what fear creates

 

Last July, I stopped writing here. The final post was about how a man with an overflowing bucket of entitlement and anger had frightened me so badly I stopped going to the dog park. The fear of angry people pushed me into the mountains where I could hike alone. Where I felt safer stumbling through the trees in the dark than I did in the valley in the middle of the day. 

Three days a week, I would set my alarm for 4:30 AM, make coffee, grab the dogs, and drive fast to avoid people and parking issues.

Near the end of July, I had hiked most of the top of the canyon and begrudgingly shifted my hiking to lower trails. What I didn't shift was my alarm clock. One morning, I got up, a little earlier than normal, and drove half as far. I ended up on the Overlook trail hiking in swallowing darkness. 

I was so scared I forced Juneau in front and Ginger Dog behind. I didn't have a light other than my phone. 

I remember thinking I should go back. Of course, I didn't. I hiked in the dark, safely tucking into my own fear. And a conversation began playing in my head. From that conversation grew the first chapter of a book. The timing of which was unfortunate because I was just finishing a not so horrible manuscript/novel and considering attempting to publish it. 

Fear is a house of mirrors.

Sometimes it fools you. Fear can amplify, replicate, reflect, and it can create. 

This past week at work, I had a similar angry person encounter. It was a woman, and she did something I have never seen someone do. It has shaken my faith in the rules of bad behavior. It wasn't her swearing at me and threatening to "come in and kick my ass." Blowing up the phone for half an hour. Or her showing up demanding to speak to my boss. At least in my job, anger and rudeness, I know how to deal with. I am a fixer. I talk anger down. I make mad people happy. 

But this woman lied. I know people lie, but they do it when they think they can get away with it. She was so bold, so empowered, she didn't give a shit that WE both knew she was saying wasn't true. 

She accused me of doing what she had done to me, swearing, threaten her, and hanging up on her. Then she threw out another threat pretending to be a police officer, which she is not. 

And as I kept helping the customers in front of me, this woman stood two feet away, complaining loudly to the authority figure we provided for her. Sneering over at me victoriously boldface lying ABOUT ME- basically to me.

Lied about what was said, who she spoke with, who had helped her the week before. EVERYTHING she said was untrue. I couldn't interject. I couldn't defend myself. It was like being held down and being punched in the face.

She thought she had all the power and that I was helpless. And in the world of customer service, she wasn't entirely wrong. Customer service is a tar pit. It's hard to work in and not get your ethics and morals (and self-esteem) a little dirty in the name of being paid to be nice.

So it's nice that no one at my work believes her. They all have my back. Nicer still that I have witnesses to all my encounters with her. It's great that the owner researched all the data on the computer, which proves I was doing my job by the book. Except for one thing. I broke police when the week before I did the woman a "favor." After a rambling account of child support and illness, I let her prepay for a spot in a full class if it were to come available. And if not, she was to use the credit she created for the following month. 

I fucked up by being nice to her. And as far as breaking the rules, we allow people to prepay for classes as gifts, so as a rule follower, I want it noted I only bent the rule. 

But that niceness was my downfall. She knew she had pushed me the week before to get her way, and so she figured she would do it again. But it didn't work, and so she was angry. She wanted revenge, and she got it.

I am being told not to worry about it. I'm not in trouble for not doing anything wrong. I'm not in trouble for being verbally assaulted at work. That's good to know. 

Logically, of course, she was a crazy-ass woman, just walk away from her- after you do your job, of course, and after she gets her say, but you don't get yours. Don't let her bother you, just like the angry man at the dog park. Walk away. Into the mountains. Into darkness. Through fear. Into the light.

"There is a space in my mind where monsters lay in wait."

I have now written the book I will hopefully publish. And after I thank all the people who have supported me, I suppose I will thank all the angry people who made it possible to write an entirely fictitious novel about fear.

To keep down on the word count, it will simply say: fuck you.

the days that follow

I don't want to be up at 4:30AM making coffee.  I don't want to hike that trail. I don't want to be so in love with what I have learned is politely called a reactive dog. 

I don't want it to be July.

But most of all, I don't want to be on a 7-mile hike at the top of the canyon on a Sunday morning because I am too afraid to go back to Tanner.

What is there to say?  I was yelled at by a man, probably having his own bad day that had nothing to do with me.  I know, I was with Juneau, give him a couple of minutes you will find plenty of things to yell about.  

However, this man had no issue with Juneau or Ginger.  He was yelling at me. 

 Tanner, on the dog park side, is an off-leash trail every day of the week, all year long.  We go there just about every other day. Or I should say we did.  

This man decided I had let my dogs off-leash a hair too soon; a couple of feet from the arbitrary line he himself drew on the trail.  

"What makes you any different from anyone else!" he screamed repeatedly in my direction and then dramatically threw down the leashes of his 2 dogs.  

At first, I didn't even realize he was addressing me.  

There were at least 4 other dog owners with their off-leash dogs on the trail with us. My dogs were both at my feet.  And yet he was singling me out. 

Of course, knowing full well I hadn't done anything wrong I instantly began apologizing.

