Et In Cascadia Ego
an excerpt

Finally, they belayed each other down, the younger woman taking out the belay screw and making the last twenty feet a free climb. The older woman studied her daughter’s movements carefully, inspecting for any seed of a mishap. At points when her daughter’s hand groped around a bit, she would advise on where she saw a good hold, or where the most solid place was to place her crampon spike. When her daughter reached ground, they both stretched. The older woman looked up at the tree and bowed deeply. Her daughter laughed, a little embarrassed, but a little pleased. Her mom sure could be a fruity new ager sometimes, but there was no harm in it really, and it made her do good things with her job.

“Don’t laugh,” her tone was gently chiding, but understanding. “That tree is most certainly a guardian of the forest, if not a demi god. One should thank it.”

Bemused, the younger woman turned to the tree and mimicked her mother’s bow. “Thank you, guardian of the forest.”

“Well done. When the gods are gracious enough to let you pass unharmed, you should always show humility and gratitude.” She smirked at her daughter. “You may not think it’s necessary now, but I hope in time you will.” They proceeded to open up their packs again in order to pack away their gear. In went the screws, the crampons, the and the meticulously cared for rope. As they were readjusting and tugging the compression straps on their packs once more, the grey haired woman spoke again. “And yes… yes, I honestly do think it is a good idea to give whatever powers that be the chance to wipe me and all my good intentions from the face of the earth. I don’t know everything, Sophia, even though I act like it. Even though I try. A lot of people are not comfortable with what I am planning—what we are planning—Nick isn’t, for one—and a lot of people are going to be downright angry. Am I doing the right thing? I hope so; I believe so. But ultimately, we do not know, and we never can.

You know I believe that there is no such thing as coincidence. Call it god, call it the oversoul, call it the pantheon, call it mother earth, I do believe that there is something larger than I, that knows better than I, and of which I am a part. If, for example, we have to climb around another tree, and that tree falls while we are on it, and I am knocked senseless or, gods forbid, knocked dead—then I shall accept that a higher authority vetoed my plans.

The same is true of any moment in life; I could be seized by a stroke, and it would not be out of the question. My grandmother’s cousin had two strokes, the first when she was around my age, and twenty years later she died of the second. But in a way, there’s something more important about going someplace where the elements of nature, of the world, of stochasticity are dominant and free to act—to the land where random chance has not been curbed by the comforts and cautions of human civilization, and the voice of that which is larger than me is the loudest thing we can hear.” The grey haired woman stopped talking for a few heartbeats, and the forest seemed silent, though of course it was not; but whatever sounds existed seemed nothing more than a part of the breath of a gigantic organism. Or maybe that was just because of the conversation’s tone.

“I like going where one has little choice but to place oneself at the whim of the gods. The boundaries of human existence. Where it is clear that I am but one creature in a forest of many,”—a blue jay flew past them, in front of their faces it seemed, with the sound of a battalion of flags snapping violently in the wind—“and where all things,”—she slapped a mosquito on her forearm and brought it up to look at a smear of her own blood on the fingers of her hand—“die.”