J. Curtis - Calexit - The Anthology

Even before she gets to the still waters of her evening she has made her decision. Last winter was exceptionally mild, and this summer looks to be a scorcher. If there is a fire of any size she would be trapped. The first summer after secession, there were no vacationers returning to the cabins within earshot and a short trail ride. Her neighbor John has gone silent and she dared not risk a drive to his home. In their last conversation, his voice had changed as if he had heard something he knew to be true, but would never be ready to believe. She didn’t know if he was dead, Mother Mature being somewhat unforgiving of error in the woods, or if he had headed down into the Valley, risking it just to see if indeed life had returned to some semblance of normalcy, his grown children safe somewhere.

There’s cloud cover coming in from the ocean, the temperature should drop for at least a couple of days. If she stays, there’s plenty of grass in the meadow for Taxi but there would be nothing for winter. It’s not just that her horse is family to her, her only companion throughout this last year but he’s her only escape. There’s no way she can hike over the Nevada border, even though she’s in better shape now than when she finished school.

She’s going to make a run for it, or trot, if you will

Perhaps it’s the heat outside that makes her bold, perhaps it’s the heat within her. It’s always the first jump into the unknown that is the hardest, that hesitant leap upward propelled by desire and only held back by the gravity of restraint. Once you are past that feeling of helpless weightlessness as you stop off into space, it gets easier. For life waits. It waits to come to you in the heat of the day, secret and swift, wearing air and water and blood and need that flow away like a garment revealing all that you knew. If you close your eyes to it you will see, drifting until the water grows tepid and the sound of future Cicadas is all that remains.

She’s going to escape to the America she remembers, and hopes it will take her in. For it waits. It waits in the heated movement that is not the wind. It waits in a rush of roaring water; in a patient pool in the evening, where the hurts of the past are left lying upon a drifting and imponderable shore, washed clean in the heat of a yellow afternoon.

She figures if she stays away from the main road, she can make it in three to four days, and assuming no run-in with bears or Militia, she can pack out what she needs to survive as well as the cash she will need to find her new life.

Perhaps she’ll ride out to find that everything she feared down in Cali did not come to be, that after the initial violence and upheaval, it settled into a self-sufficient land, where the citizens had what they wished for and she’s been hiding in fear all for nothing.

In her heart, she is doubtful; the breakdown in the grid, the silence on the radio waves speaking volumes.

As she mentally makes a list of what she needs to pack up, she pauses for a moment, among the trees. She’s reinforced in the smallness of her form next to their trunks, smiling as the branches separate her from the chatter of the world that echoes outside the woods. There is comfort in these trees, old and strong, even if scarred, their roots sunk deep into the ground becoming one with it, taking nourishment from it with a gravity of purpose we poor ground dwellers wouldn’t understand.

The seasons are changing and a small sting of warm rain against her face tells her it’s time to get going. The rain wakes her from her thoughts, a pinprick of fluid, each lance full of the promise of its remission, here one moment, then gone, like the tears of a child. One moment, there is the rumble of thunder, water released from above, then it’s gone, fleeing southward on the wind, leaving behind only spent confetti of moisture on pale limbs that gather and drip into puddles that reflect the sky that only moments before had imprisoned them.

Leaning against the trees, sun glinting off of those small drops of water that cling to ancient wood, the secret whisper of the wind invisible to her and silent, asks of her — would we find the beauty in anything if we lived forever? Would the gems of thoughts and feelings and desire be so precious if we knew they would always be on our shelf? Or would they fall to the earth, trickling through our hands like water, evaporating on the cold ground, because we thought our hold on them was eternal?

She readies her home as if she is coming back to it. She realizes the improbability of that. She doesn’t think Cali will suddenly go “sorry, we made a mistake can we rejoin the team?” She still can’t believe Congress even bought off on the secession in the first place but for the incessant bleeding of money from federal coffers to a state that was being abandoned by industry as well as many of its legal citizens at a breakneck pace as it slid into bankruptcy.

So many memories here, she thinks as she grins at the antique “explosives” sign on the horse stall, the “Bee Happy” sign one of the local beekeepers gave her.

With dried food and water for the trip, not a lot but enough to keep her moving, her rifle, her revolver close by and her supplies in saddle bags, it was time to go.

She had some forest service maps from when she first moved her and had plotted out the trails she knew by heart out to an area that was going to be more “there be dragons”.

There was a chance she could end up at a dead end, forced to get down to the road which could signal her doom. Once she was on Nevada soil, she’d bury the rifle. Getting shot or arrested by a Nevada native or LEO was not how she wanted to say “hi — can I stay here?”

She saddles up Taxi and with a wave, heads east using trails that parallel the road but at a safe distance, keeping out of the most difficult of terrain, but not within eye or earshot of the road. She wonders how it all got to this point. She should be enjoying life like most young people her age, not riding out from all she loves like some contestant in the “Hunger Games.” But she knows that if she doesn’t do something to save herself, no one else is going to help her.

In just a couple of generations, it seems the entire concept of being accountable to oneself has been undermined, ridiculed even. Self-reliance, the learning of skills that extend beyond a paycheck or a computer screen is treated as some archaic riposte of foolishness, unnecessary symbols of bygone days. Those that practice such skills are often perceived, not as practical or frugal, but as paranoid survivalists who should be viewed with fear and monitored by others.

If you’re afraid to fail, you’ll never try. If you give up, you just go back. The decision to hunker down and live off of her own work and efforts when Calexit happened may have been a foolish one and there has been more than one time when she has stood in tears in her empty meadow softly saying “why?” as the words catch in her teeth and tear. But she didn’t give up even as she may have wept a tear of frustration as she discovered that often immitigable discrepancy between will and capabilities.

She figured she had to travel over forty miles. A horse in good condition could do that in a day in easier terrain. But Taxi had been mostly shuttered in the barn or munching grass in a meadow. She basically had a “couch potato” horse. That was going to mean it would likely take three days to travel that distance. There was a direct, and much shorter way, but the last few miles of it were in totally open country and she’d have to cross a fairly large high highway, likely covered with Militia. The longer way kept her in tree cover until she was much closer to the border.

She had ridden about five hours, stopping to relieve herself in the bushes and let Taxi drink from a small stream when she heard a noise. It was coming down from the trailhead, and it sounded bigger than a coyote or feral dog. Taxi heard it too and stopped, likely remembering the bear incident.