Ecology of Home

Turning back to embrace the past has been a long, slow lesson not only in self-esteem but in patriotism--pride in homeland, heritage. It has taken a decade to whip the shame, to mispronounce words and shun grammar when mispronunciation and misspeaking are part of my dialect, to own the bad blood. What I come from has made me who I am.
--from Ecology of a Cracker Childhood by Janisse Ray

What I come from has made me who I am.

What I come from is a home with yellow shag, a dishwasher never used for washing but fake baking of Play-Do, windows stiff to open, popcorn ceilings and overhead lights that dim. I come from the hands of a printer, the belly of a woman who only longed to be a mother, the skin of Germans and English and not farmers. From a land with brown water, more sky than you need, trees that try for height, and wind everlasting.

There is sand beneath me. Sand driven from faraway oceans by that everlasting wind and cast down, orphan to the sea, on rolling prairie. Sand hills provide elevation, if only slight, so that the paths you took to reach them wind away and lose themselves in the horizon, just like every word you ever say. Just like old friends, plastic bags, memories of your youth.

In that plant I was looking for a manera de ser, a way of being--no, not for a way of being but of being able to be. I was looking for a patch of ground that supported the survival of rare, precious, and endangered biota within my own heart.
--Ray

Because there is sand beneath me, and because what I come from has made me who I am, I study the trees for their strength. How do they grow in the full blow of the sun? How do they not rise higher than trees anywhere else in the world with that full blow of the sun? How did they get here? When will they go? Can I claim one for my own, a sister tree, and follow it on its slow extension, sleep when it sleeps in the winter, sing when May turns us green?

Lessons from INTO THE WILD

Christopher Johnson McCandless

The very basic core of a man's living spirit is his passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly changing horizon, for each day to have a new and different sun.
-Chris McCandless, in a letter

The physical domain of the country had its counterpart in me. The trails I made led outward into the hills and swamps, but they led inward also. And from the study of things underfoot, and from reading and thinking, came a kind of exploration, myself and the land. In time the two became one in my mind. With the gathering force of an essential thing realizing itself out of early ground, I faced in myself a passionate and tenacious longing--to put away thought forever, and all the trouble it brings, all but the nearest desire, direct and searching. To take the trail and not look back. Whether on foot, on snowshoes or by sled, into the summer hills and their late freezing shadows--a high blaze, a runner track in the snow would show where I had gone. Let the rest of mankind find me if it could.
-John Haines, from The Starts, The Snow, The Fire: Twenty-five Years in the Northern Wilderness

He was right in saying that the only certain happiness in life is to live for others. ... I have lived through much, and now I think I have found what is needed for happiness. A quiet secluded life in the country, with the possibility of being useful to people to whom it is easy to do good, and who are not accustomed to have it done to them; then work which one hopes may be of some use; then rest, nature, books, music, love for one's neighbor--such is my idea of happiness. And then, on top of all that, you for a mate, and children, perhaps--what more can the heart of a man desire?
-from Tolstoy's "Family Happiness"

HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED.
-Chris McCandless's note over a passage of Doctor Zhivago

Follow the Posteds

Last Sunday, our group of five plus three dogs made the short drive to Rumbling Bald Mountain on the perimeter of Lake Lure, NC. Though it's a beautiful area with both quaint and grand homes in the Hickory Nut Gorge, the only true, blazed hiking can be found on Chimney Rock. But, then again, there's little true hiking even there, all of the trails short and made easy for tourists willing to pay for the view and experience of being high. I went there in my first few months in the South when I was still getting my bearings as a hiker, and it wasn't enough for me.

So, Rumbling Bald. All we had to go on were prose accounts of the unblazed trail, which is really an old jeep road that starts at a water tower. We found it easily and set out on the muddy clay road that was to lead to the ridgeline, across three peaks, past an abandoned jeep and "Party" Rock, and over to Eagle Rock--a 7 mile round trip hike. We knew we were looking for a hard left and, after going too far up to a house that dead-ended the road, we tracked back to that hard left and kept our ascent. It was steep but not rocky and kept up until, high up over Lake Lure but still a distance from the ridge, the road ended, dissolved into leaf litter and limbs.

