Dear Jack, Ted, Jim or Some Other One-Syllable Name

I’m mostly writing to say that I’m sorry I mistook you for a serial killer. I’m sorry I thought you were waiting until bedtime to raid our tent and leave our bodies on that mountainous hill behind our campsite. Who could blame me? You had all those tools—an axe, a shovel, a pitchfork, a machete—and we were just three wimpy girls who couldn’t even start a fire. Please don’t be offended; I changed my mind when you offered to help, when you showed those tools were for chopping wood, not limbs.

Right now, as thoughts of you have pulled me from my winter vacation’s sleep, I can’t yet remember your name. It’s been a few years since we met at that small campground outside of Washington’s Olympic National Park, so I’m not surprised your name has escaped me. I’ll find your postcard in the morning and check, but I want to say it’s something like Jack, Ted, Jim or some other one-syllable name, something simple, something that does the job. I can, however, see you flawlessly in my mind, facing Hoh Rain Forest, one foot propped against the fire pit. Your dark, curly ponytail juts out the back of a blue, straight-brimmed baseball cap. I see your blue windbreaker with the gray fleece collar, your ankle-high leather boots, your calm sideways smirk.

You asked me not to write about you, but you never said anything about writing to you. I’ve been obsessing over you lately, wishing we had kept in better touch. Though I suppose when you spend your life cycling from Washington to San Francisco and then through Europe, keeping in contact with random campers proves difficult.

I also wanted to thank you for the postcard from Sweden. I’m glad you enjoyed my copy of The Call of the Wild, and please don’t worry about not having a book to trade. I often wonder how refreshing it must be for you never to have more than one book at a time, to swap for whatever your new neighbor might have. It’s respectable; you are capable of reading and releasing. I, on the other hand, covet those bound and print-covered pages, some of which I don’t even read.

I’ve never been a fan of taking books out from libraries, partly because I fear the germs but also because I suffer from some curious compulsion to buy them, own them, line them up neatly on my shelves. I don’t buy used either; I need crisp, clean pages that no one but maybe a print press operator and a bookstore clerk have touched. That doesn’t mean I keep them in perfect condition. Oh no, I scribble, underline, highlight throughout, fold the cover, stretch the binding, dog-ear the pages. I hold them open above my head when I’ve forgotten an umbrella and leave them in the back seat of my Altima to wither, mold, and crumble. Yet they are all here among strange knickknacks and shards of sea glass, among old typewriters and brass piggy banks, among wooden birds and tiny vases, among all the other trash with which I inexplicably fill my apartment.

I would trade any book, however, for just one more postcard. Perhaps I should have left you money, Frank—I’m pretty sure your name is Frank. I should have left you money for future postage because this not knowing is too much. I need to know where you are. I need to know if you are still working random side jobs for money and a campsite, if you ever called your daughter or met your granddaughter, if they are half as curious about your whereabouts as I am, if something significant made you trade your job and house and country for 365 days on a bike, if you have read any good books lately, if you will ever come back to the United States, if you ever think of me, if you ever...