Creek’s Edge

“Do you remember how it happened?”

            “No.  I remember some things, but I don’t know how it happened.”

            “Do you remember how it felt?”

            “I was so cold, and then warm.  Wait… I almost remembered something else, but it’s gone now.”

            “Where were you?”

            “In the mountains, up the little canyon by my house.”

            “What were you doing?”

            “Just climbing.  I hadn’t been up this way before and I was looking for a new place to paint.”

            “Did you find your place?”

            “Yes.  I had climbed to the top of a hill to get a better look at this narrow creek below.  The air tingled the hair in my nose as I breathed it in.  My ears were numb and I could see my breath as I breathed it out.  I stood on the top of the slope, wind blew in my eyes and I remember tears beginning to streak and cool on my cheek.  I looked down the bristled slope at the creek below.  I recognized a sterile winter smell.  Not the hospital, chemical-sterile smell, but a deep refreshing nothingness.  The shadows of weeds and rocks were growing longer as the sun set behind me.  It was a golden sunset.  All the shadows pulled away from me; seemed to try to detach from their objects and sink down into the quick current of the creek.  Somewhere unseen I could here the river that fed my creek.  It bellowed distantly monstrous, like forgotten memories of violence.  Maybe there was a fall near by, or maybe it bottlenecked.  Dead sticks and brown weeds littered the bank like bones scattered.   I couldn’t catch my breath from the climb up the hill.  I contemplated the depth. 

            To the left was a shear cliff.  My father had taken me up in these canyons when I was a boy.  He was a geologist and he told me that most of the canyon had been cut by glaciers, and then cut deeper by ancient water flows.  The river laughing in the distance and my creek were echoes of those forces.  They cut too.  Small incisions down the mountain.  Slowly grinding down the rock below their water with constant friction, sending fragments down to the delta in the foothills.  My hands were dusty, and stained green where I’d pulled myself up with some weeds to get to the top of the slope.  I looked at the raw green lines in my palm.  And then I was standing on the shear cliff.  My creek ran below, it seemed slower looking straight down at it.  Sticks were being tossed in its current.  I suddenly felt dizzy, some sort of vertigo, and I had to sit down.  I dangled my legs over the side staring at my dusty feet.  Stickers stuck to my socks and the soft fabric of my shoes.  Dirt had gotten into their cracks.  I imagined myself standing on the water below.  My nose was cold. 

            I looked down a long time until my head felt suddenly heavy.  I tried to lift it up but a pain shot through my neck.  The vertigo returned.  My heart began to race.  I braced the weight of my head with my hand.  I used my arm as a prop, sticking my elbow into my gut and my hand on my chin.  I could feel the bristle of my cheek.  It felt cold.  I lifted my head manually, and a pain shot up my neck into my head.  I used my other hand to massage my shoulder muscles.  They were tight.  I found a knot and worked it out.  I regained control of my head and rolled it around my shoulders.  I found the painful positions and held them.  It was the type of pain I enjoyed, like sore muscles from working out.  When I stood back up, my joints were stiff.  The sun had set, it was dark.  I couldn’t see my creek, or my slope.  My fingers were numb, barely useable from the cold.  I stuck them in my armpits.  I noticed I was shivering.  I heard the river snoring somewhere in the distance.  To cold penetrated to my lungs when I breathed in.  It startled me.  I had to look straight down to see where to place my next step.  My neck shot pains into my head and I felt dizzy.  The air smelled more sterile.  The sides of my thighs became cold. 

            Finally I found my slope.  I sat down again, planning to slide down the hill on my buttocks.  But it was rocky and weeds and sticks poked me, and I thought I heard my jeans snag.  Everything else was silent but that old river rasping somewhere far away and small loosed rocks rolling down the hill.  I tried to slide down on my feet, folding my knees up close to my chest.   There was too much friction and I felt like I would fall forward.  So I stretched my sluggish joints out and tried to go one step at a time upright.  The darkness was thick.  I tried to pierce it with a stare, concentrating on one point straight ahead.  The darkness lapped around me, I thought I saw something but it disappeared.  I heard something that sounded like an old clothes dryer behind a closed door.  I listened harder, and realized my teeth were chattering.  I took the next step.  I took another.  I took a third and twisted my ankle on a rock.  I fell forward.  Trying to keep my feet in front of me I began to run down the hill.  My clenched muscles and tight ligaments were too stingy.  I fell headlong.  My hands were still in my armpits.  I hit first with my face.  It slid; I felt my skin pulling away from my cheek.  My hip hit rock.  I was horrified but not by the feeling so much as the sound. 

            For a moment everything was aflame.  Heat pulsed through me.  My eye throbbed and I saw dull dark colors.  Then my face felt cold where I was cut.  I could taste my blood.  It ran over my lip and into my mouth.  It was strange tasting cold blood.  I tried to get upright, but when I moved my left leg, pain shot from my hip, and I felt nauseous.  I couldn’t relax; my stomach muscles ached from squeezing.  I finally got onto my back with my head uphill.  I thought I might lie there till morning.  I couldn’t stop shivering. 

            A spider crawled onto my arm.  I could barely feel it on my numb skin, but it tickled the hair, and I flung it away flailing my arms.  Adrenaline or whatever else, I found myself sitting up.  I decided I would try to slide the rest of the way down on my butt, regardless if my pants tore.  I felt the ground even out below me.  My hands were immobile, numb.  The muscles in my forearms were so tight I couldn’t straighten out my wrists or uncurl my fingers.  I had reached the bottom, and relief soaked through me. I remember feeling woozy, and having a cracking headache and a throbbing hip; I couldn’t move my left leg.  But I was down! 

I looked around; it was too dark to see.  I couldn’t remember which way I had come from.  I didn’t know which way I was facing.  My throat grated when I swallowed, dry from dust and wind.  The wind blew, howling higher up.  I tried to breathe warmth into my hands.  I put them under my shirt, but it hurt my skin, which had become raw in my armpits from rubbing on my shirt.  I found my way over to my creek.  It seemed so small.  I could hear it now, right up close.  It didn’t yell like the river, it gurgled.  I lay, curled up in a painful ball on its bank.  I began to feel warmer.  I thought maybe it was the creek, or my position.  I got tired.  My eyelids ached.  I began to breathe easier, and finally I felt my muscles relax in my neck.  They relaxed all over.  I was lying on a stick that poked me in the ear, but I didn’t care.  My creek sang me to sleep.”

            “You were alone when you died?”

            “Yes.  I died.  Yes.  I guess I did.  I was.”

            “Nobody should have to die alone.”

            “Were you surrounded by family at your death?”

“Yes.  And friends.” 

“How did you die?”