Everything Is Trying To Kill You, But That’s Okay

High in the Catskill mountains, it’s time to face the truth

“But there’ll be bears! A forest full of bears!” I said. “I don’t want to be eaten.”

I pick up a hot-pink doughnut and take a sticky bite. Through the curved tin windows of the Amtrak, unfamiliar land rushes by. As the light dims, it’s looking more abstract by the minute: patches of woodland that could be lakes, lakes that could be craters. A corn-pale stag raises his head to watch us pass; his eyes are grave like he’s looking through me to the knot of worry inside.

My boyfriend takes a sip of tea and winces. “I swear they somehow make it hotter than boiling,” he says. Then he turns to me, putting a hand on my arm I can’t feel through my padded coat. “I mean, yes, there are bears, but what’s the point of going all the way to the Catskills if we don’t even hike?”

“Cabin life,” I mumble and lick sugar from my fingers. I reach a hand down to press the right side of my stomach, just below the belly button.

“Everything will be okay,” he says.

Three days later, and my boyfriend’s won.

As we sign the hiker’s book at the foot of Overlook Mountain my heart is thudding.

“See, you have to sign in because they know there’s a good chance you won’t come back.” I half-joke, penning the date.

“You have to sign in because you always have to sign into hikes in America!” my boyfriend replies. “I think it’s weird you don’t have to in the UK. What if you got lost?”

“At least nothing’s trying to eat you in the UK,” I shoot back. “The worst thing you’ll run into is a patch of stinging nettles or a pissed-off wasp after your sandwich.”

“I don’t know,” he laughs “you always think everything’s trying to kill you.”

“Everything is trying to kill you,” I say. “Think about all the animals who want to eat or poison you. The parasites, the viruses, the bacteria. The natural disasters. Even just stress. Stress can kill you!”

My boyfriend throws me a withering smile, and as we start up the rocky path, I imagine how it would look from above: a tiny vein snaking up the mountain amid a claustrophobic block of green — stiflingly uniform from above but crawling with dark secrets beneath.

Patches of snow are starting to appear already, just a few minutes into our hike; they sparkle like festival glitter in the afternoon sun. But as we journey upwards, I’m on high alert. My head whips left to right, scanning the trees for movement or currant-black eyes. The forest is always watching.

Suddenly there’s a crack of twigs.

“What was that?” I hurry the words out, but my boyfriend turns languidly to peer where I’m pointing.

“Oh,” he says, and his face crinkles. “It’s a chipmunk — look!”

“Where?”

I can’t see anything and then suddenly it’s obvious: tiny and serious, like a squirrel wearing racer-stripes. For the first time in days, I feel joy bubbling in my chest. We stand for a moment in silence, watching it bob around the trunk of an oak.

“Let’s keep going,” he says. “Not long before dark.”

I tilt my chin up to the hulk of Overlook above us, dark-tipped and mysterious.

I wonder what’s up there. Bears? Bobcats? Cougars? Surely there aren’t big cats so close to towns. I decide not to ask. Instead, I try to forget about the forest and focus on my boyfriend’s slim shoulders as he hikes. I think about how since we’ve been in New York he’s let me drift off nestled into them every night, despite the fact he hates sleeping on his back. He’s indulged me in the small things since the scare.

The sky is darkening to the shade of a 3b pencil now and I’m getting worried. Should we turn back? How will I see a bear coming? But I think we must be nearly at the top because we’ve been traversing upwards for hours.

We pass a wholesome-looking couple laughing on their way down. My hand goes automatically to my right side again and I’m dizzy with longing to be so carefree. I turn to watch the woman’s perfect pony bob as they descend.

Suddenly, a structure appears in a clearing to our right. It’s like someone laid the walls of a mansion and then gave up on the roof. Slate-coloured steps lead up to an almost building: a grand house sketched in bricks.

“It was once a hotel, I think,” my boyfriend says, watching me stare at the building’s shell. “Can you imagine how hard it must’ve been to get building materials up here?”

We stare in silence at rows of sky-filled windows and the grand arched door leading nowhere, minds scrabbling to fill in the building’s gaps. I try to imagine the lives that crossed paths with this place. Did ladies in chiffon sip tea on this stone veranda, peering warily into the trees? Were servants stuck here year-round, longing for home? I imagine collecting firewood alone, always trying to keep the hotel’s bulk within sight.

I shudder. Everything’s always trying to kill you, but especially out here.

We’re nearly there: we should keep going,” my boyfriend says. He looks straight at me for the first time in a while, and I think if he had x-ray vision, he’d be able to see my frame like the bones of the hotel. He’d also see, just above my hip, a shadow the size and shape of a thumbprint. Likely a tumour, the doctor had said so quietly I thought I’d imagined it.

We turn away and begin to crest the mountaintop. The trees are thinner and more spread out up here. A public toilet and picnic bench look Lego-sized below a fire tower of crisscrossed metal poles with steps that wind skywards.

“Do you want to climb it?” my boyfriend interrupts my thoughts, but he sounds dubious. I’m famous for having laid face down on a mountain path and refused to get up; my sister had to try and prize me off a rock while walkers simply stepped over me on their way to the peak.

But I’ve just walked up a mountain and through a forest where there are bears; that’s three things I don’t like, what’s the harm in facing one more fear?

From above, the forest looks different than I imagined. It’s not oppressive: it’s ethereal. The mass of trees could be a soft carpet of moss or a wide green sea rippling in the breeze. My breath catches. It occurs to me that though I’m tiny in comparison to the wilderness around me, I’d still be just visible from a helicopter flying overhead, my red bobble hat marking the spot.

I’m small but I’m still alive, still here, still part of it all: an infinitesimal piece in the most unimaginably complex puzzle.

I wonder if my fear of bears isn’t really a fear of being eaten at all, or not specifically at least because who wants to be eaten? But maybe I’m afraid of the woods and the bears because they represent the uncertainties of life none of us can escape. They are the surgery I face when we head home. They are the traffic accident statistics I read in the news. They are the call I might get at any time telling me a loved one has passed.

We climb carefully back down the tower and turn to go. I can walk through uncertainty, I think; I can live even when it’s crowding in on either side. Everything is trying to kill you but that’s okay, because while death is ever-present, so is life.

This time, I don’t look left or right at the forest or at my boyfriend’s back, I focus on the path ahead. The light is slipping away quietly now, but in the growing darkness, the beauty of the forest shines a light.