Zora Grizz

I’m not even a quarter mile out the door when my right foot starts to

misbehave. A pervasive ache radiates through its center and I know it will

get worse with each additional step.

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I don’t care.

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I keep going, my boots hitting the cold dirt in a slightly arrhythmic

stride, the frost crackling underneath my feet.

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When I was young, I didn’t learn to avoid the woods and the

things that “lurked in them”, as the archetypal stories warn us to. As a kid, I had been highly annoyed with every single character in “Little Red Riding Hood” (not a one had any agency: parents starving to death and sending their daughter into the woods so they wouldn’t starve themselves, Red herself a hapless pawn to every other player in the story, grandma just giving on over to the wolf, the hunter slicing bellies open…and I was not-so-secretly sympathetic and supportive of the wolf, at least they had some brains in their head). I have always loved the woods. What lived there had always provided me with peace and respect, and it seemed that I had never been able to find those things outside of them.

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Maybe due to my early-learned disdain for stories that portrayed the woods as a threat, or maybe due to many other societal factors, I never did figure out how to effectively avoid those things that did lurk and harm.

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Over the course of my seemingly endless 35 years, I’ve been raped, abused, had my drinks drugged, been stalked…I have had so many men touch me without my consent (a stranger’s hand on the small of my back in the grocery store, a hand rubbing my shoulder, my arm, that I’m not ok with. A doctor standing between my thighs and rubbing his hands up and down them for no reason as he talks to me about my sore throat and my mind blanks out in a frozen white panic) that I was consumed by rage and had nowhere to let it out in a culture that was designed to protect not me, but the men.

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My rage was delicious. It was horrific agony. It was unyielding flame. It was the only clean window letting the sunlight into a house built of shutters.

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I tried self defense courses. Punching bags. Hitting old chairs with baseball bats.

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Nothing.

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The rage was eating me alive, turning my insides into ash.

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I was angry. And instead of feeling scared, or hiding, my instinct was to go looking for what should scare me the most. I wanted to stare my fear in the eye, examine it under a microscope, dissect it to great satisfaction with scalpels and magnifying glasses and crisp white labels written on in sharpie. I wanted to put my fear in a clean, uniform, sterile, box. I wanted to label it and take away its power.

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I went walking in every cold and lonely, dark, place: I hunted my fear down. I stuck my head in, dared someone to attack me again. It felt that all that was left inside of me was roiling waves of rage and hopelessness, and I ached for someone to try it again, so that this time: I could fight back. I itched to show them their mistake. I wanted to not feel so powerless after a lifetime of men putting their hands on me without my consent. A lifetime of speaking and having my words float away, unheard, unacknowledged…disappearing on the wind, as light as dandelion seeds. Meaningless.

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When I was in undergrad in the deep south and living in a campus dorm, there were two active serial killers in the community. We only knew of one at the time and they had not yet been caught.

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I would go for walks late at night in the dark, unlit, places by campus. Deep into the trees. By the lakes.

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“Don’t pick someone else”, I’d project into the darkness.

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“Don’t you dare pick some drunk girl, or some hopeful woman who thinks she can talk her way out of it.”

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Pick me, you coward.

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You come and you find me in this dark. I will show you your mistake.

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I was burning up inside. I’m surprised I didn’t glow, orange light cutting through the deep, midnight black: embers echoing out of my eyes, smoke drifting from skin, flames coiling above my hair.

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No one ever touched me on these walks.

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Years later, having fled the south, I was living in a smallish mountain town, whose university grounds (right by my rented duplex) were being plagued by a man attacking small, thin, white, blondes who were walking in the area anytime after the sun went down.

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I already frequently walked at night in the area, and I was a match for the victims’ descriptions. I called the detective who was handling the case, told them that, and offered to be bait so that they could tail me.

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The detective said they’d thought about doing something like that, but had decided against it for liability reasons.