Most likely realizing he was actually in the wrong with me still apologizing, the angry man with his 2 dogs walked away.

I altered my route to avoid having to trail behind him the whole time but otherwise continued on our walk. We did have to pass him one more time on our way out; it was uneventful. 

Two other women who had seen it go down went out of their way to tell me how wrong he had been, laughing it off as a nutty guy. 

And I told BC you would be so proud of me I didn't even let it bother me. 

There is a space in my mind where monsters lay in wait.  

It did bother me.  It bothered me a lot.  

Finally, I had to admit I was afraid to go back.  With support from a few friends, I gathered my nerve and three days later returned with my dogs. Successfully twice saw and passed the angry little man. Problem solved. 

Only it's not. 

It's July and I now run the outside trail from 2300 to Wasatch and back. Dogless and alone as the bikers clip by me. Sometimes I startle so badly I have to stop to calm down. 

I go out in the heat on the heavily exposed blacktop walking the biggest hills, running the small ones. 

I look down at the dogs in the dog park and wonder 

what the hell I am so afraid of? But it changes nothing.

The canyon is better.  The trails yawn and stretch.  The dogs run free.  When you are alone in the city it is seen as a weakness. In the mountains, it is a strength.  

I didn't want to hike Dog Lake this morning.  It's not a trail I love but I owed the dogs something.  

Driving in the dark looking for deer stepping out from the trees I followed the canyon road to the end.  

Alone in a dark parking lot.  Alone on a dark trail.  Alone when the sun splits the trees. And alone at a beautiful mountain lake. 

Walking among the trees pockets of hidden snow, breathe the breath of winter over the smell of a distant wildfire.  The world is pine and dust nothing else even exists. 

All of it is for this dog who can't tell us about his past.  Who can't explain why some things scare him so badly while other things don't. 

I suppose the same could be said of me.   

     

gsl

resutls from the deer hunt

snapshots of me

I stood at the counter watching the black and white pages pop from the machine.  The weight of the notebook a phantom in my hand. I had found it while waiting to be helped by the man at the print shop.

It was tucked away on a shelf.  The cover, a waxy wash of blue, pages dots, not lines, an open spine, and only $10.  But still, with so many expenses this month I told myself I didn't need it.  I didn't need another notebook.

Over the weekend I thought about it.  The smell.  The blueness.  The clean slate.  Sunday at 5:55 I checked the prints shops hours- Sunday 12-6.

On Monday I struggled with the rumpled green bills inside my wallet.  I mentally tagged each one of them towards the desserts needs for Beach's birthday, for a proper gift for Baby J, towards the trip to the bounce house for her, and fresh vegetables we would be needing midweek.

No money for a notebook.

But on Tuesday morning I made an excuse to go to the post office and drove the print shop.  I found a blue notebook.  Rubbed the cover.  I opened it.  Shut it.  Turned it over and rubbed the back.  I put it back once but the second time I picked it up I carried to the counter.

"This one is my favorite," the man said.  Then he showed me its blueness, it's open spine, its grid, not lined pages. He was the same man who had helped me the week before.

When I got home I was too nervous to write in it.  I got out a sheet of notebook paper and wrote: Pieces of Me. Below that, I spaced out the words: Me, Family, School, House, Yard, Travel, and Work across the paper. Then I got to work adding in the details under each part.

When I was satisfied I took up the blue notebook.  Opened the first page and printed in 4 months of calendars and listed important events off to the side.  I skipped the second page but on the third, I carefully copied in the Pieces of Me. Adding artful accents and using 3 different colors of ink.

It wasn't until the late afternoon when I was standing on the summit that I realized it had been one week.  That last Tuesday I was not on top of a mountain.  I did not have a new blue notebook and a clean slate.  I was way out in the valley at the dentist's office closing old doors.

One week.

What divinity is this?

A naked dragon with granite bones

It sleeps like a cat coiled and still

but rises like a serpent

rolling to the sea

breaking the surface of the sky

with scales of red and yellow

and eyes of winter white

In that space, I have already hiked 2 hikes that mean more than miles to me. The Living Room is inside my soul.  It is my heart and my fears.  It holds pieces of my sister, of love, of loss, fire, and snow.

Elbow Fork is of another lifetime- and another love.  It is the fight I have been fighting for the past 3 or 4 years.  The fight to make it to higher ground.  It holds the sound of silence, ghosts of steamy breath, BC's hand outstretched, flannel, rain, and lightning.

As I hike I take snapshots of myself smiling at nothing and marvel at how much I am starting to look like ME.

The mountain breaks the October sky,

tearing at its white dress

ripping holes in its autumn peace

I could stay here in its whisper

rest in the wind

let the dog go feral like the trees

When I return from the mountain I gather all the notebooks from this past year and burn them in the yard in a nest of fallen leaves and narrow branches.  The flames blacken out the calendars with important events.  The dentist appoints littered like buckshot among them disappear.  The fire licks the pages; meal plans, medication schedules, soft food lists, chores, projects completed, words already written, gifts already bought and given. The notebooks burn.

I go inside and take up the blue book.  On the fourth page, I write.

Mirror Lake Highway