An Afternoon Runyon Hike

Valleys green from big rains slowly yellow and brown back into the usual. The occasional adonis with the most toned of calves huffs uphill past us. Signs warn of snakes.

An ecologist friend quietly told my dad all these wildfires are not a bad thing but simply part of nature’s bigger project, an exhalation, an ousting of the smothering dead to make way for life. Quietly because it’s unpopular to be pro-fire amidst those who lost everything. The big picture makes us look like real jerks.

Dusty hiking trails get dustier, easier to slip on as Spring dries out. Illegally off-leash dogs get up in my pit’s face often enough that I muzzle her. She looks like Hannibal Lecter, and prematurely guilty.

Another scientist, a biologist, once told my class he likes it when, now and then, a human in nature gets eaten. He rooted for the undershark, the underbear, who has already lost so much. The biologist, like the ecologist, may have been making a point⁠—we tame nature at our long-term peril⁠—or maybe the biologist was a misanthrope.

A Week Away

I’m alive / can you hear me?

– Damien Jurado

The lake, like glass blown by a real pro, has just enough imperfections you can see the labor in it.

Too injured to hike or jog, I rifle crankily through volumes of unearned wonder and overcompensate for my foul mood by asking elaborate questions of my parents as if they are the subjects of a long-form magazine profile about America’s most fascinating near-retirees. They love it, and then it’s my turn to answer questions like, I know you don’t eat meat but what about chicken.

Years ago, in the middle of this lake, my friends and I heard a car crash from just behind the trees. A woman called out for someone to phone for help but we were a 15-minute paddle away.

You always feel helpless when you visit your family, my friend says on the phone. And then you’re surprised when it happens all over again. A modest earthquake hits LA triggering in me inexplicable FOMO.

At dinner, I greet a family friend. When he’s stiff and formal like don’t talk to me, my mind leaps to: Did he die inside or did I? For days the interaction bounces through my mind with all the jerky inelegance of an airplane landing.

The Eternal Wednesday

Constructing a personality around being fine is only fine when you’re fine. From the stillness of my solo apartment, I empathize via text with my friend about her bad roommate sitch. The dryscaping is always greener.

Though I would describe it as a quiet morning, from my couch I hear the neighbors’ TV, the neighbors talking, the birds chirping, the cars passing, construction workers unloading heavy metals, my dog’s claws clacking on the floor, and from my bedroom the sound of simulated rain.

As politicians announce presidential bids, the air fills with an anticipatory exhaustion for all the outrage to come. It feels so good to rub my eyes it might be worth whatever’s traveling from oily fingertips into me.

I cut a joke here that came from a deep insecurity that if I bore you, you’ll leave. Going hmm to stall as I wait for thoughts to wash ashore, I press on bravely like a Gym teacher subbing Chemistry. Cleverness is the teddy I eventually must attend a sleepover without.

– Gabe Durham