It was a most curious sight to see in the middle of nowhere, Jana decided, but always a pleasure to come upon. Granted, every state in the union had a few of them, but to see one just lying outstretched lazily in the sun so far from where she was accustomed to finding them was both intriguing and a little hilarious. Damn, she thought, are they really becoming that common or am I just not as able to be astonished by them as I grow older?
The seclusion and solitude she had sought out when she made her annual pilgrimage to Desoto Canyon was to her what high-rolling trips to Vegas and high-kid-volume hair-pulling trips to Disney World are for so many- a break from it all. While she had been many places and done many things to take her mind off the daily grind of single parenting and crappy upper management decisions, it ultimately fell to her annual indulgence of the quiet peace of the secluded cabin and awesome abundance of natural beauty that replenished her soul. To get away from it all, one had to escape more than the hometown pitfalls and humdrum.
She had always come in May because of her vacation time being so regimented and dependent on people with more tenure and clout being able to pick and choose their allotment with impunity. She had ridden out a few of the older hands, medical maladies and retirement thinning the ranks of the older co-workers. Firings and new hirings chopped up the tenure list enough for her to state with finality that she would take in the seasonal change in autumn. Any acre of Desoto in September is worthy of a postcard photo or Ansel Adams print and she at last had the opportunity to visit a heavenly spot of earth.
Her son was safely stowed with her parents and the house was secured as well as could be expected. The more pressing of her financial matters were resolved for the month. Her car ran beautifully all the way into northeast Alabama.
She was completely at ease in the sturdy cabin. It was well furnished with all the necessities. There were pots and pans in the cupboard, a freshly made bed in the bedroom, hot water aplenty, and a huge tub to relax in and allow for quiet leisure and growth of soul. She had bought provisions along the way, stopping at a Food World in Gadsden for canned goods and a few bottles of merlot. Jana was set for seclusion and a peaceful respite.
She had spent the first few days reading, inhaling fully the words of Jackie Collins and Anais Nin, at first. But after a day of alternating looking blissfully out of the window in between text and sips of red, the walls closed in a bit and she decided to take in the views and sights and perhaps shoot a few frames of film. As luck would have it, her quest for life's simple pleasures yielded the most basic and simple of them all.
Desoto Falls was truly awe-inspiring. It sprang up suddenly from the forest, a towering cliff of falling white mist whose roar shrouded the valley below with scattered rainbows and foggy clouds of humidity that completely overwhelmed the senses of any who come to see its grandeur. The kaleidoscope of bright yellows, reds, oranges and greens surrounded the valley with autumn's own swirl of psychedelic inspiration. The granite itself was alive, a hodgepodge of lichen and oddly hued mosses having taken up residence on the rock faces eternally made boggy by the omnipresent misting. The fauna had no fear of man here. The multitude of animals living around the park were not hunted and were in fact a bit tamed by decades of peanuts and half-bitten slices of tomato or lettuce haven been throw out to them by gawking tourists.
There were a few tourists here and there. She noted a few hardy mountain bikers, hikers, naturalist stoners, stern game wardens, and the occasional van load of kids whose sour expressions led her to believe that all things being equal, the kids found the Gameboys in their laps much more stimulating than some dumb waterfall. Ah, youth.
She spent a great deal of that second day sitting high on the cliff overlooking the falls below her, thinking about things in general and dwelling on nothing in particular. The only interruption to her natural coexistence with the park was one intrusion by her mother explaining that her kid was fine, the house was fine, everything was fine. It was an unnecessary call, really, but she understood her mother's need for checking in and was tickled by her description of the tyke's bumbling and fumbling with sounds and crawling. He would be running circles around the house in no time. Watching a pair of raccoons, one large and one small, dancing around a trash can in search of a morsel, she felt that sense of motherhood strongly. To raise a son alone was always a challenge, but at the end of the day, seeing one's offspring attain just a little step forward into life was its own attribute. She loved him so.
All this and everything else was thrown carefree into the wind when she saw it. It was on her third day in the cabin, a dire sense of boredom having overrun the rustic qualities of seclusion and her need for exposure to the forests taking her on a much-needed hike off the beaten trail. It was a gloomy day, the lack of sun decimating the rainbows and casting a pale shadowy pallor over the valley. The sky's pale grey pallor tempered the fiery bright colors of the valley, as if depressing the natural sense of soul in the flora with a pungent attitude of blasé and melancholy lack of rapture. It was in this doleful mood that the entrance of a man's bright exuberance changed her lack of human touch into a long forgotten sense of need and desire.
"It" was a perfect man. Jana watched the human form from atop a hill, eyeing the stranger as he sat against a large oak, snapping an occasional picture with a long lens that he tossed casually aside as he leaned back against the tree to pick up an acoustic guitar and thumb a few notes. He played the notes low, the windless air denying the sound's travels up the hill in any substantive way and begging her to cock her ear to receive its song. She did not go to him, instead crouching low in a stand of ripening huckleberries and spying as she would observe a skittish animal. He was dressed in a blue pullover of some kind, an Indian style print etched horizontally in faded black across it. A well-worn wide-brimmed hat of leather shielded the eyes and brow but not the full lips and definitive chin denoting good breeding through countless generations. His casual ease of movement was apparent even sitting down; she could see he had a genteel and calm demeanor that was sexy in that he contained the self-confidence to sit alone and unafraid. He wore well-fit jeans as well and a rugged pair of hiking boots.
