July 11

It’s now been a week since I’ve been eating those chicken thighs I grilled on the Fourth. Somehow no one seems to vibe with my Jamaican jerk chicken. I marinaded it for 36 hours in habaneros, scallions, ginger, shallots—it’s delicious! I microwave a thigh for breakfast each morning with the one-pot, Caribbean-style beans and rice I made (added a can of coconut milk for good measure) and the grilled pineapple salsa. Maybe it’s the bone-in, skin-on factor that dissuades our kids. They’re grossed out by anything real like that. Excluding the bone and a joint I’ve now gotten used to I eat everything, gumming the bone with my lips and teeth the way my dad or mother-in-law do, not wasting a scrap. Maybe it’s the fact we’re older, we’re more primitive evolution-wise, closer to the apes.

One of the best things about hiking in the early morning is being able to take my shirt off and not worry about being seen. Tiger Mountain is such a popular spot you have to get there by 5 if you want some privacy. So I laced up in the parking lot with my skimpy running shorts and stripped off my shirt.

It’s five and a half miles round trip and 2,100’ of gain (640 meters) and I try to summit in an hour. I have a new pair of trail running shoes that are electric green, more the color of a lime about to turn. Bright orange mini gaiters too.

So up the switch backs I went, getting that good burn in my legs and lungs, thinking. Lily and I came up here that time before she went to wilderness therapy; most times I’d done it myself. I was really hopeful I’d get the job I applied for. I’d started fixating on it, and risked getting my hopes up. With both of us out of work and worried about funding our kids’ college, work became something more, the way it did when we first had children. In a primitive sense it felt like hunting and gathering.

There was a nearby storm building and rain coming in, giving the morning sky a moody feel. I knew when I got to the summit there would be no sun but I liked the idea of an ocean of clouds. And when I got there the wind was strong, flattening the small plant life; the views opened all the way to Seattle and the mountains to the north and south, and I threw my arms up and clenched my fists in a winner’s pose. There were some good pieces of fallen branches I eyed for our garden beds but thought better of it.

Yesterday at the park I saw a bear, just part of it, but enough to give me a good scare. I’d discovered a section of the park I never knew about, a wildlife preserve off to one edge. There was a sign and a map announcing a Hazel Wolf Wetlands drawing me well out of my normal morning route.

Some of the grass was so tall and brown it was draped over in places. With the recent light rain it smelled sweet like hay. I first sensed the animal then caught just a snip of it, the silhouette, as it slipped across the trail and into the shadows. I offered a tentative “Hello?,” and I’m sure it could sense my fear. Then there was no sound and I stood there waiting.

The grass swished as it moved to a new hiding spot and I advanced on the trail trying to see it. No animal that large could move without making noise but somehow the next time it did it was a lot farther away. And this pattern continued for a solid minute or so: silence as we both waited, then it would re-emerge many feet from where I last heard it. Which signaled to me the bear was very fast.

I was not watching the post-apocalyptic HBO series The Last of Us but understood the premise, people being infected by a fungus, and unlike most zombies the ones in this show moved unusually fast, like this bear.

I came to the end of the preserve and doubled back, feeling safer somehow as the sun got higher in the sky.

They messaged me about the job saying they probably had a spot for me but there were some changes to the job description, was I available in the morning to discuss?

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Diary, Memoir

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, journal writing, Memoir, pacific northwest