Non-Fiction Writing

The Shape of Fear

I thought I knew fear until I found myself on a week-long backpacking trip in the hills.

You start out not talking.

End of day two, you are talking to yourself.

End of day four, you are talking to the blueberries and blue orchids.

End of day seven, you haven't spoken a word in seventy hours. Your voice crackles when you try to use it at the first cigarette break on your return from the mountains. You have forgotten how to talk like yourself. Keep sentences short. Takes a few days to regain the flow.

The particular brand of fear you feel alone in the countryside after midnight is something I've never experienced before or since. Most things that startle you will have a rational, innocent explanation. But the rustling sound wakes you. It might be just a deer making its way back home. Inevitably attached to the hip of that thought is another: it might just be alarmed and trample your tent and you could die, or worse, sustain serious injuries that you have to deal with on top of everything else.

You hear a large animal breathing and the pine needles being displaced with each step. Your breathing is measured and shallow as you reaffirm the grip on your pocket knife. Or whichever class of weapon you drifted off to sleep holding. Make no noise. Be silent. They smell you. They know you're there. They'll pass.

More footsteps. A family? Herd? Pack? Likely not snow leopards. They walk a little more deliberately. Bears don't care. They make noise. Deer. Might be just deer. You keep telling yourself they are just deer. Then you realize you haven't heard a sound in a while. And you hope they are gone, not just standing still. Staring at your tent.

At some point, somehow, you drift off to sleep again. Silently.

In the morning, you stand in the sun and laugh at how terrified you were. You laugh it off out loud. Or you find wolf tracks and don't laugh. Instead you start wondering about your place in this world. What this world is.