Stonecrop Magazine

He likes his cherries when they’re maraschino, his denim from Tokyo, and his toilet paper triple-ply, which is why, when I suggest spending our first anniversary after her tent camping at a remote hot spring, I assume Grant’s joking when he agrees.

“Only for you,” he says, laughing; at this point, I think he’d accompany me to Antarctica if it meant I’d put his affair behind us.

Maybe I was naive, thinking a romantic soak under star-studded skies would be enough to set us right, to prove I could be as fun and spontaneous as the college sophomore he’d slept with.

“Just give him another chance,” his mother, Helena, advised. “You know how men are. He loves you so much.” When my own mother agreed with Helena–that I’d be a fool to give up such an investment– I’d thrown up my hands in defeat and promised to try.

❢

Before dawn, we’ve loaded Grant’s Land Rover with camping gear that cost two arms and a leg and we’re on the road to nowhere, Idaho. We fill the first few hours with banter and laughter, Grant’s hand on my thigh in an affectionate vise only slightly too tight.

The sagebrush transitions to ponderosa. Five hours into the drive, we can no longer agree on which music to listen to.

We lose service outside a town with only a gas station and then, after too many miles of washboard road and a flat just inside the campsite, the last of Grant’s patience.

“This was your stupid idea,” Grant says. I say nothing.

The hot springs are close, corralled from the river with large, smooth stones, just a half-mile hike through the darkening forest. I kindle the fire and we eat, tomahawk steaks and roasted root vegetables. Between the edible and the champagne, I find myself warmly– unexpectedly– tender.

Turned on.

“Dessert can wait,” I say. “Race you to the river!”

I’m doing it, I think– See? I AM fun.

We fly down the trail, bottles in hand, dodging low-hanging branches with moderate success until I trip on a root and lose a Birkenstock. Ahead, Grant pauses, annoyed.

❢

I hear her before I see her, padded steps crunching forest duff as she approaches.

Outside of a singularly sad tourist attraction, I’ve never seen a brown bear before. She’s much larger than I expected, loping toward us. Imperious.

Grant shrieks.

I yell, waving my arms like I’ve lost my damn mind, and feel a sudden pressure on my back; the last thing I see, hurtling towards the ground, is my flashlight illuminating Grant’s back as he sprints toward the treeline.

I look up. The bear stops, mere feet away, her harrumphing thick with curiosity.

We lock eyes in the near-dark, she and I, for what feels like eternity, until finally, she shakes her head, lowers to all fours, and, I swear– when retelling this story six months later at my divorce party– I saw something like pity in those wide, bright eyes.

A storyteller since childhood, Cat (they/them) graduated in 2018 from the Boise State Honors College with a BA in Creative Writing, but has yet to find a way to monetize their degree. Cat enjoys thrifting tchotchkes, rockhounding in remote locations, and standing over a sink eating dill pickles straight from the jar. A frequent outsider, Cat’s Western Gothic-informed fiction and non-fiction writing frequently examine identity, Otherness, and isolation— in other words, they’re a huge hit at parties. Most recently a Portlander, Cat currently resides in a tiny dot-on-the-map Eastern Oregon town with their multiple rescue cats. Ironic? Maybe. But the other cats don’t write.