The Return

He wasn’t sure if it was his snarling hungry stomach that awoke him or the crackling of spruce turned to ember, releasing one last gasp of expanded gas while travelling from tree to ash. His head remained clear enough to recognize irrepressible shivers, and carefully and precisely note to the various stages of hyperthermia. Or is it hypothermia? It troubled him knowing he should know, while simultaneously intriguing him that his mind was still capable of knowing there’s a difference; knowing he ought to know what he doesn’t. Then, as if to prove to himself his level of awareness, his brain delivered a few words of caution: Do not remove your clothes! It then obnoxiously repeated it, over and over, like an earworm, or is it a brain worm? Or a cognitive itch?

Then he imagined himself prancing naked in the snow, making clotheless snow angels, then jumping in the frigid ice hole his father had cut into the lake with a chainsaw when he was a child, then rapidly climbing out, running and submerging himself in the hot springs, skin tingling, friends laughing, sun shining, snowflakes stinging against his bare naked face. He laughed out loud and thought he heard himself. Then he thought he heard others, maybe, or perhaps just the wind howling through bare limbs of larches around him. Or it might have been wolves singing in the distance, wailing like he imagined the sounds of native women mourning the deaths of their children, or at least how it’s portrayed in the movies, and then he thought of Robert Redford and Jeremiah Johnson and Hatchet Jack’s final note, “I, Hatchet Jack, being of sound mind and broke legs, do leaveth my rifle to the next thing who finds it, Lord hope he be a white man. It is a good rifle, and kilt the bear that kilt me. Anyway, I am dead.”

Ha! He remembered! And he laughed again. Longer. Louder.

Sound mind, he thought. Do not remove your clothes!

Doused by increasing heavy snowfall, the fire gave off one last tiny flicker of orange and red then turned black as the forest around it. He wondered, if you can’t see the forest, is it still there? He laughed again.

He knew he had to do something. Anything. But he had no energy, no desire, no inclination to gather wood, though he knew he should, but he also thought how difficult and tiresome it might be to yet again build a fire, a thought that brought to mind Jack London, and again he laughed hard and loud as he envisioned a bucket’s worth or two of snow falling upon him from spruce boughs above and burying him in a thick blanket of warmth.

And there was his father, cutting though the thick, hard ice with a chainsaw to reach the warm water below.

He turned slowly around towards the lichen-covered ledge behind him that, until now, had served as a fine backrest, for which he would forever remain grateful, and said so to the rock, before forgetting to. He couldn’t see it but could feel it, solid as a brick house. Indestructible. Immortal. Invincible. Or is it invisible? 

He remembers confusing those very words whenever reciting the Pledge of Alliance as a school kid. Why should he know the difference now? At least he knew that he ought to know, he thought.

Sound mind, he thought. Do not remove your clothes!

Dig! 

So he dug.

He knew he needed claws, sharp claws, claws as sharp as his mind. And he needed strength, physical strength, the physical strength of a grizzly. He was aware he possessed a sufficient and effective quantity of both. 

So he dug.

He dug deep through layers of soft snow and frozen crust. He dug deeper through a layer of dead and decaying duff. He dug deeper and deeper through roots and dirt and rock towards the fiery center of mother earth, deep down past the early stages of warmth until it grew increasingly, almost uncomfortably hot. 

Then he stopped.

Although he greatly appreciated and applauded the mind’s well-meaning counsel and advice, and such warnings made perfect sense at the time, considering previous and precarious circumstances, he knew that his once dire situation had now significantly changed, thanks to claws, strength and soundness of mind. All had suddenly taken a turn for the better. Everything was going to be just fine. It was hot. So he removed his clothes, then crawled quickly down into his cozy hole. It was beyond perfection, like “being in God’s pocket” as his mom liked to say. Then he heard her say it, again, and tell him how tremendously proud she was of his unwavering determination, fortitude and presence of mind in the face of adversity. It felt richly satisfying to have pleased his mother enough to receive such high and unusual praise. He couldn’t remember when he had last felt so content. He curled into a fetal position, and thought he could recall the warmth and comfort of his mother’s womb.

He drifted warmly into a deep, deep sleep and dreamt of bright golden glacier lilies in a lush, green meadow where all seemed to be slowly sliding down, slipping towards the precipice, down towards the edge of a warm and welcoming silence.