Showers of dirt and mud sprayed over her, filling her eyes as flecks of muck found their way into her mouth, nose and ears, inhaling them made her cough and sputter as her hands wildly flailed for something-- anything-- to clutch onto.

Before the dirt was around her, it had been beneath her.

Beneath her feet she tread courageously over the well-traveled gravel pathway that was made compact by hundreds of other feet which had traversed the path sometime in the recent past, but now were no where to be seen. She felt her shoulders settle comfortably under the familiar weight of her pack, and heard the metallic tingling of cool water sloshing about in its metal bottle, a miniature bell’s ring of a waterfall with each confident step she took. Her legs were goose-pimpled from exposure to crisp mountain air but she didn’t mind, anything was better than the gasoline-ridden breezes that wafted through her nose while walking to work in town. Stretching her arms in front of her body, still trying to loosen up from the cramped car ride through countless miles of forest, she breathed deeply, absorbing the smell of newly wet dirt. To her, there was no better smell than when the clouds opened up above and gave way to millions upon billions of perfectly formed water droplets, cascading down to the soil below, colliding with individual pine needles and fallen leaves on their way, collecting in pools and moistening the ground so that the pure smell of earth permeated the entire forest, shouting to all of the forest’s inhabitants that it is time to spring forth. And so every year the forest springs forth into lush greenery, and into a symphony of a thousand cherubic notes as produced in perfect harmony by newly hatched song-birds, whose playful flitting from limb to limb force the hiker to pause, neck bent upwards, chilled cheeks turned rosy, and marvel at their brilliance.

Reasserting her direction up the path and tearing her wondrous gaze away from the trees above, she continued on, feeling the magnetism of  the hundreds of feet before her, eager to know what each other hiker had discovered and to find what else she could discover for herself. She came to a simple foot-bridge with a smooth divot in the center molded by constant tread over the pliable wood, soggy from rain. she kept to the divot, cautious to not lean too far to either side, though if she did, there would be only suffer a short tumble to the marshy greenery below. And so, her mind put at ease by the pleasure of walking amid songbirds with the scent of earth wrapping its familiar tendrils around her, her mind drifted back down the mountainside to thoughts of her life outside of the forest.

She wondered to herself how her parents were getting on since she last spoke them. She had avoided communication with them since she moved out under tense circumstances, her mother not uttering a single word to her for a week after she announced that she was leaving to pursue a career in art, her father calling her intentions a “half-baked scheme to avoid doing real work.” Why did they have to be so offensive? She wondered. What happened to all of the tenderhearted family nonsense about supporting each other no matter what? She knew she had skill, and so did her past art teachers, her parents were the ones with no taste and no faith in their only child. Seething inside, she could feel her shoulder muscles tense up and her once relaxed, loping pace quicken as her mind became aflutter with poignant thoughts. As she neared the end of the foot-bridge, one second of neglecting her surroundings, and she found her hiking boot caught in between two wooden slats of the foot-bridge, her knee plunging towards the slick wood, ending its descent with a thud, the rest of her body following.

As she propped herself up on her elbows, she was now angry for a different reason, angry at herself for letting her feelings get the best of her and making such a careless mistake. Tending to her knee, she noticed for the first time that the air was, in fact a bit nippy, and that her goose-pimpled legs were cold and now unpleasantly wet from her tumble. She couldn’t hear songbirds anymore, just the rapid pulse of her heart in her temples. She breathed deeply, calming and relaxing her body once again, and thought to herself with a huff, there will be time for family later. She rolled herself up onto her hands and knees, the water in her bottle sloshing and tinkling upon being disturbed, and stood up quickly, ignoring the rush of light-headedness that flew over her, feeling herself filled with a renewed sense of will to continue on, the path taking a winding turn ahead.

She peered to the trail once again and caught the first glimpse of the view which her guide book had promised would be “awe-inspiring.” If she stood on the tips of her toes and squinted her eyes just right, she could see the far off ocean resting below the mountainside, minuscule white-capped waves crashing silently onto shore, the distance erasing their call. She smiled to herself and fondly recalled a time when she had walked on a beach much like the one below, chasing after a seagull as her parents walked hand-in-hand behind her. There had been such warmth within her little family at that moment. She began to stride on up the trail towards the lookout point, but as she took her first step, she saw that her knee had begun to bleed profusely. The shock of blood, ripe and red, streaming down her calf and dripping onto the gravel, combined with the leftover shock of tripping a few minutes prior made her stumble back and a new wave of light-headedness crashed over her, causing her to take a step off the trail to catch herself. There was nothing behind her for her foot to settle on and she felt the pit of her stomach drop as the sensation of falling consumed her.

Showers of dirt and mud sprayed over her, filling her eyes as flecks of muck found their way into her mouth, nose and ears, inhaling them made her cough and sputter as her hands wildly flailed for something-- anything-- to clutch onto. The trail had disappeared in an instant and now all she could see was the forest spinning into a green and brown blur, her body being pulled downwards at an unnatural pace, flying faster and faster down the steep hillside with nothing but her pack to protect her from the jutting rocks and sharply snapping branches that she careened into. Fear was pushed to the back of her mind; she felt only a rabid desire to save herself.  The tree line at the base of the mountainside loomed closer until it overwhelmed her field of vision, individual trunks flying towards her until --

Black.

She opened her eyes to see blue sky above her, waves crashing beside her face. There was a black bear standing in the surf of the ocean, its hulkish shape rising like a boulder on the otherwise flat beach. It lifted its head and gazed at her, not menacing, but curious. It tilted its head as though it was asking her a question, and opened its mouth. It moaned softly as though calling to her, telling her to get up. She was not afraid. She focused on this bear which pawed at the soft sand and moaned louder, seeming to grow impatient with her. It moaned and whined to her, then lumbered over, its eyebrows knit closely together in an expression of worry as she waited and watched her lying motionless, the fine sand chafing against her cheek. The bear’s moan twisted into a cry and it tossed its head into the air and then knelt next to her, tenderly placing its moist nose in her open, unmoving palm. She opened her mouth to ask the bear why it seemed so sad, and as she did, its fur melted away, becoming finely woven fibers of a blouse, its moist nose morphed into a tear-stained cheek, and the sand fell away, grain by grain, until she could feel cool sheets pressed softly against her face. There was no more bearish moaning, just gentle sobs drowning out the beeping of regulator machines. Her mother and father were knelt beside her bed, tears streaming down her mother’s face which was lovingly cradled in the palm of her hand. A warmth bubbled inside of her and she smiled.