This is one entry of the story I am drafting — and sharing — during NaNoWriMo. It’s my first real go at writing fiction, and it’s fast paced without looking back. Read accordingly. It is not planned, but continues to reveal itself as I write. I hope you are as thrilled reading it as I am writing it.

Previous Entry | Table of Contents | Next Entry

Declan had held Emma Kate through the night,with her sleeping next to him in his bed, on the sheets he had pulled taut, the blankets down by his waist, a hoodie on his upper body to feel the warmth of a blanket, and Emma Kate tucked by his side. He now held her snug to him, breathed in every ounce of her that he could, trying with all his mental acuity to take with him this moment, this hug that he would stretch out in his mind’s eye for the next week.

“My sweet Emma Kate, our sweet Emma Kate, may I find the peace and strength to return to you as the father you deserve, the father you need. Or at least, may I glimpse some sense of a path to be that father. I love you, Emma Kate, more than you’ll ever know. More than perhaps your mother ever knew.” Declan whsipered these last words to his daughter before walking downstairs with her and handed her over to his mother-in-law. He hugged both his in-laws. His father-in-law broke into tears.

“I… I don’t understand, but I respect that you feel the need to do this. We will take good care of Emma. You take good care of yourself.” He finished this last sentence with a tone of caution, of concern.

“Dad, you do understand I don’t intend to do anything stupid, right? I promise you, I will return in one piece, and, well, hopefully in the best space I can be in to continue in this new reality.”

“I know, I know, declan. Be safe.”

“Mom, thank you for doing this. I’m, I’m sorry—” Declan started.

“No, none of that, Declan. We already went over this.” Amber’s mother started.

“I know, I—” Declan started.

“No, I don’t think you do.” And tears started their slow path down Amber’s mother’s face, and gained momentum. Her voice quivered. “No, I don’t think you do. And that’s okay. But understand, no, look at me. Understand that you did all you could do. Amber had already passed, and you can’t blame yourself for having gone for a walk.”

Declan had not yet found a way to tell them why he was out for a walk.

“Yeah, but—” Declan started again.

“No ‘yeah, but’s’,” she continued. “You did more than anyone could have asked. And I won’t hear anything else. None of it. You understand?”

Declan’s will to tell them, to get it out and then walk out the door sank. “Okay,” was all he could say.

They hugged one last time. Tears now flowed between the three of them, as if they shared one source of flow. Declan took Emma Kate into his arms one last time.

“Just one week, my sweet girl. I hope I just need one week,” Declan whispered to her. He kissed her cheeks, her forehead, her nose, and then he lifted her up and raspberried her belly. She gigled. A smile broke through all their tear-moistneed faces. His eyes met theirs, one then the other. Amber’s mother nodded first, and then her father, both to Declan as he nodded back. No mor ewords were necessary. Declan looked to Emma Kate one last time before turning to go.

I love you, Emma Kate, he thought. I will find my way, I prmoise, he thought. And as he turned, I have no choice his thoughts continued.

—-

Declan started his hike, what was to be a seven-day traverse through a federally designated wilderness area. Declan lamented that there was no massive tract of true wilderness within which he could get lost, meaning get away from any sight or sound of people. However, he intended, through bushwhacking, to leave the trail early on and truly get into the words.

One thing Delcan had always hoped for when hiking with Amber was to break from the trodden path, to bushwhack through their own way. While she ahd allowed them to venture in some ways into the unmarked way through the woods, it was only for short spots, to cut off a length from one trail to another, but always mainly travelling their hiving via trail. Well establoished, maintained, and mapped trials.

Declan enjoyued this immensely, but also sought often to not see any people or signs of people, to experience the feel of walking where noone had evidently walked, sleeping where no one had evidently slept, and communing with nature in an area with no visual signs of other humans, of society interjecting itself between him and, well, whatever it is he sought connection to.

For this trip, Deckan had ventured into pristine wilderness, to a vast swath of public forest where he hoped to not see another soul, no, another human being.

Declan walked briskly away from his parked car, into the woods. Taking a bearing from his map, Declan wlaked and focused on the course he had set, a course to a small peak he had read about, one which did not offer expansive views, but which prvided a rocky overlook to a lake, and a fair distance down the valley it helped to form. THis was 15 miles away. Declan was not concerned about this fact; he wanted onyl to hike, to hike fast and to hike hard, through any struggle or fatigue, to push hi sbody like he hadn’t done in quite a while.

Aside from the obvious struggle of having just lost the woman he loved, his wife and mother to his child, to a heart attack, Declan had also struggled during the past week with not being bale to move. All he wanted to do all the time the past week was move, to move his body in whatever effort he could that he might work some of the tension, the pain, the grief from himself. The thought of a challenging 15 miles, bushwhacking nonetheless, didn’t bother him. He looked forward to it. HE swelcomes it.

So Declan walked, and as he did so, his thoguhts drifted. As the more painful side of his grieving entered, he hiked harder, faster, building momentum gradually, but steadily, sometime spicking up the pace so rapidly thaat he would find himself jogging, his pack on, bracnhes here, branchses there, running, sprinting at times, all the while trying to run out his pain, or outrun his pain, depending on the moment.

And after stretches of twenty, thirty minutes, having built himself up to seemignyl absolute exhaustion, Declan would finally stop to rest. Breathing heavily, sweating, his chest hurting slightly, his muscles in pain from the lactic acid, Declan would falld own to the ground, let out a sigh, and and cry. Declan would cry, and then he’d cry some more, and he’d cry some more. For the first real time since Amber’s heart failed, Declan cried like he had never cried before.

And it felt good. it felt so good Declan at one point thought he could stay there forever crying that cry. And each time, after minutes of crying, without extensive thought of words to Amber, DEclan would stop, he’d look around, he’d take in his surroundings, and he’d wonder.

How could he know such pain amid such beauty. He and Amber alsways shared their love for the natural spaces, for the healing and good feeling of being in places lie the wilderness, in the middle of a lake, at the top of a mountain, and for Declan, for a time in his younger life, ont eh face of a rock.

This one time he stopped, he considered his surroundings even more closely, looked around at the trees surrounding him, the ground vegetation. Declan sat there in awe of the way it all fit together so seamlessly, so balanced, so beautiful.

Later that afternoon, Declan, legs shaky, clothes soacked in sweat, reached the lookout he had set his sights for. Once there, he dropped his pack, and dropped to the ground.

Previous Entry | Table of Contents | Next Entry