A Good Day to Die

We all must die sometime.

This area seems like a fine enough place to do it.

The trail here is narrow and curves sharply to the right. The drop-offs here are significant. The land below is a dotted landscape of extremes. The winters here are harsh, and the trees are all stunted, short-limbed things that look like elves hugging the side of the mountain.

The problem was that I’d stopped to meditate and soak up some of the natural beauty.

The river rumbles and roars far below. I doubt I’d tumble all the way to the river if I fell, but I’m not interested in testing that hypothesis.

It hasn’t seen me. Not yet it hasn’t, but its huff pulled me from my meditative state.

There’s only one animal that sounds like that: a bear.

I’m a noisy hiker. My pack rattles. My bones creak and crack as I walk up and down the trails. This is my first encounter with a grizzly bear. I know I’ve had to come close to them before, but the noise that accompanies me like an entourage usually scares them away. But I had sat quietly on the uphill edge of the trail, cross-legged, enjoying the view and meditating on and off for the last hour.

The bear must have worked its way down the slope or come up from the south, following the trail, looking for its lunch. Apparently, it had been successful. It is 40 yards from me, but I can hear the bear’s powerful jaw tearing apart something big. I think it might be a raccoon, and that makes me sad. I love raccoons. We romanticize nature so much, but at the end of the day it’s just so much ‘red of tooth and clay.’

I stand up as quietly as I can. My legs have grown tingly and numb from sitting for so long. I contract my muscles in both legs in ways that I hope quickly restore circulation. I believe I can head north, as quietly as a loud hiker like me can, but then my eyes fall on the trail before me, and I remember the season. Fall is my favorite time to hike, not too hot, not too cold, but the trail is awash in fallen leaves, crunchy, crackling leaves. And below the still colorful leaves? Twigs and branches. Things that snap and pop with every move I make. Lots of things to provide my attempted, numbed-leg getaway with sounds that might draw the bear’s attention.

One alternative is to outwait him and pray he goes west (back up the mountain), east (towards the river), or south (the direction I’d come from).

Who said, ‘Practice dying?’

I don’t recall. Was it the Greeks? The Romans? One of the lovable Monty Python rascals?

I think it sounds like the Greeks.

The furry pile at the bear’s feet is getting smaller. He’s not eating everything. I suspect he’s tossing the inedible bits off to the side.

That poor animal.

Nature is nature.

Well, what would prefer to happen here? Should the bear magnanimously let the animal live and starve in the process?

It’s untenable. Nature is neither moral nor amoral; nature is nature.

Grizzlies can run fast. I am 61 years old and not fast. If it came down to a race between the two of us, I would end up being the bear’s dessert. I doubt he will finish me.

Practice dying.

Something I’d been meaning to investigate or do for decades.

Why had I never followed up on this intention? How does one even do that? Practice dying?

For decades, I’ve lived with a low to mid-grade level of depression. Then, lucky me, that condition was joined by a bracingly obnoxious anxiety. Trust me, of the two, anxiety is worse, far worse.

Depression leaves you not wanting to do anything but sleep. Sleep, eat, self-medicate, and escape reality.

Anxiety sends your mind nonstop inscrutable messages!

You must do something.

But what should I do?

What’s the rush?

My brain never answers my questions; it just repeats the command with evermore urgency.

You must do something now!

No thanks. I’ll stick with my longtime companions: the black dogs of depression.

Today is a good day to die.

I wish I could remember who said that. Why? Would knowing the source make my situation more manageable? No, probably not. So, what do you do now?

I study the valley before me. The river is a rolling, noisy affair. At lower altitudes that is. At my elevation, it is a pleasing background sound like white noise. If I were lower, the water sounds, waves crashing over and over against the Rocky banks, might give even a loud hiker like me enough audio cover to slip away unnoticed.

What am I missing?

I look again, patient, attentive, and alert as my jacked-up nervous system will allow.

Gratitude! I shall practice gratitude!