But none of my prose descriptions said anything about the trail being hard to follow; they all said you follow the road up to the ridgeline and across to Eagle Rock. Simple, though strenuous. Where was our trail? I pulled up the one semi-map of the road and tried to find our place, but all we could figure is we needed to go up. We explored to the west first, searching for any sign of a worn path, and then traipsed back to the road's end to try again. This time we decided if we could just get to the ridge we would be fine, so we dug our toes into the earth and climbed straight up several hundred feet until we were closer to the summit but saw no way to continue or head east from there. Grateful that, in late February, nature was largely still sleeping in the cold, we stuck our hands into leaf litter for leverage; in any warmer time we might have reached right down onto snakes or other creatures. At least bugs.

After resting and snacking at a leveler edge high up, we decided to head down and try up again on the other side of a gulley that was impassable from our height. Erica and I leaf skied down on our butts some of the way, the slope so steep. Back again at the road's end, we followed the "Posted" signs east along the side of the mountain, the Posteds saying we shouldn't trespass beyond that point on Nature Conservancy land. Over maybe a quarter mile we came upon a thin waterfall from the ridge. Jonathan was the first to climb up to it and find the little pool at its base. So close to the summit, Erica and I followed, essentially rock climbing at times and picking our way through briars. From the waterfall we attempted to keep going up, up, to climb the side of the mountain for a second time on our own path--but we reached a point with no foreseeable way higher and thus began the slow, careful, leaf skiing and rock maneuvering way down. The dogs, meanwhile, climbed and descended at will multiple times for our every effort.

Four hours into our hike, and we hadn't found the trail, and we hadn't summitted, but we had made our own fun and explored the mountain with our hands, with our eagerness for height. All the while, we could see the vivid teal of Lake Lure and the stretching mountains of West NC. Nick had been tracking our position through an app on his phone, so he led us on a short cut back down to the trail, bypassing a return to the road's end. We rejoined the trail about a quarter mile from the start and shortly came upon a spur in the road that took a hard switchback up the mountain, an angle that would have been that hard left in the descriptions we had. But somehow none of us had seen this spur so early in the trail, thinking that we had a ways to go before that hard left.

We laughed and promised to come back soon to take the actual trail, even though we'd had fun making our own. We do want to see Party Rock, after all, and the peaks of Rumbling Bald, and Chimney Rock from the other side of the gorge. And we want to do more hiking together before we run out of time, since several of us in our little group are about to move back to the Midwest.

Every view of and experience in the mountains is even more precious now that I know in just two short months I will no longer be within sight of an ancient ridge. I send little thank yous across the landscape to the peaks that have made me feel both small and larger than ever before. Truly, I feel larger in life than I ever had before, so full of purpose and meaning from my time in Spartanburg, with my dear friends and my dear peaks and my dear community. And full I will be as I return to Kansas and anticipate a skyline of grain elevators, a landscape of love.

Wildness

I've been musing a lot on growth lately. And time. And the way we think about our home land. And what it means to explore. And what it means to take risks.

Two years ago I completed grad school. Two years ago I up and moved to Spartanburg, a place I'd never been, for a job. Two years ago I set out on my own like I'd never done before. I started climbing mountains, to be exact. I wanted to go as high as I could, to test my body, to see how alone I really was, if alone was a state of being or a place I could go when I chose. I set out to escape from and be found by my self. Discovering my self was the only thing I could do.

I discovered that I can go far, both high and low. I can stand on the edge of the continent and not be carried away. I can stand on a cliff and not feel like falling.

Two years ago in August I touched the ocean for the first time, wading in to my calves on a rainy Saturday on Hunting Island. I sat in the sand where the water washed over me and left, taking pieces of my foundation and burying me more each time. It was a surreal sensation, and I wasn't convinced it was actually me in the water, me following waves, me writing "I am here" in the sand. I felt so alone that I didn't answer my phone, cutting myself off entirely from what I knew. I drove home sunburnt and sand-filled, the only proof.

"If only we could keep going, out of harm's way, and take with us only the best part of ourselves; if only we knew why we dream at the wheel or think more clearly while moving down valleys and across rivers."
--from "Hereafter in Fields" by Robert Vivian

One year ago today I brought home a golden year-old puppy named Scooter. He was afraid of the car, afraid of the stairs, afraid of my leaving. He wouldn't sit when you asked but would sit and not budge when he felt stubborn on walks. He was a wonder, my first dog after a lifetime of cats, and his presence in my life terrified me. Suddenly I had committed to this dog's well-being and future. I stressed constantly about how much he was barking when I wasn't home. I walked him so many blocks those first months, convincing him we were in this together, just him, me, and Snickers. And, though, at the time I adopted him there was still another person pulling me in and pushing me away, I already knew that it was over before it was over. I took my dog to my favorite trail; I moved to a duplex surrounded by kudzu and birds. I was alone, and I was going to be good.

