what about DJ? How were things going with him? Did he even think about me still? Had they gotten in touch with him, told him I was gone, asked him where I might be?
After my last taco, I dug out the apple. It was a bit of a disappointment—the sugar leaked out and burned, but parts of it were sweet and good. I made my whiskey and tea while I let it cool, and now I think I’ll have another.
The fire is burning low, giving just enough warmth to take the chill off, and above it, the sky is full of stars. If only my DJ were here.
Sigh … gaze into the fire …
It’s perfect and beautiful, and I love being here, but while I wanted to be alone, what good is it? Maybe I wanted to be alone because I thought this way I could control everything and slip into my own fantasy without a real person intruding.
But in my solitude, I find myself thinking of others: sharing the camp tacos with DJ, having a conversation about self-doubt with Ally. I can hear myself telling her how I’m afraid that I came up here not to think, not to go to a pure place where I can truly hear my soul’s voice, but just to avoid my problems.
The flames fail and I push a log inward so the fresh wood lies amidst the coals. I lay some smaller stuff over that and it all bursts into hot, bright flame.
The fire is mesmerizing. I stop writing every so often to stare and sip my drink, just the way humans have stared into fires for thousands upon thousands of years. In the ash-covered and glowing embers, I see patterns and movement as of something alive, and in the almost-consumed wood I see the fire bring out the shape and the grain of the tree before reducing it to cold, dusty ash.
Cold and dusty ash.
Gollum pawing the ground of Mordor, hissing, “Dusst!”
Almost as much as they delighted in killing, Sauron’s slaves relished the destruction of nature. Orcs cut down the trees of Fangorn and hauled them off to feed the forges or just left them lying with uncouth symbols carved in their trunks. And on the plain of Gorgoroth in Mordor, only stunted and thorny things grew.
And here in my own high mountains, the balance is changing—earlier snowmelt and later snowfall and too much water piped off to irrigate the pesticide farms, lawns, and golf-courses where geese forget their millennia of migration and grow fat and saturated with herbicide.
How can I fight, how can I stop it? Oh, Di. I feel it calling me, and DJ’s favorite Zeppelin song sings in my mind:
I can feel it calling me the way it used to do.
The fire consumes itself. The fire consumes its fuel and is gone. The fire eats its own body and leaves only elements—elements for new life and new fire. So, why not join the fire? Why not join the ashes and dust—why not be soil and rock and water and air? Not to be fire anymore, not to be burning fuel, not to be.
I can feel it calling me . . .
But there it is again, just like on the beach: the nothing. The cold and howling nothing.
On top of the world, my little valley opens to the sky, opens to space like a portal on a starship that bursts open so everything goes screaming into the vacuum.
Can nothing be cold? It feels so icy. And can nothing be dead?
Oh, yes, as sure as dead is nothing.
It’s all being sucked out into space and, empty or not, vacuum or whatever it is, when you hit it, all the water and heat and life and spark get sucked the hell out of you and you’re dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead, dead.
People who love you will cry because your heat and spark are gone into the nothing. Only elements remain. Beautiful and senseless
elements.
I wanted to be elements before, I wanted to be senseless, but not anymore. I love the rocks, and I believe that even the rocks are alive, but not alive enough to want to be them. I need spark and heat, I want fire, not ashes. My blaze will burn out too soon as it is, so why smother it before its time? Why not enjoy the heat while it lasts?
I can feel it calling me . . .
And music—never more to sing a note? How horrible is that?
“I can feel it calling me,” I sing into the night. “I can feel it calling me, back ho-o-ome.”
What a clown I am! A self-conscious, tragic, silly, little clown in the big world. The limber pine in the firelight seems to laugh at my singing out loud, and it throws me into doubt again, telling me to simply be—and I see myself through the eyes of the tree, and I want to be like a tree, to simply be without all this wanting and needing—to be a cold and bloodless tree, watery-thin sap flowing with the seasons, a slow and gradual rising and falling, not this rapid-fire filling and emptying with a hot pump, a hammering heart—
But that’s not it either. I got lost again; I followed it too far. Because I love this red pump and this hot blood. If only I could stop thinking for a while.
I closed my eyes and everything went swirly and sick, but it cleared when I opened them and took a few deep, slow breaths. I might just need to sleep and possibly throw up, not die, just sleep and maybe vomit—but keep my red frantic heart squeezing, pushing the blood, hammering the valves, and someday again, I hope, have my heart against someone else, beating against another, warm together in sleeping bags with the cold air outside, beating together and pumping: warm and furry animals, mammals, forgetting the empty space or else loving the contrast of the cold starry night against the warmth of our breath together, breathing each other’s breath and making heat together under the cold and distant and elemental stars.
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