Nicole Bethune Winters | nonfiction | Remembering

 
  
   

Remembering
  


I’m six, and I’m following my dad up a mountain with a blue backpack slung over my shoulders.
My new shoes sink into the dirt of the trail, my mom and sister are behind us and I almost trip
because I am too busy looking up at the trees. In the side of the mountain there is a cave and
what if a bear lives in there? My dad hoists our food into the trees just in case. He sets up the
tents in a clearing next to a river. My sister and I are sharing ours and when we wake up there’s
already a fire to keep us warm and mom makes us hot chocolate to cup in our palms. When the
sun comes out we change into swimsuits and wade into the river and look for crawfish. I pretend
I am a fish and I follow the current. I walk across the rocks in my rubber soled water shoes and
hug a boulder that is warm. If I am quiet and if I close my eyes the wind blowing through the
trees sounds like whispers and I pretend I can whisper back. I mimic the chirps of the birds and
my mom points out a woodpecker perched on a limb tapping bark and looking for its dinner. My
dad shows me how to start a fire and I wonder if I’ll remember the steps. On the way down the
mountain we get lost and I don’t mind because I am not ready to leave the forest.

I’m almost twenty-eight and the creek is somehow still full even though it is the end of summer.
The chilled air balances out the warmth of the sun beating through pines and the ground squishes
with moisture, is speckled with polished rocks from the riverbed. We pitch our tent in the flattest
spot. You start a fire to cut the cold and we read beside it until my eyes strain to pick out the
words. I start chopping potatoes and vegetables for dinner and you oil the cast iron. We fall into
rhythm; this isn’t our first time.

The first time, I watched you pitch my tent because I didn’t remember how. I watched you start
the fire because I didn’t remember that either. I slept on the ground because I didn’t think I had a
sleeping pad, and I didn’t mind because it was summer, and the dirt was warm. I’d forgotten how
to speak to the trees, how to listen to them whisper, but when the breeze danced through the
leaves it came back to me. I closed my eyes and leaned back in a hammock strung between two
of them and cupped a mug of red wine in my palms and listened as the trees laughed with us. I
laughed so hard my stomach hurt, in the good way. And the pine gleam in your eyes matched the
mud gleam in mine and I had forgotten how it felt to be so alive. To feel like a flame licking at
the air around it. To feel like you could whisper back without actually speaking.

I can’t run my fingers through my hair because it’s snarled in knots. It’s lighter than it’s been in
years, though, sun-bleached and streaked with highlights from salt and desert heat. I haven’t cut
it, like when I was little and refused to go to the salon because I wanted it to stay long. I’m
leaving it wild, letting it wave, or not, I’m sick of being tame.

You didn’t realize how important those nights were to me. I didn’t either, until now. Now, when
I’m in the high desert watching the sun rise over the Sierras. You aren’t here, this time, but I can
almost see you walking through the sage looking for the right angle. I follow the patches of
yellow wildflowers, something I learned from watching you. And I crouch and twist my lens.
Squint through the viewfinder. I’m learning to find the right angles, too.

My dad sends me a picture of his campsite. He’s backpacking solo, over a hundred miles and a
stranger’s dog followed him for thirty. I send him a photo of my home for the weekend, my feet
propped up on rocks, my dog curled up beside me gnawing on a stick. It’s cold, but the kind that
I’m used to, now. I cup a mug of coffee in my palm and start a fire, the way I remember.