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I continued my walks anyway. No one touched me.

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It wasn’t until years later that I found the solace of the woods again and knew the peace and the calm that they offered me.

Loneliness is…something I’ve learned to carry like a backpack. In that pack, I store my unwillingness to be with those who have treated me poorly. I store the strength I need to carry my loneliness into the woods, in search of something more. In search of peace and clarity.

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Now, the snow begins to fall even heavier, white globs of it sticking in my thick, coarse, mane of hair. The wind whips strands in front of my face but I yank them back with the leftover purple gloves I’d found in the back of a drawer.

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The gray clouds continue to roll thickly across my lonely patch of mountains.

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The wind howls between the rocks and the corners of my mouth lift involuntarily, my eyes glimmer.

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I continue to drag myself up the mountain.

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Not even halfway up the trail, and I’m already limping badly. I know that I should stop. That I should go back down and rest my foot. I know that every mile I hike with this pain is just enabling my muscles to continue learning their maladaptive coping mechanisms: my posture to worsen, my back to ache, my calves to swell. Allowing my muscles to compensate for my bad foot is training them to support my body in counterproductive ways.

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I listen to myself thinking and smirk at my attempt to fit my body into academic language. I’d done enough years of therapy (emotional and physical) to know that I was detaching from a problem in order to not feel overwhelmed or made powerless by it. I thought of the wary facial expressions of my physical therapist when they realized that I was going to hike no matter what.

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I didn’t care. Just like everyday, I was going to the top.

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There’s only a few houses out here, but on these hikes I rarely (if ever) see anyone else outside. After two years of pandemic isolation, I sometimes imagine the weird conversations we’d have if I did. Some old white man would come out of the big house on the top of this hill I’m climbing and look down at me, at my jacket stuffed full of extra layers and the winter hat I decided I don’t want to wear today.

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“When are ya due?” He’d ask, as I’ve learned that many men tend to think womxn are pregnant if they’ve had so much as a burrito. This actually happened to me once. I’d had a delicious chicken burrito for dinner and was riding an employee shuttle to my late-shift at the train station. A fellow passenger looked at me, looked at my beautiful, burrito-holding, stomach, then smiled indulgently at me and asked when I was due. I stared at him for a beat too long and just said “…I’m not”. Everyone on the shuttle rode the rest of the way in awkward silence.

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So having my jacket currently stuffed with winter wear, I’m sure it would happen again. A man I didn’t know would ask about my body, and I’d then pull the hat out of my jacket, letting it drop back flat against my stomach.

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“Right about now,” I’d say, waving the hat towards this bystander. “I think I’ll name them Hatty!”

…This is the weird stuff that goes on inside my head as I drag my bad foot through the dirt and up the hill. No one comes out of the house. Like most days, I’m the only one here. I keep going, my strides becoming more even and paced, eating up the path despite the pain and my weird body mechanics.

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I am a machine that eats mountains.

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I started hiking this lonely and isolated patch of path and mountain routinely after I couldn’t enjoy more populated hikes anymore because of…other people. I let my mind wander as my feet chew up the ground beneath me. I think back to the last time I let myself go on a more traversed trail, and on a weekend no less.

I was cornered in a trailhead parking lot by a man.

I went hiking up by “X Lake”. At the beginning of the trail, there were some park rangers watching a big bull elk sleeping only a few feet away. I sat silently with the last one of them for a few minutes, watching the elk, amazed at how big it was. Then I whispered “take care” to the remaining ranger and continued hiking upwards.

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A minute later, I passed a man coming down the trail. He was probably in his late 50s: tall, tan, whippy, a short black and gray beard, narrow face, overbearing nose, wearing sunglasses and a big floppy hat.

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He was radiating creepy vibes.

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He started talking to me as soon as he got close enough on the trail for his voice to carry, telling me he had to take off his jacket too, noticing that mine was tucked under my arm. He moved even closer to me and then started listing all of his clothing items that he had taken off already on the trail.

