J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

Even as quiet as it is, she keeps her guard up as she and Taxi make their way uphill. Not all predators are four-legged.

Even with the threats, she still loved being out here. So much of the country envisioned the California of old as simply L.A. and San Diego and San Francisco, vast cities teeming with people when, in addition to the farmland, California had vast beautiful mountains. She wasn’t the only citizen who eschewed city life for something remote and wild and as free as you could get in a state that loved to regulate.

Give her a spot for just herself or perhaps a friend, days sliding into the sunset, marked by little more than the sum of breaths taken freely. It was hard to tell one day from another. Mornings would creep in on the breath of small creatures watching from the trees, days spent in reading or hiking, nights simply lying out like one single point of a compass star, feet pointed towards her future, pointing true. She didn’t move quickly when she woke, looking at the morning sun with the mild inscrutability of animals awakening, functioning outside of a watch, having left time lying upon the slow and imponderable shore on which her life is moored.

She remembers coming up to her uncle’s hunting cabin once with her best friend from high school. She thinks back to that night, the telling of stories in front of the fire, trying to scare one another, as off in the distant the stars flared against a background of ebony velvet. They sipped a can of cheap beer (being young and knowing no better) and talked into the wee hours. Adulthood was looming, both of them soon off to college, both of them still naive to the ways of the world and of men, but both aware of the redemptive power of the woods. They looked to see if they could see the Northern Lights. This far south it was highly unlikely, but it never stopped them, sharing stories and dreams, not realizing how far the years would take them from this place.

For now, she needed to get her mind back on what she was doing — she had an entire solitary winter to daydream by herself.

Taxi’s ears suddenly went back and he came to a stop.

“What is it, boy?” she says as the horse refuses to go forward. She doesn’t see anything up ahead, urging him forward. The horse is in park and that’s where he is going to stay.

She senses, rather than feels, coldness at the very base of her spine, a sense, somehow, that she is being watched. There is no sound, no steady growl or rustle or movement upon which her mind will tell her to hurry along. Yet, she knew it is there; the murmur of threat, the panting whispers of predators unseen.

Then she sees it, up ahead on the trail a couple of hundred yards. It is a bear. Did she manage to find the only bear with insomnia in the Sierras? It wouldn’t have cubs this time of year, that was one good thing, but it still was a danger.

The bear spotted her. It was a very young bear, lighter brown in color but most likely black bear species as brown bears have not been seen in this area in years. The thought flashed through her mind for just a moment whether the new Cali flag still had a Grizzly on it or they’d traded it out for a unicorn. As the bear huffed, that thought fled her head.

She had her deer rifle with her, but from this distance, she’d need more than that to go up against a bear and he’d be on her by the time she wrangled with the sling and got a sight picture for a round that would only piss it off more. Where’s a nice 12-gauge Express Magnum loaded with slugs when a girl needs one?

She raises her arms as high as she can and shouts, waving her arms. Bears usually don’t want to deal with humans if they don’t have to, and if they aren’t startled. The bear wasn’t likely very hungry either and with her talking to Taxi as she rode, likely had heard her from a long distance. It stood, sniffing the air, and giving a challenging huff.

She slowly backed the horse up, continuing to try and look as big as possible. She had an adequate distance between them when the bear gave a small bluff charge, then stopped. She continued backing up waving her arms high over her head and shouting until they rounded a bend, out of sight of the bear. She and Taxi then took off, the bear losing interest once they are out of sight. Still, she keeps the horse going as fast as is safe for the trail until they are back home. She is not sure how she rode home as she was literally stiff with fear, listening to the minute seeping of hot blood through veins constricted, as everything was going to the muscles, fight or flight. She thinks Taxi just got them there, her being just along for the ride.

It looks like winter was going to be a lot of canned soup and beans, but she was grateful neither she nor her horse was any the worse for wear.

She had chosen safety over the gathering of game today. It was something that made her think back to the day in which she went on her first deer hunt. She remembered it not so much for the action but for what was passed on. What her father and uncle taught her that day was more than the taking of game. They taught her when to shoot and when not to-that the taking of a life was not something be done lightly, no matter how hungry you were. They taught her what was worthy, and what should be left alone. She learned when the woods were a safe haven, and, with a rumble of thunder, when the woods were a place to leave. She learned not just the rules of the hunt, there in the dark, heavy dew of an April morning, while they squatted, knees crying, underneath a turkey roost. She learned about life, and how precious it is and how quickly lost. She learned without speaking. She learned just by watching. She learned not just when to act, but when to just walk away and let it go. She learned that with freedom comes responsibility, with wrong decisions, comes death, if not in the flesh, then of the spirit.

As she got the horse watered and fed, with a warm blanket draped over him, giving him some precious oats as a thank you, she realized that this seemingly sturdy body, that serves her subtlety and so well, is only so much meat, and her thoughts and life history would only be a night’s sustenance to some creature of the woods… or to fate.

As the snows gave way to rain, she thinks hard about what the upcoming winter would bring. She has enough to eat, and enough wood to keep her place livable if the power went out, if one liked living while wearing a parka in the house. But one fall, one accident, one encounter with tooth and claw might be a game changer.

There had been no signs of life in a while, no cars on the road, though in September she swore when she was gathering kindling within a glimpse of the road she saw a guy dressed in dark clothing on a bicycle with a backpack, riding around the mountain before it starts the drop into the next state.

The light is all but gone as she heads back towards the house as if the night had slipped up behind her, her back exposed to the creep of time, so enmeshed by the dimming of the approaching darkness that she scarcely heard its whisper. The moon is out, the shadows diminishing to its curve until even the shadows are drenched in black. There at the edge of her property is a young whitetail. For a moment, there is no movement, the deer’s still form barely visible, its outline growing weightless and faint; the night itself mesmerizing her with its own primal inertia. As the little deer turns to leave, she thinks that with the coming spring, it too may be her time to slip away from here.

As she enters her home and lights a candle, water trails off the tin roof, the sound of it ebbing and flowing, lapping at the corner of her thoughts. Let there be a time and a place, she prays, where she can have this, and the company of friends, without sacrificing her freedoms and her safety.