"We use the word 'wilderness,' but perhaps we mean wildness. Isn't that why I've come here, to seek the wildness in myself and, in so doing, come on the wildness everywhere, because after all, I'm part of nature too."
--from "The Source of a River" by Gretel Ehrlich

Perhaps this summer will ever be known to me as the summer of adventures with my eyes open. This was the year I began to see, to open up, to breathe in my own wild nature. It began back in January, internally, a wild seeping out that you probably couldn't see. This recovery of my self, a return to true being, propelled me. It led me to May, to build a structure and sleep under it on the forest floor in the rain, plucking just two ticks from my thighs in the morning. It led me to take a road trip--going forward by going back--to see good friends along the way and spend more time with my family than I had since I left seven years prior. It led me to Phillip, a man who makes me feel full, who keeps me smiling and dreaming, who knew me then and knows me now, who has me believing.

The road trip was supposed to end with me camping on the beach in the Gulf, right where Isaac has been hanging out for the last few days. But it was storming that day, too, thick sheets of rain blanking the ocean. So I returned to Hunting Island last weekend with Scooter to celebrate one year together, to take another step in my journey, to finish my summer of adventure.

And a funny thing happened: I didn't feel alone.

Yes, I had Scooter, but I had no desire to write my name in the sand as physical proof I was there. I walked into the ocean up to my ribs at high tide, rippling gushes of water aimed at my chest, and took it on; the waves shook me, set me off balance, and I walked right back in. All evening, I wrote and read in my tent by lamp light. I wasn't afraid of noises in the dark, of the racoons who visited, of the buzzing against the tent wall. Each time I awoke in the night I woke to stars peeking through branches above me. In the morning I gathered my books and notebook and reached the ocean by sunrise, catching the sun's bowl as it lifted from the horizon, and I stayed through morning on a silent stretch of beach to write some more. All the while, content. All the while, eager to read more, write more, soak in the rhythm of waves and slant of sun before it caught day. All the while, thinking I didn't need to escape to be alone anymore, that what I really wanted was to be sharing the sunrise with someone else, to see the orange glow on each others' faces, to walk into the waves holding hands.

Saturday: 1

Two years ago Saturday became my day of exploration. I would drive to a mountain nearly every week on my only day off and push myself to hike it, to see how it felt to complete a challenge on my own. I was new in the South, new to mountains and the ocean and weekends alone.

It began with Grandfather Mountain and continued to the Atlantic and back up into the Blue Ridge. And it was in the Blue Ridge that I found my Southern home: the Art Loeb Trail from Black Balsom Road over Tennent Mountain and Ivestor Gap. Recently, my fourth time on the trail, I finally made it to Shining Rock, the cluster of white quartz you can see from miles away. The first time I took a wrong trail to find it, the second I got rained out halfway, the third was colder than I had prepared for. But this time I had set out with the intention of going all the way--6 miles to stand on quartz and say "I made it."

The morning was heavy with clouds. On the drive up I-26, treed tips of mountains hovered in the air above white. Fog lifted from the Green River Gorge, and clouds moved unimpeded over the Blue Ridge Parkway. The forecast called for a 30% chance of rain, but I needed the hike too much call it off. Scooter and I both needed exercise, and I needed to walk out my distraction of late, to complete something worth my time.

 "...mountains are providers: they catch clouds, shed water, give refuge, cleanse the spirit. Standing up straight, they seem to represent the highest spiritual attainment of the human; they are the natural sacred site on whose summits we express our gratitude and awe."
--from "The Bridge to Heaven" by Gretel Ehrlich

Twelve miles later I had completed my quest, finally tired out my dog, and spent the day amid rocks and trees I love. And I had done it alone, again. My feet were caked in mud, calves shaded by dirt. As I descended the last section of trail through pines, brown rooms meant for bear and rattlesnakes, I wondered if I will ever make it down to the water heard deep in the valley: a rush below green, a depth lower than my feet tend to go.