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I quicked my pace to move away from him. “Yeah. It’s warm out,” I said.

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Then, my guard down in awe of the solitude and beauty of the trail, without breaking my stride I mentioned that there was an elk sleeping near the path, and told him where to see it as I passed him and continued upwards. I only made it about a half mile further before it got too icy to continue on in just my boots.

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I turned around and headed back down.

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I passed the elk again, now awake and lounging majestically among the trees.

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I reached the much-emptied parking lot and noticed a large, white, pickup truck parked on the outskirts with its lights on. I wondered if it was the park rangers’.

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Then I saw the man who had been so eager to tell me about removing his clothes on the trail.

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He got out of the truck and started walking across the lot towards me. There was no one else around.

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A survivor of numerous assaults, my body started to panic. I deliberately turned and walked away from him in a different direction as he continued to approach me in the empty lot.

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“Have a good day,” I heard my mouth mutter nonsensically as he got closer to my retreating body.

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I dared a glance behind me: he followed me still.

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I tried to get to my car from a different direction, which proved to be a bad move. Without saying a word, he darted behind me and quickly followed me down the narrow aisle between my car and a big suv parked next to me, increasing his pace and getting closer to me as we were between the cars. I kept going, walked past my car, and stood about 5 feet in front of it before turning around to face him, feet planted squarely on the pavement, keys jammed between my fingers.

He had continued to follow me all the way around my car, and now he was blocking my driver’s side door with his body. I was unable to get in my car.

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“Have a nice day,” I said again, my face devoid of expression, stating each word coldly and with finality, no smile in my voice. The sun was setting, the light slowly leaching away from the parking lot, bringing us further into shadow.

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“Thanks for telling me about the elk. Are you a local girl?” He asked, still blocking my door.

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I froze. I could feel the panic turning me into ice, my stomach dropping into my feet, my breath petrifying in my lungs.

After a beat too long, I heard myself lying to him: “…no”.

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“Where are you from?” he asked, taking a step closer to me as the words were leaving his mouth.

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Lie again, an impulse told me.

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“…Nebraska?” I said wildly, as I took two painfully slow steps backwards.

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“Ahhh, I retired from the university in Nebraska!” he said, still trying to get me to talk to him. He suddenly moved several steps closer to me again.

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Just as suddenly, I used the small distance he had inadvertently created between himself and my driver’s side door to pivot into it, opening it quickly. I got into my car with him still talking at me, my mind a blank white space, trying to get the door closed and locked before he could turn to get close enough to the handle to reach it.

“Congratulations. Have a nice day”, I heard my panicked mouth say quickly as I closed the door and locked it in one practiced, swift, movement. I could feel the panic, still frozen in my stomach, starting to defrost. I knew that soon, I may start crying and shaking as it thawed out of me.

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He slowly walked to the white truck parked on the edge of the lot.

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He got in, slowly circled the entire parking lot, and then drove towards its exit.

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I used to hike there all the time, and knew that once he drove through the exit of the lot, I wouldn’t be able to see him as the road dropped to a steep downhill slope and became heavily wooded, with several small turnoffs. Before today that had seemed quaint, nice, had enhanced the wilderness elements and peacefulness of the place. But now it only seemed like a perfect layout for waiting or following.

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I sat there in my car.

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I had no intention of driving down that slope and into those woods anytime soon, in case he was there waiting to follow me again.

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I rolled down my windows. The day was truly beautiful up in the mountains and I tried to focus on that.

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But instead, my mind kept thinking about what had just happened: him noticing my clothes, telling me about him removing his, waiting for me in the parking lot, following me, continuing to follow me despite my obvious discomfort, blocking my door, calling me a “local girl”, again trying to force me to have a conversation with him, always moving closer to me.

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This is why I don’t talk to people.

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Now I hike close to home.

