Frozen Woods

Upper Peninsula, Michigan

I wasn't very old, maybe five, when I went into the woods with my mother to get a deer. I can see her with the .30-.30 carbine to her shoulder, behind the fallen beech trunk, and the gray brown buck down in the snowy ravine looking up as the unbelievable crack of the rifle broke the world in half. The buck leaped up the side of the ravine below us, and mother levered another round home and fired again. The buck seemed to raise up in the frozen air and then he went down, forever.

As mother dressed the buck, I asked her what my father used to do. "He worked in the woods," she said, drawing the hook knife along the belly of the buck.

I wanted to work in the woods, but it worked out differently.

It was cold, the air was full of frost.

"This is a young buck," she said. "Young bucks are alone, and they aren't as experienced. Lucky for us. We'll have meat this winter." I helped Mother drag the buck out of the woods on a toboggan. I felt bad for the young buck, but I was young.

Time passed, and I was working in California, living along the coast. Showing off for a young girl beneath the Pacific Beach Pier, I rode my surfboard into a piling. The hospital in Chula Vista is close enough to Mexico that you can see it from the windows in the hallways. I was going under when the anesthesiologist said "just talk."

"I was in some frozen woods, skating, and there was a full moon above. My dog was running over on my right. It was as bright as day, but still night. I was skating along the frozen swamp. It was heaven."

"It never froze in the Phillipines," the nurse said, "I don't know what that's like, but it sounds nice."

"It was nice," I said.