On Shining Rock

Shining Rock (white quartz) itself

In cloud on the Art Loeb Trail

Contemplating clouds and trees

13 Ways of Looking at a Road Trip: 7, Leaves

Man has created some lovely dwellings--some soul-stirring literature. He has done much to alleviate physical pain. But he has not ... created a substitute for a sunset, a grove of pines, the music of the winds, the dank smell of the deep forest, or the shy beauty of a wildflower.

--Harvey Broome, naturalist, on a roadside marker in North Carolina

As a frame, from the Appalachian Trail.

As shadow and definition, from Highway 441 in Tennessee.

As high as they can get, on the Konza Prairie.

As wild and quiet in the wind, at Sandhills State Park.

As destruction during a storm, at my grandmother's house.

As sparse and striving for green, off the highway in Oklahoma.

As expanse and relief, in Houston.

As a view, outside hotel window in Biloxi.

As a singular entity against the storm, on the beach in Biloxi.

On fighting for a trail

It had only to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk for miles for no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, mountains and deserts, streams and rocks, rivers and grasses, sunrises and sunsets. The experience was powerful and fundamental. It seemed to me that it had always felt like this to be a human in the wild, and as long as the wild existed it would always feel this way.

--from Wild by Cheryl Strayed

Aloneness

Alone had always felt like an actual place to me, as if it weren't a state of being, but rather a room where I could retreat to be who I really was. The radical aloneness of the PCt had altered that sense. Alone wasn't a room anymore, but the whole wide world, and now I was alone in that world, occupying it in a way I never had before. Living at large like this, without even a roof over my head, made the world feel both bigger and smaller to me. Until now, I hadn't truly understood the world's vastness--hadn't even understood how vast a mile could be--until each mile was beheld at walking speed. And yet there was also its opposite, the strange intimacy I'd come to have with the trail, the way the pinon pines and monkey flowers I passed that morning, the shallow streams I crossed, felt familiar and known, though I'd never passed them or crossed them before.

--from Wild by Cheryl Strayed

We're here. We're big.

The only thing to do on my first Christmas alone was hike. I first wanted to go far, to the Smokies, to another state, somewhere I had never been. I wanted to get myself as far removed from home and aloneness as possible, to place myself on an unknown mountain and make myself climb it, to discover something new in the world and, perhaps, in myself.

But I was tired and didn't want to drive for hours, and I didn't know how much stamina I (or Scooter) had for a lengthy hike. I also wasn't excited for the hike like I would have been a year ago. Oh, how those first six months in Spartanburg were defined by hikes and exploration. That's all I wanted to do on a Saturday, my one day off. I'd get up at 6am and set out for the Blue Ridge, usually alone, for a challenge. I'd look forward to it all week. I'd say, "I'm rugged. I want to get scrapes and bleed because that will be proof I'm rugged." I'd call Jedsen from the summit. I'd brag about my strength and moxie like I was surprised to find them every time--and I was, and I wanted him to be surprised (and awed) too.

As I was preparing my backpack for the hike Sunday morning, I realized I'd forgotten to get anything to take for a lunch, and all I had was a KIND bar. I packed a bag of treats for Scooter, several pairs of gloves, an extra hat, and the usual emergency provisions of stun gun, pocket knife, folded foil blanket, and matches in a waterproof pouch. We set out just before eight, and the sun was a peek of bright through streaks of clouds. We headed toward Table Rock State Park in the far western corner of South Carolina. I tried to sing a journeying song to Scooter, but it came out in weak hums. About five miles down the highway I realized I'd forgotten my trail shoes, electing to wear my favorite blue Nikes for the drive. So I had to turn back.

I ran in and got the shoes and backed out to start again. Then I stopped and ran in to get one of Scooter's blankets to put in the backseat with him. And then we finally left, headed west. I don't remember what we listened to on the hour drive, though part of it was NPR. I don't remember thinking on the drive, just feeling saddened, reluctant but determined to go on this hike. I was relieved when the Table Rock State Park gates were open, and I was glad to remember the way. But when we pulled around to the large parking lot at the trailheads, the one that had been nearly full on my previous hike in the park in March, was completely empty at 9:15 on Christmas morning. Not a soul was around. And I was instantly afraid.