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On this mountain, I feel less likely to panic. I’m more comfortable with the terrain, knowing it like the back of my hand. I’m intimately familiar with the daily rhythms of this mountain: the comings and goings, what changes, what stays the same…if I feel safe anywhere on this planet: it’s here. And not hiking has never been an option for me. I’ve always been what would be considered an “outside-cat”. I have my home base, but I need to be outside: stretching my legs, feeling the sun on my face, letting the wind cool my skin, seeing all of the wonderful things that I can see around me.

Today, I’m almost to the top of the trail in the snow and the clouds. I’m basically dragging my right leg: my left picking up the slack, thigh muscles burning pleasantly, abdominal muscles working to stay engaged to better support my back, right shoulder slowly inching up towards my ear to avoid the pain in my foot.

I summit the last steep incline of the upwards hike and instantly feel the headache set in, like it does every time in this part of the hike. But I know it’s just the variables of my oxygen intake, my body’s exertion, and the blood vessels in my brain adjusting to one another. After walking the next few yards of flat trail, the headache vanishes, just like it always does. I take a deep pull of water from my canteen. I continue to limp further up, going deeper into the forest.

I reach a small break in the thick pine trees to my left. The break provides a window through the forest and over the ledge that lets me see out across dozens of miles of rolling mountains and valleys. From here I can usually see acres of tan and gray boulders, swathes of deep green forest spreading out below me in every direction, the gradual uptick of low foothills turning into great, jagged, peaks, and the dragon-like spines that are mountain range ridgelines splaying out across the ground below. But today the thick clouds are mixing with a low, blue-hued, fog, and the wind is blowing snow at a frenzied pace across all of it. When I look out over the ledge, the view is almost completely gone, hidden by the thick storm clouds and snow. I see nothing but a canvas of swirling white and gray.

I don’t break my miserable stride but I feel my face break into a madwoman’s grin, all rictus and grizzle and teeth, as I gaze out and into the storm. I love it. It makes me feel free. It makes me feel somehow both safe and seen, two things that I rarely feel at the same time anymore. I seek safety in being unseen, in being unnoticeable, in being alone. But the storms….they see me.

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And I continue on.

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Somewhere on the hillside above me I hear the scrape of a hoof against the lichen-covered rocks. I look up, but between the wind and the snow and the fog surrounding me, I can’t see the deer or elk that’s probably right there.

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I keep going.

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I pass the cabin of a couple a decade or two older than me who I’ve gradually gotten to know over the years, as I hike through while they are outside doing chores or working on projects. We’ve promised to meet up and drink a glass of wine soon. In my isolation, it’s something to look forward to.

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Shortly after I pass their cabin, I reach the end of the trail: a dirt road that sees few vehicles besides my own feet and their worn hiking boots. There’s another cabin tucked back just behind the path there, occupied by an old man who I occasionally see out in the forest chopping wood, though we’ve never spoken; each of us enjoying our solitude.

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I stop for a moment on the very last piece of ground the path contains on which my two wobbly feet can stand. From here, I stare out across the valley floor, taking in the majestic black and purple and blue of the craggy mountain peaks, visible only through brief fissures in the darkening clouds.

Everyday I hike up to this spot: the furthest point of an old dirt path that few know exists.

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Everyday I gaze out across the expanse of forests, mountains, and wild, beautiful, raging, weather.

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Everyday I prove to myself, to my body, to the ground beneath my very feet, that I can.

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Much like this mountain weathers the howling winds, the freezing ice, the blazing sun, the human occupation: I show the mountain that I too can weather anything my day has thrown at me.

