Excerpt

The taxi ride from the airport had taken us ten miles
to the nearest cabin. The road wound deep into the
forest through a row of tall maples, ending at a small
gravel drive.
The cabin was more than I’d expected. A stone walk
led up to the door, and a small garden with brightly
colored flowers surrounded it. There were white pines
everywhere, and it was wrapped in complete silence.
It had a traditional log exterior, and someone had
painted the door candy apple red. Above the door was a
handcrafted wood plaque with an inscription.

Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’ intrate.
I pulled the key from under a brown welcome mat
that had a smiling beaver on it, slid the key into the
lock, and entered, stepping into a small open space that
resembled a Thomas Kinkade painting I’d once purchased
for Lacy, called “The End of a Perfect Day,” with
a woodstove, tin roof, and through the back window, a
canoe visible in the back near the edge of a pond.
I felt a peace I hadn’t felt in the desert.

Now I walked across the hard wood floor, my bare
feet feeling the rawness.

How’s our baby girl?
I felt a sense that I’d been there before, but I chalked
it up to the comfort I’d always felt when I had visited my
grandfathers cabin on the lake, decades earlier.
I love you daddy.
Some things remain in your DNA forever. I opened
the door and walked outside again, stepping onto the
small wood porch. I observed the way some of the trees
swayed deeply, while others stood rigid. Like humans,
each one moved slightly differently, changing with the
shift of the wind.

Be alive, Jonathan.
I sat in the rocking chair and imagined those who had
done the same thing a hundred years before, imagining
the lives and messages we receive like one eternal thread,
all connected. I thought of my brother, who had loved
hunting and fishing in the mountains with our grandfather
when we were young, while I had been content to
skip rocks in the stream, unable to stomach the thought
of killing a deer.
I considered calling him, but there was no telephone,
and even if there were, what would I say? Everything was
different now.
He’d be unable to understand my desire to escape.

He’d want to talk me into coming home, talk me back off
the ledge of this new journey and into the normalcy of
my abnormal existence.
But what would I go back to now?
I fell asleep again in the chair, sometime after four
in the afternoon, and when I awoke, it was dark and
the wind howled through trees. I had much to do, but
couldn’t. Much to say, but couldn’t. Much to feel,
but couldn’t. The shrink back in California had said
I’d entered a “dorsal vagal shutdown,” which in plain
civilian terms meant that I was frozen. The answer, she’d
said, was social engagement via the ventral vagus nerve,
accomplished by laughing or connecting with others.
Everyone, it seemed, had an answer.
My Christian friend Bob told me that isolation was
the tool of the devil. That, although it seems like a gift,
it’s also a curse when we become too inwardly focused,
withdrawn from life, disconnected. He’d said that the
enemy can get to your emotions only after you’ve been
isolated, a strategy used by the greatest war generals of
all time. Isolate, then defeat.

“How long you staying?”
The voice startled me, and I turned.

The man walked with a limp, one leg looking to be
shorter than the other, and he was wearing a flannel shirt
and high rubber boots over jeans. He shifted his weight
to his good leg as he ambled up the path toward the
cabin, stopping once to catch his breath.
“I been waitin’ for you,” he said, approaching the
deck. He carried a long shovel, the end covered in mud.