After spending a summer slowly desensitizing myself to sleeping outside, I put my growing comfort to the test with a camping trip in Montana. We went just to the edge of town to the Rattlesnake (what a name!) and only three miles in to accommodate various ailments, mine included. As we openly joked about bears soon after arriving and settling in, we heard some ruffling in the forest nearby almost right on time. A likely elk or deer never showed itself but it did manage to almost send me into a spiral. My fear of bears feels ancestral, like some Norwegian relative was torn apart by a polar bear 400 years ago and subsequent generations vowed to never forget it. Now all that’s left is my racing heart to remember.
Or maybe it’s just a really rational fear aided by watching too many “I survived” episodes as a kid.
We had a wildly wonderful time collecting fire wood, drinking whiskey, making bangers and mash, and sharing stories as day turned to night. We basically had the place all to ourselves thanks to finding an overgrown campground far from the next and more obvious spot that was already taken. The creek ran alongside it and rain fell gently and intermittently throughout the night. When my partner and I got up to pee in the middle of the night, we paused to hug and soak up the stars before drifting back asleep. We also both had dreams related to deer and I swear something must have come up near the tent at some point in the night.
My partner is from Montana and I can see why she has such a strong emotional attachment to her home state, in a way that I don’t have to Florida. The day prior, we helped her parents pick and process grapes in their yard, a first for me. I absolutely love picking things and have to rein myself in when it’s blackberry season in Seattle or else I think I’d roam around the entire city just picking berries, forgetting anything else matters. Grape picking was no exception and I was so amped up from it that I started picking some of the apples that were ready.
In a way, it reminded me of Florida and climbing up our grapefruit tree as a kid (I climbed our lemon tree too but grapefruit was sturdier). I have such a strong memory of a time when I loaded my bible and likely a journal into a makeshift basket connected to a makeshift pulley system, climbed high into our grapefruit tree, sat on a big branch that split in the most perfect way to create a seat for my small self, and watched the sun fade as I read and reflected. It was at our old house so I was under the age of 9 or so. That habit and draw to nature and reflection as a kid remains. I’m so glad I haven’t lost that part of myself.
I think it was our grapefruit tree. It might have been orange!
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