Yes, the main motivation for hiking on this day was to get away from society, from people, even from friends I couldn't talk to about what I was feeling on this first Christmas without Jedsen, so close to what would have been our seventh anniversary. But I'd told myself all those times before Scooter in those first six months, "I'm going by myself, but I won't be alone." I always chose trails that were popular, where I was sure others would be even if I wasn't with any of them. There would always be someone to run into, to say hello to, to come along if there was trouble. And there always had been. Not this time. This time as we crossed the first deck and bridges to the divergence of trails, as I filled out the card that said my name, age, trail, starting time, and emergency contact, I was actually alone. Scooter can bark, but he's small. Scooter can smell, but does he know the scent of bears? Bears. They were my fear.

Bears were all I wanted to see when I first started hiking. I dreamed about coming around a bend in a trail and looking over to see a black bear serenely loping up the mountainside. Nature, I thought, that's when I'll know I'm really in nature. Because it was difficult to believe that I could actually see a waterfall by driving to it or hiking a few miles. Growing up in Kansas, waterfalls, mountains, and bears were fantasies, things I longed for. They were mythical, subjects of fairy tales and epics. Suddenly living in close proximity to them made them, in a way, more mythical--or made me reside in some happy dream land whenever I was near. But it was that hike in March, on the last day of winter, on the Pinnacle Trail, Table Rock's neighbor, that I found fear. I wasn't alone--I knew there were others ahead of and behind me because the parking lot was full and it was a gorgeous day--but there were times when I could see no one yet heard large rustling of leaves. All I could think about was that the bears were waking up; it's bear season, and they're probably everywhere, and they probably have cubs. And I'm alone. I kept going, though, because I knew the bears would sense there more a number of people out and stay away from the trail. I reached the summit of Pinnacle Mountain that day, the most challenging hike to date, and I practically ran down the 4.5 miles out of relief.

When do bears sleep? Where do they sleep? Do they know to always stay away from the trails?

The creek was rushing, and the trail was muddy. I had Scooter on the 16-foot retractable leash so he could feel like he was walking off leash and so I could feel less immediate responsibility for him. I looked up into the bare trees, down to the creek, across to distant slopes of leaves, looking for the black bulge of a bear. I blew my bear whistle in short bursts every minute or so, hoping the sound was non-organic enough to keep a bear away while at the same time worrying that it would wake a bear up if it was sleeping. I at once wanted to make sure every creature on the mountain knew we were there and wanted to slip by unnoticed.

I made myself sing, at first holidays songs like "Deck the Halls" and Mariah Carey's "All I Want for Christmas," but they'd quickly fade because I didn't want to be singing, and I didn't want to be talking. I didn't want to hear my voice. I wanted to be silent in my sadness, to keep it within as I always do. I wanted to only hear the wind and the leaves. I wanted to see. I'd be silent for a while and then have to just start talking aloud to ensure I was making noise. I started writing this as I walked, as I came upon what looked to be prime bear caves and nearly began crying in fear. I began composing my journey into an essay as it happened because I realized this was a journey about multiple fears. Bears, yes, and being alone, yes, and being exposed, and trying to get back to something that was once fulfilling. Hiking, nature, the climb, height, the achievement of reaching a pinnacle. The fulfillment of completion.

Over the last few months, I've learned that Scooter only cares about toys and treats that he can finish. As in, a food-filled Kong that he can empty, a stuffed squeaking mouse that he can chew through to the stuffing and squeaker, a bone that he can gnaw all edible matter from. He doesn't care about balls or fake bones that are only meant for chewing. Where's the reward in that?

I can't remember now how I completed all of my homework in school, but I certainly don't remember having much fun. Each assignment, each class, each A, was another step up the mountain of success, at least when it came to school. I understood school, the steady movements toward an end, a degree, and a new start. What that new start would be I was never sure until it was upon me, but it was the completion that was satisfying, and the completion with all A's. I kept going until there was no longer anywhere to go.

I blew my whistle every few feet as we climbed higher. I yelled, "We're here. We're big."

I saw movement up ahead but couldn't focus on it. Then I saw round creatures running up: wild turkeys. Thank god. Then Scooter saw them and switched into hunter mode. He barked and yelped and pulled me a head toward them, and I just kept saying, "You cannot eat the wild turkeys. You cannot eat the wild turkeys." It took him several minutes for him to listen, for them to disappear over a ridge.