The mountain is beautiful. The river, so far below me, is more an abstraction than an actual current of water.

My eyes drift upward. The skies are a piercing blue color, with not a cloud to be seen anywhere. My heart fills with joy. This interests me. How could I feel anything in this moment but stark terror?

I toy with the question, but I sense a lack of interest in answering it. I’m grateful for the joy. There’s fear also, but the joy is louder.

My life was (IS!) a series of potential moments for such ecstasy, such joy-not all of them were wasted. Many were. So much time I squandered. Thinking I would live forever. Not really, but I conducted my life like I had time.

If I had that time now, it’d be gold in my pocket.

It will be dark soon. I need to find the next shelter before darkness falls. As dangerous as this trail is during the day, it’s worse when the lights go out. From the sun’s position, I’d guess I have maybe an hour.

The next shelter is still three miles away.

I must go. Now. My untenable situation also includes a clock.

I check on my two friends: depression and anxiety. They are quiet, lying dormant somewhere in the background. They wouldn’t have offered anything helpful anyway.

The void left by the temporary abandonment of my twin emotional states: anxiety and depression, is a gaping hole. I’m surprised that rising in me is a joy of life, a zest even. I’ve never felt more alive than I feel right now, in this moment. Certain death awaits to the south. The lump of brown is alarmingly small now. One way or the other, the bear is almost done and will likely start moving my way. There’s no way it came from the north. I wished I’d studied more about bears. It might have come from the west, up the steep mountain, but I doubt it. He’s already shifted to conserving his energy in preparation for winter. I think there’s an eighty percent chance he is coming my way soon.

A resignation settles into my being. Yet my background exhilaration is still there. I wouldn’t have expected that. Not that I want to die, but now that it is spitting distance close, I find I’d rather not feel his thick teeth squeezing my head, or my neck, shaking me around like a ragdoll. Its breath, hot on my skin, odorous. It’s saliva running down to mix with my blood.

Yes, because everyone knows bears are notoriously undisciplined when it comes to dental hygiene. Despite the dangerous situation, I must clamp down on a very real need to giggle.

I study the ground at my feet and take two little steps. I’m on the trail now. Standing sideways, I can see the bear to my right. A series of side steps might put enough distance between me and it so that I might feel running wouldn’t be a stupid thing to do. But I’d need at least a hundred yards to feel that confident about running.

Thank you for my life, all of it. These skies!

And the bear?

What?

Are you also grateful for the bear?

More joy floods my system. I’m giddy. I certainly don’t feel 61 now. I feel 28. I feel as though I could run. I want to run. It might be my last opportunity to do so.

I take two more steps. The second step finds a particularly brittle branch. The crack is a rifle shot to my ears. The huffing and crunching sounds from my right cease immediately.

I lift my head and lock eyes with it.

Looks like I’m running after all.

My odds aren’t good. The trail is narrow. If I pitch off to the east, I will die long before my body finds the river.

The bear might slip and fall.

That idea also makes me want to giggle.

But then I imagine the hot, stinky breath on my neck as he bites my head.

Will he eat my glasses?

I don’t want him to do that. I think the lenses would break and probably kill him before he finished digesting whatever portion of me, he would eat.

Today is a good day to die.

Looks like a good time to run.

Today is a good day to run.

I pull my glasses from my head and stuff them in my shorts pocket. I take two steps down the slope — I’m no longer 61. I’m 28 or even 18! I’m fast. The joy finds me again. I don’t kid myself, don’t tell myself that I’m about to outrun the killing machine behind me, but the joy is undeniable. I’m running as fast as I’ve ever run. The trail is sloping down, and my feet barely flick the path every nine feet now.

Today is a good day to die. But I’m practicing first.

I run to meet my future. My hungry eyes drift upward to taste the sky, for just a glimpse. Despite everything, I find I’m smiling.

Originally published at http://storiesbyshawn.com on October 19, 2023.