The morning sun was an angry red dot, a burning ball of flame coming through the trees. The sun made the leaves golden pink; it lit everything with a glorious soft tint. All the trees were leaning or bent and I liked that best: the sense we were all tilted, a bit off. Like the pen drawings I made as a kid I liked things askew. Some trees had fallen onto others and were balanced in the Y of a neighbor’s branches, bark stripped off and just hanging there, flaps of dead skin. When the sun popped through it cast splotches of bright pink in random patterns on the forest and the pink was so rich it was more peach, blood red. There was a scurrying of birds in the bushes and some overripe blackberries in the bramble giving a brandy-like perfume. The scent took me back to Germany, that first time harvesting grapes one September, and soon I’d be sniffing around similar trails again, taking in the local scents.

I carried my walking stick like a baseball bat, both hands gripped tightly on the end, the stick balanced high on my shoulder ready to swing, coiled up for a cougar that never came. I lowered it when passing runners or other walkers so as to not look threatening: there was a guy who ran with a metal police baton and always made me nervous when he came up from behind me.

The sun’s so low it’s a terror when driving, blinding. It goes from pink to pale yellow, and though it’s not good to look at I can’t help myself: the wildfire smoke gives it a queer allure. The trail twists away from the sun and gets so narrow and choked it’s hard not to get nervous you’re being tracked, but I keep my stick balanced beneath one arm or hold it like a farming implement, bear spray on my hip.

The trail curls around a ravine where the shades of green grow dark and mysterious, made spooky by the sound of a nearby crow. Crows, nature’s snitches.

Today we’ll go to the state fair, the last weekend it’s on, and be plunged in a sea of people and deep-fried food. Krusty pups, pineapple whips, sausage on a stick.

Multiple crows calling to each other now, approaching, gathered overhead, and I can’t help but feel full-on paranoid I’m being followed. Then it goes dead silent and there’s just the hum of far-off traffic, little peeps of nearby birds. Using my stick like an oar in a gondola, poking the ground.

The fair is where my first girlfriend Shana and I broke up. We didn’t break up exactly but we talked about it for the first time, in the car in some grassy field where we paid to park. We contemplated it then sat in silence and after a while figured fuck it, let’s go into the fair. But it was never the same after that, and in a couple months it was official.

Snot rockets, allergies and Covid. More strange sounds from the brush. When I stop it all goes silent like they’re waiting for me to leave. A frog croak like a deep socket wrench. If you come across a cougar you’re supposed to hold your ground and fight. Use your fists, throw rocks, make yourself look big. It’s this kind of fascination with violence my dad had too. The fact he kept a blackjack in our house, let me handle it, the feel of it in my little boy hands, swinging it, imagining myself a hero, a grown man.

The blackjack is a handheld weighted sack bound in braided leather; you can knock someone out with it in one swing and keep it concealed in the pocket of your coat. It’s an impact weapon, a flexible club, that’s been around for centuries, used by cops and criminals (my dad, too).

Pieces of wood from fallen trees chainsawed into rounds by the side of the trail, growing moss. Too heavy to carry but tempting to roll some out. Meanwhile I have more firewood at home than I’ll ever need; still it’s good to have it for times the power goes out and you need to keep the house warm, homestead style. Another occasion to feel like a man, swinging an ax.

Some leaves are dead and withered but still hanging on. All of it to be stripped down when the first hard rains come, the wind. Nature grooms the dead, tucks all of us in, returns us to where we belong. What’s the true nature of a man and where does he learn it?

Out here on the edges, in the wild, the lost are found. With nothing, no one to fear but ourselves.

Categories: Creative Nonfiction, Memoir, prose

Tags: Creative Nonfiction, identity, Memoir, pacific northwest