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Everyday I show up at the base of this mountain, deep in these woods, and I show it that despite the feelings of powerlessness as my rights as an LGBTQ+ and genderqueer person were attacked over the course of four years; despite the razor-soft touch of an unkind word from family, or professors, or even from myself; despite the anxieties about employment after grad school; despite the constant fear of additional sickness; despite the seemingly myriad injuries sustained from a body which, at 35, has ligaments that no longer want to hold it in place; despite the feelings of foolishness after many failed romances; despite the exhaustion of living…I show up everyday to the bottom of the mountain and I find my way up it’s paths and to its peak. The mountain doesn’t care about any of these things, but after so much time together, I do feel that it knows me just the same.

Everyday I make it to the top of this small mountain.

Today, like many days, I reach the end of the trail and pause a moment to look at the breathtaking view. For a brief second, I smile before spinning on my heel and heading back down, the wind stinging as it pelts my bare face with snow.

My eyes water in delight at this wildness, at this show of natural ferocity. I feel an innate kinship with the storm, almost like there is no separation between it and I. We are living different parts of the same life. It rages and brings destruction and brings life. But don’t we all?

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I limp on.

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Two Ravens fly overhead, croaking at me as they pass. It’s the two that I’ve named “Merry and Pippin”. They’re part of a group of four ravens that nest in the cliffs up above me and that I see everyday on my hikes. Merry has a kind of chip cut out of their right wing. I always see it as the pair glides above me, or even below me sometimes: with the sun shining on their backs. Merry and Pippin were here first, just the two of them for a long time. Then Sam showed up, who was smaller at first so maybe a fledgling that stuck around, then Frodo showed up last, always hanging around Sam. I decided a long time ago that they’re two gay couples who are bff’s and practicing communal living in their cliff community with a view.

I pass the house at the top of the hill again on my way down. Right in front of it, there’s this large, perfectly inclined, flat, rockface almost completely hidden in the ebb and flow of the boulders around it. I feel that if I lived in that house, I’d lay a towel out on that rock and sunbathe in my bikini all summer. The rock is positioned so that no one on the road would see me until they were right next to me, and by then their car would have driven them past me. Actually, the only one who would probably be able to see me would be Kim in her giant delivery truck, with the cab towering up above the boulders. She was the only one who drove a truck that size on these steep, switchback, mountain, roads. I liked Kim. She picked me up sometimes when she passed me on a hike, and let me ride along in the jump seat and we’d chat about nothing: her wife and kids, my grad school progress. Kim was cute, and sometimes I wished she wasn’t married. I won’t lie, I think it’d be fun to fuck around in the back of the truck. But I’m not one to mess with married folx, so I never pursued it. I just enjoyed riding up and down the mountains in her truck and having a little company, if only for a few minutes. It gets lonely up here.

As I hobble back down the mountain, I gaze across the valley to a mountain lake visible over the next rise, glowing a stunning blue as the sunshine above it dares to peek through the clouds.

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I don’t slow my pace.

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I pass a small herd of deer close by on my right, and I murmur soothing words as they all freeze and watch my passing with big eyes and bigger ears. I pass them again and again as I make the switchback turns down the mountain.

The ache in my foot has hardened now, like a rock strapped to my boot that I must learn to naturally carry in my stride.

I’m past the second to last switchback turn when Kim’s delivery truck comes rumbling up the road. She waves at me through the window and I grin. She continues on to the top as I continue my hobble back down.

Towards the end of the dirt road Kim catches up with me, slows the truck to a crawl, leans her tan face and curly dark hair out of the open side and grins at me. “I’d offer to give you a ride but you’re almost there!”

“Just a few more feet! I can make it,” I laugh. “Have a good one!”

She waves and closes the door, barreling down the hill as I head up an old dirt road that will take me back to the small cabin I call home these days.

As soon as I walk inside my door and close it against the wind, the storm suddenly lets loose: everything around me turns white as the thick clouds and fog completely take over the landscape and the air. There’s giant snowflakes spilling out of the sky, thrown at incredible speeds by the fierce winds.

I wrench my boots off of my forsaken feet and collapse onto the bed, staring in thrall out of the window as the storm rages around me.

Photo by Zora Grizz