Fear

.....It's park!

I’m writing this in Flagstaff, Arizona in the middle of a thunderstorm. It’s the first storm we’ve experienced since the beginning of our trip in Indiana. I spent the last thirty minutes trying to keep my dog from putting his whole body weight directly on top of my rib cage, which is the only way he feels safe during a thunderstorm. I’m his security blanket on days like this, and it’s only fair because every other day he’s mine. My dog knows what fear is. He has scars all over his body. He knows that fear is sometimes the best way to protect yourself, and he uses his big soft squishy body, and his scary deep voice, to protect me, too. 

Everyone has a different and complicated relationship with risk. I was never much of a physical risk taker. I never skipped monkey bars on the playground. I hated riding a bike because I didn’t like falling. I will never go skydiving. I think the free solo people are fucking nuts. But both “kink” and “park” have made me realize that I do have a relationship with risk, a wilder one than I thought before. Traveling alone, even with a dog, is a risk. Hiking alone is a risk. I do everything possible to keep myself safe. I carry bear spray and pepper spray with me. I send the same kind of “check in on me” texts to my friends when I go meet someone new off an app and when I go on a hike. But I still let a stranger tie me to a bed until he isn’t a stranger anymore. I still go on ridge walks with sheer drop offs tethered to a fifty pound gremlin. 

I like to hike alone because I can feel the experience of being in my body without constantly having to judge it. I don’t feel guilty for going too slow, or too fast. I don’t feel the need to talk when all I want to do is soak in what’s around me. I can start when I want and end when I want. I can turn around without shame. Because of my “not that bad but not not bad” invisible illness I usually feel the need to explain my body and abilities, to apologize for myself. It is so freeing not to answer to anyone. But this decision to be alone comes with risk, even though I pretend it doesn’t, even though on this trip I often wake up feeling fearless, like my only obstacles are thunderstorms and being kind of sleepy and having to go to work at 5pm. 

In Glacier National Park, rescuers found a woman’s body. She had gone missing the day before I arrived, and her body was found near Logan Pass the day that I left. I won’t put too many details here in case I veer into true crime territory, but she was traveling with just her dogs. She was raised in Richmond, Virginia, where I was also raised. All deaths are painful in some way, but it is harder to remain detached from a stranger’s death when you know they grew up seeing the same things as you, that for years you shared the same weather on your skin.

Learning about this woman broke the spell. A word of advice: never google “hiker death” before a hike. These deaths happen. Statistically, over 300 a year in the united states, which means that there will always be something new to terrify you when you check. Suddenly, I felt open and raw. I had told myself certain things in order to live a life I want to live. I told myself that everything would of course be ok. But then I began to wonder: Is this hike with a drop off actually worth my life? Is this stop at a gas station after midnight in a town with hardly any people of color worth my life?

And then the thought: if I die, will it be my fault? When someone dies on a hike because there isn’t enough water, or they don’t tell a friend where they are, or they didn’t think bears were such a big deal, the “audience” of the death - mostly people on the internet - will try to turn it into a lesson. Bring pepper spray. And a map. Know your skill levels. Don’t be afraid to turn back. And probably this isn’t bad, because people deserve to know the risks, and fear will help more people prepare properly. People blame the dead to distance themselves from the possibility of their own deaths (I would never forget my first aid on a hike) and continue as they have always done. They do it so the spell won’t break for them. I get it. It still seems cruel. And this feels at stake too, when taking a calculated risk: my own foolishness. What people will say, what my mom will have to hear if anything happens. 

Thinking like this is practical. Thinking like this is paralyzing. Ultimately, what I seek to access is a kind of pearly middle ground, where I am foggy enough to forget that death exists, where I am sharp enough to do my best to avoid it anyway. And I don’t know if that’s possible, when nature is a large mouth and people fucking suck and I only have six seconds of bear spray which is enough for a bear and a person but what if I run into both on the same day? 

This thing that I have with risk. This dance. And it is a dance, a constant calculation and recalculation of your body’s relationship with the world, with sub-calculations of gender and race, class and income, location and weather and time of day. We all engage in these calculations every moment of every day, but sometimes it takes an almost-fall or a missed red light or a headline that aligns with your life to actually see it, the constantly running machine. 

Whatever. That’s what I decided in the end: whatever. 

I am grateful for this trip for many reasons, one of which is that I’m already in the fucking middle of it, all my shit and my dog is in Arizona, and I’ve already done half of it so might as well see it through. I am so proud of myself but I also understand why my mom started calling me multiple times a day once I reached South Dakota, the first place from which I simply couldn’t drive back on a whim. 

In any case, thank you to my dog for barking at strangers. And thank you to my friends, who would notice if I went missing.