Non-Fiction Writing

The Shape of Fear

I thought I knew fear. Until I found myself on a three-week backpacking trip to Maine.

You start out not talking.

End of week one, I'm talking to myself.

End of week two, I'm talking to the blueberries and blue trumpets.

End of week three, I'm not talking at all. My voice crackles when I try to use it at the first gas station on my return from the mountains. I have forgotten how to talk like myself. 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 moose 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 bear spray or stun gun. Whichever you drifted off to sleep holding in the first place. Make no noise. Be silent. They smell you. They know you're there. They'll pass.

More footsteps. A family? Herd? Pack? Likely not mountain lions. 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 bear tracks and don't laugh. Instead you start wondering about your place in this world. What this world is.