He's so good on rocks, even with his small frame. He never tires. He runs uphill. "Wait," I'd yell, and he'd stop for a moment, until the leash was no longer taught, and then go again. "Stop," I'd yell louder, "I need you. I need you to stay with me."

Whenever he would stop on his own and turn his nose to smell the air, I thought bear. I thought, he's smelling something knew, something large and wild, and he's trying to understand it. I thought, let's turn back.

I thought let's turn back the whole way. I thought it when we hit the first mile marker, thought that a two mile hike was at least something. I thought it when we hit the shelter past 1.5 miles, thought it wouldn't be a shameful stopping point because we had been climbing up, up, up all the way. I thought it when we passed the turkeys, thought that since I'd seen wildlife I could go home. I thought it passing boulder with dark overhangs that made shelters for dark things, thought it when I nearly slipped on a wet rock, thought it when Scooter's leash got tangled in trees from where he'd gone off the trail.

I knew we were in the last mile or so once we hit the marker for the Ridge Trail, though I didn't have a map. Perhaps foolishly, I'd taught myself to trust in the trail markers and my own instinct for direction. Up ahead was a sloping wet rock that I knew we'd have to go up and, just behind, a large dark cave. As Scooter went off and down to eat some poop--what kind, I don't know--I convinced myself that there was a bear in that cave. That as we came up the rock I'd see big eyes glaring at me in the dark. How could there not be a bear in that cave? It looked large and sheltered from the wind. It even had a view of the valley.

Scooter ate the poop for a long time and then got himself tangled in limbs by looking for more. I was nearly crying at this point, anxiety fully setting in. I felt fear and failure. I blew the whistle for a long time. I screamed. I tried to get Scooter to bark. "We're big!" I wailed.

When I got Scooter untangled I was about to tell him to go down, but he started climbing again and got halfway to the rock when the leash reached its max. He wasn't worried, wasn't sniffing the air. He just looked back annoyed that I had stopped him. And so I followed, my eyes on the cave the whole time. My hands shaking. My little voice whispering wait.

My impression of bears was formed by Winnie the Pooh and zoos and Teddy, the stuffed bear I've had since I was a baby. Cuddly, right. Tricks. Honey. Then, claws. Hunger. Territory. Did I want to experience nature or not? Was I proud to be hiking alone (a woman, silly and dangerous, everyone said) or had I been convinced I was foolish? Was I determined to always finish a hike, to summit, or could I be satisfied with the mileage, the beauty, the journey? Who was I going to tell about this hike that would be remembered for its solitude and panic?

All along, an absence of bears in view and empty caves. Just beyond, the trees opened up to a slope of rock and the mountains to the west. I knew it wasn't the end of the trail, but it was an opening, a window back out to the world. Over there, Pinnacle Mountain, my peak. And North Carolina beyond. The rock rolled over and off the mountain, and a braver me than today would have gone closer to the edge, to better feel the height and weightlessness of a climb. But I sat back, gave Scooter some treats, tried to breathe, and decided that this would be the end. I was too exhausted from worrying to keep going to the last half-mile or so. It wasn't a failure, I told myself, but an experience. Nearly 2,000 vertical feet of experience.

About half-way down we encountered more people, a family, and farther down, there were couples with small dogs, and in the parking lot there were about 15 cars. It had just taken them until noon to get out there.

I spent three hours alone on a mountain. I wish I could say, like my three hours alone in London, that it was liberating, that I came away stronger, that I gave myself the perfect gift on Christmas. But instead I deflated, thought of calling my mom just to tell her I was done with the hike but decided I didn't want to talk about it. When she called a few minutes later and the call dropped after about a minute, I didn't want to call back. When Jedsen texted "Merry Christmas, Kari" as I was nearing home, I couldn't be strong and write back my own reserved wishes. No, I broke down and began a conversation in common misery, a conversation of texts that would last the rest of the day, that would make me ache for him yet smile that I was somewhat near him, that would make me break a hole in the wall I'd built between us because I had to, that would leave me more alone than when the day began because there was nothing to be done and these texts of reminiscence and hurt would lead nowhere, to no different end. He, alone in the cold of Chicago, and I, alone by choice in the gray of the South, would have to stop here, most likely for good.