Tales of the Derry Plague , Anselmo, Ray [fun to read txt] 📗

But as she went home for dinner, she hadn’t made any headway on the boredom issue. Thirty-one days now since she’d gotten sick. Twenty-four since she recovered. She’d taken days off, yes, but except for the two trips east she hadn’t really gotten out of town. She needed to … to what? To break out of the trance? To get away from it all? To …

She mulled that over as she made noodles, with Alfredo sauce from a jar and shrimp and spinach from cans. There had to be some way, if only for a day, to mix it up a little, to have responsibility-free, consequence-free fun, to forget for a while her self-imposed responsibilities as lone caretaker of the planet (or at least of this corner of it). But nothing was coming readily to mind.

As she ate, she took out the picture of the party of five. What would they do? Well, they would go party. That hadn’t been a great attraction for her even before – she was never the social butterfly even during manic episodes. And now, where could she go to party, and who could she party with? Nowhere and nobody, it seemed. So that wasn’t an option.

She kept chewing on it as she took the laundry to the ocean and scrubbed it and herself. As she worked on the last pillowcase, her clothes drying on the rock, she looked out at the water, stretching to the horizon. Once you went past the little peninsula where the Nature Conservancy building was, there was nothing due west but seawater until you hit Japan six thousand miles away. She could swim out there until her arms and legs tired, and then …

“Stop it, stop it, stop it, stop it, STOP IT!” she told herself. She didn’t want to die, she wanted to live. She just didn’t like being alone and stuck. She needed to fix her life, not end it.

That brought her back to how. Fun. When was the last time she’d really, really enjoyed something besides a meal? Leave aside the head rushes of challenging wild or semi-wild animals – those weren’t fun so much as exciting in an oh-God-I-might-die-or-lose-a-limb way. Likewise the feelings of accomplishment at jobs well done – that was normal working and living. She was aiming for joy here.

That’s when she remembered the deer. Just standing there by the highway, minding their own business, as peaceful and pastoral a scene as she’d ever experienced. It did her heart good just to think about it now. Was there any way to get a whole day of that?

The answer was obvious: of course there was. Just go out into the wilderness, keep quiet and watch. And Sayler Beach was surrounded by miles of wilderness on all sides. Like houses and canned food, she had more untouched land than she knew what to do with.

That night, after hanging up the laundry to dry, she made plans. The next morning, after breakfast, journaling and siphoning, she packed a backpack with food, drink and Toni Matchick’s binoculars, hopped in the Hyundai and headed for the hills. Specifically, north on the Shoreline Highway until she got to the hairpin where it went sideways searching for a way to ford Lone Tree Creek. Where it finally did, she parked and began hiking north, following the creek upstream.

No houses out there to search – no man-made structures at all, just the natural beauty of Mount Tamalpais State Park. Trees and flowers and brush. She listened to the birdsong, the breezes through the branches, the crunch and shift of leaf litter under her hiking boots. She felt the ferns brushing against her canvas pants (she’d stepped in poison ivy once – never again) and the occasional bit of leaf or bark dropping on her hat. She smelled the fertile scents of growth, decay and more growth.

Finally she found a climbable tree near a small pond, went up about ten feet, settled into a comfortable position on a large branch against the trunk and broke out the binoculars. Time to enjoy nature in earnest.

She saw deer walking by, browsing and drinking before moving on. She saw raccoons and gray foxes toddling along the ground, seeking smaller prey. Squirrels jumped and scurried through the overgrowth and along tree branches. One even came within two feet of her and she froze, not wanting to scare it off. It hung around for a few minutes, twitching hyperactively and looking every which way, until it scampered off to points unknown.

A sleepy-looking mountain lion wandered by at one point, and she squinted at it, trying to determine if it was the same one she’d yelled at last week. But she had no way of telling – it wasn’t like she’d tagged it or anything. A family of coyotes – two adults, three smaller, passed too, acting nervous – maybe they smelled her up in the tree and were worried she’d attack. Later she heard a squeal from somewhere downstream and figured they’d caught dinner.

She even saw a bear at a great distance, bashing through the foliage like a bull in a photosynthesizing china shop. She’d been told that all the bears had left the park (or been hunted out of it) before it was founded almost a hundred years ago. It looked like one was venturing back now. Nature reclaiming its own, once again. Good for her.

When she noticed the sun going down, Kelly climbed out of the tree and headed back, feeling lighter of heart and sharper of brain. Yep, that was just the thing. She’d have to remember that whenever she felt she was being ground down by her life or what passed for it. She could get away from it all in pretty much every direction expect toward the ocean – it would be a waste to not take advantage.

Dinner