She lost track of time and space watching him, as if enthralled as her child would be with a bright noisy toy seen for the first time through infant eyes. There was no sounds apparent to her except the gentle notes of C minor and A sharp occasionally fighting their way up the hill, as if each lick of a string no matter how inappropriate to the desired chord sent a determined soldier of lust floating on humid air up to find her. Nothing in the world mattered to her in that span of time. All thoughts of the world left behind her for so short a time failed to break her rapt attention in the stranger.
A strange wave of compulsion began to take hold of her, a desire to ravish and pillage a source of virile presentation and to have him firmly clutch her lack of fulfillment left unchecked by so many dicey encounters with men who had just been there and not fully transported her needs into accomplishments. So complete was her attraction to a man whose voice she had never heard that she never heeded the approaching grunts of a large mammal sashaying up her trail. The odds of finding a bear in Alabama were small, but Jana and a large male bruin quickly introduced her to the perfectly unassuming man she coveted.
It was a small black bear, shuffling its nose through the underbrush for a tasty sweet acorn or grub worm. It's eyes were poor and it was as guilty of lack of attention to detail as she for not seeing him approach. The bear was quite used to pillaging the stand of huckleberry bushes along the ridge for a tasty treat without any fear of man. Her quiet crouching and spying immediately gave way to a scream of immense pitch and volume. The bear, used to people's noises, moaned low and menacingly in return. It did not run away, sensing the panic of the woman and determined to have its way with the berries, human be damned. It stood up and its hind legs and gave its reply to her fear in the form of a low growl that only sent another bout of hysterics thundering down the hillside to the stranger's ears. Jana never saw the man toss caution and the Washburn aside, pick up a limb and rock and charge the hill. Her eyes locked on the bruin.
"Hey you sonofabitch! Git' tha' hell outta' here! Hey! Hey! Haaaaay bear! Git on outta' here! Now, you big bastard!"
The wild approach of another human triggered a new level of flight or fight in the bear. It dropped to all fours, unsure whether to listen to reason and run like hell or call the people's bluff and fight for its rightful share of the succulent berries. Its and Jana's eyes locked on the angry face of the fast approaching man, his camera swinging wildly side to side and his deep voice demanded to be heeded. Jana could scarcely believe the speed and power of the man's approach, each long stride fighting to gain uphill ground and succeeding in closing the gap between himself and the threat rapidly. With feline ease he slipped through the underbrush. The bear flinched to its right, grunting loudly to challenge the attacker's resolve. He kept coming, his ferocity and tenacious assault on the bear's position emboldening Jana's adrenaline to pump her full of a previously unknown sense of mettle she had never known. She stomped loudly on the ground and began shaking the shrubbery around her vigorously, taking her own stand against the threat. If a bear's long face could ever personify the phrase, "Fuck this!" it was in this split second before it turned and dashed away, yelping like a puppy and thudding down the hill opposite from the tall man swinging a limb and demanding to be acknowledged.
Jana stood transfixed and gaping at the chiseled face and wild eyes of the man as he ran past her without even pausing. He continued past her, following the bear's path and continuing to yell obscenities at the fleeing animal. He ran for several hundred yards further down the valley, ultimately flailing the thick limb repeatedly against an elm tree that may or may not have been offended by his assault against its old trunk, depending on one's beliefs in a tree's thoughts. Still not convinced the threat was eradicated, he threw the rock and the limb high and hard into the last patch of foliage in which the bear had been visible.
Her heart began pounding hard, the adrenaline finally making its presence known completely. The fresh blast of blood rushing into her mind and the glut of oxygen streaming into her veins from her deep breathing made her swoon and she fainted dead away, her last clear thought and vision being a strangers smile turning into concern as she grayed out.
She awoke to the feeling of jostling, the roar of a motor beneath her, and a strap holding her firm against an upright body. Shaking her head and gasping aloud, she realized she had some type of strap around her, securing her to the trunk of a man's body. His back was damp but there was the scent of sweat that was fresh and oily, not yet dank with time. It filled her with the deep aroma of a long-ago application of cologne tempered with the rich scent and masculinity and leather. Her head was resting on a man's shoulder, her arms and legs loose and reaching around him. Her hands were palm down on his lap, inadvertently resting on a firm bulge shielded by blue jean fabric. She sat up abruptly, not completely sure where she was or what in the hell was occurring. Realizing she was on a four-wheeler, she latched onto his chest. The nipples were hard, the chest firm.
"Hey!" He turned around and stopped the ride. She fidgeted a bit, not afraid but certainly more than curious about just how and why she was tied to him on a four-wheeler. Instantly, the strap released.
"Are you alright?" She cautiously stepped off the four-wheeler, stumbling a few steps at first but composing herself quickly out of embarrassment.
"I think." He looked her up and down. Gone was the wild look or rage that had bore into her psyche, replaced with concern and sincere glee.
"You passed out. I thought you would come around quickly but when you didn't I thought you might be anemic or diabetic or something. The ranger station is just a few klicks farther if you are hurt. My phone ain't gettin' no bars out here."
"No, I'm fine. I think anyway." The last thing she wanted was a trip to a hospital out in the sticks. God knew what her parents would think if they heard she was injured after a bear attack.
