I feel a profound peace with Michael's AR-15 in my hands. The target is 100 yards away, swaying in the scope with each pulse of my body. I breathe in, stilling myself, the gun, the target. I breathe out, pressing gently on the trigger. Even with ear protection, the shot is deafening. That noise used to startle me into tears as cortisol flooded my body. Now I just blink, the smallest reaction I allow myself as I remain unmoving. There's no point trying to see where I hit the target. It's too far away, and anyway, as one wise gun nut in Pennsylvania once told me, the bullet's gone. No point looking for it. I wonder if he knows he changed my life with those words. At the bottom of my exhale, I line up my next shot.
After twenty minutes of taking turns shooting with Michael, the man working at the gun range comes out; he needs to be present for us to go get our target, to make sure no one starts shooting while we're out there. He'd been watching us through a camera and tells Michael that I shot a lot better than he did. When we get the target back, we see a cluster of holes in the center. Those breathing exercises really work.
"There's something meditative about shooting," I tell the man.
"It's just like yoga," he replies. "I don't like telling people I work here, because they can be weird about it, but I wish they could see how calming it is."
I know exactly what he means. I wish I felt like this all the time.
~
On one side of the highway that cuts through Lassen, the forest is still patched with white snow on an 80 degree day in spring. On the other side, the forest is crisped black from one of the more recent fires. From a certain angle the wildfire-charred trees look velvety, the blackness absorbing all light. Then you take one more step and the char suddenly gleams glossy in the unforgiving alpine sun. No birds sing here. It's gorgeous and I hate it.
~
I wake up before dawn to meet the biologist at 7AM. He waits for no one. "I'm like the tide," he's fond of saying. He reminds me of Sam Elliott in "The Big Lebowski" mixed with John Slattery in "Mad Men". Anyway, today we're catching Western fence lizards. Well, we're picking them up out of the bucket traps. A long time ago the biologist dug about forty holes in the ground, all over the hills, and shoved buckets in those holes, with the lids slightly ajar so lizards fall in and can't get back out. Gophers, centipedes, rattlesnakes, too. You never what you're going to get. My task is to stick my hand in the bucket and grab whatever's in there. Unless it's a rattlesnake, of course. So actually my first task is to knock on the bucket lid and listen for the hiss of the rattle. If there's no hiss, then I'm good to go. And I grab the lizards and a fistful of centipedes and crickets, too. It helps to not really think about it too much. Probably one of the worst times to overthink something is when there's a centipede in your hand.
The bucket traps are spread out across the hills and the biologist asks if I'm comfortable off-roading and I am proud to say my car has a button for this. It's called "X-MODE". You press it and the car goes into X-MODE. There's another man working with us, too. A retired firefighter with a truck of his own. He follows behind me and gets a kick out my bumper stickers. "FAST CARS FAST FOOD FAST WOMEN". "I BRAKE FOR CRITTERS". That kind of thing. He's tickled that at one point a ground squirrel runs in front of my car and I do brake for it. I wear my heart on my bumper.
My car is soon covered in that warm dust of the California grasslands. The hills seem to spread out forever, blond grass undulating out like waves. I get so turned around I lose all sense of direction. It's just endless bone dry hills and that fragrant dust I could roll around in forever like the lizards and the centipedes and I want to crawl into the bucket traps and wait in the cool darkness for someone to knock on the lid and scoop me up. It's been a long year.
At the end of the day the retired firefighter tells me he has a T-shirt that says "HUMANKIND: BE BOTH". That's so corny. "And you're both!" he says, smiling at me. I bite my tongue so I don't cry.
~
I could do the drive to Point Reyes with my eyes closed at this point. Not that I would, obviously. Even when I have a bored hand inside my jeans, I keep my eyes on the road. The clamorous 580 to the tourist-ridden 101 then through the redwoods, past all the rich cyclists, then finally onto the little road that snakes up the edge of Tomales Bay and then cuts west, up over the dark green oak forests and onto the grassy headlands. I usually can't see far. It's one of the foggiest places in America and the road I have so diligently been watching fades before me. Cypress trees sometimes shiver into view but otherwise it's the road and the fog, forever. I think if I go to heaven when I die, this is what it will look like.
Today I'm looking for nesting snowy plovers. I had helped the Sam Elliott/John Slattery biologist monitor them over the winter on a beach in Alameda, and this summer I'm helping another biologist monitor them out here. These birds are so, so small and so threatened and the dunes are so huge and they could be anywhere. It's the middle of summer and it's 50 degrees out, the wind cutting over miles of dunes. There's no one on this beach except me, the fishermen, and the surfers. Real lovers only.
I lumber across the sand, sliding around with each step. I'm barefoot -- shoes are useless here -- and holding a clipboard. It's cold but it's fine. BE BOLD START COLD, as backpackers say. Being outside is mostly about suffering and you do have to love it on some level otherwise you're just going to be in a bad mood all day. And what's the point of that? I see some shorebirds but not the snowy plovers. Hollowed-out crab shells, whips of bull kelp. Every so often I stop and scan the beach with my shitty binoculars and don't see shit. Maybe there aren't any birds to see anyway and I'm shivering on this beach for no reason. Bird watching is also largely about suffering. Well maybe all of life is.
Eventually I start walking back to my car and I pass one of the surfers. He runs up to me, excitedly asking what I'm looking for. His wetsuit covers him completely except for his hands and his face slathered in gobs of sunscreen. His eyebrows burst forth like the mustache of a walrus. He has the most perfect Californian accent I've ever heard. It's like the people in Weezer's "Undone (The Sweater Song)". I immediately like him.
I tell him I'm looking for snowy plovers and oh man that's so awesome wow how are they doing dude they're so cute but so threatened it's so sad dude the ravens man they swoop in and like they get the eggs and it sucks man. Yes it does. But again, life, suffering, etc.
He thanks me for what I do and I head into my car and start driving through the fog again. I feel every emotion all at once. I've been feeling that a lot lately. I pass by an old fence and I see a hawk standing on it, surprisingly close to the road. I don't think about it, I just pull the car over and walk up to the hawk. It has something pinned in its talons and is tearing glistening flesh into its beak. Sometimes it stops and looks at me but quickly refocuses on its brunch. It's erotic and beautiful. I am jolted by the thought that god is the hawk, god is the torn flesh, god is me watching, god is the tawny grass over the headlands and the yellow lupines brightening the fields. You know what I mean?
~
One morning I am beginning my workday out in a nearby regional park, too early for anyone who's not being paid to be outdoors to be outdoors. The summer fog still clings to the trees; it'll be hours before it burns off. I start my stupid little Garmin watch to track my mileage and then I decide to look up. And I see a great horned owl silently slicing through the air. I've never seen an owl on my own before, without an expert birdwatcher pointing one out for me. The owl lands in a tree and looks at me. We don't say anything to each other. Then it flies off again. I look down at my watch and notice it had frozen a few seconds after starting -- right around when I saw the owl. If I were a superstitious person who believed in signs from the universe, I would make something of this. Luckily I am and I do. I smile and start walking through the forest, focusing on my breath, the fog, the silence.