Past the Boardwalk

Idaho was burning when Gordon and I met. Smoke blew into the city streets, blocked the sun, and crept through our bedroom windows. I would wake, lungs taut and tender, watch the smoke waft thick against the ceiling, and smear my nose against my palm, gray mucus a streak. For weeks after the smoke cleared, my chest would suddenly spasm and recede. A residual ember. I wondered if this was what it would be like for a ghost to wrap its translucent arms around you and squeeze.

I thought it might be an omen—meeting Gordon and the smoke and the pains. He was dangerous. I should run. Knowing him was bad. But when I buried my nose in his chest and breathed, I smelled nothing but cigarettes and soap.

When the smoke cleared, and he still remained—sturdy and serene like a river stone—an unfettered amour blossomed within me. It was then, nestled against his sternum, that I invited him, Come to the desert with me this summer—meet me there.

As I felt him inhale to say yes, the first ribbon of anxiety unfurled within me.

________

Idaho is dark months later when I leave for the Great Basin. In the night, I drive from Moscow to Lapwai, from Cottonwood to Grangeville, from White Bird to Slate Creek, a photograph of my mother at twenty-eight, the same age as me, fidgeting on the dashboard. In the photo, she stands in knee-high cheat grass at the base of a taupe-colored mountain in Hells Canyon, Idaho. I want to see where she stood nearly thirty years ago; before she was a mother; before she could imagine a body revolting against itself; before she was old enough, I imagine, to truly conceive of her demise.

I drive on the dirt road until I can go no farther, slip the photo in my back pocket, and as light spills into the valley, I walk the trails leading to the Snake River. Tumbling hills unfold while grasshoppers, fat and wild, shudder across the trail. I imagine my mother walking beside me, and my lungs contract.

________

Only days before I left, a young man died in Yellowstone National Park. He went to the thermal hot springs bubbling at nearly 200 degrees Fahrenheit. He ignored the pamphlets. He ignored the instructions from park rangers. He ignored the smell of sulfur. He walked past the warning signs, the rails, the boardwalk. He walked into the steam. He heard the ground beneath him crackle or felt it waver and give; he slipped and fell into an acidic mudpot. He capsized and screamed. Gasped. Clawed for his life until the earth swallowed him.

He boiled to death. No remains left to recover.

Twenty-two people have died in the waters since 1890.

A month earlier, another tourist thought a bison calf looked cold, put it in his car, and drove off with it until he was stopped by park rangers. The calf subsequently died. Meanwhile, a woman tried to pet a bison near the Old Faithful geyser, and another visitor inched closer to an elk, camera poised in her hand, until it charged. She scrambled backward, trees reeling above.

The parks are a study in juxtaposition: cheery foldable maps, souvenir plush animals, and the emblematic park ranger hats alongside the warnings to carry bear spray, to stay on the trail, to know that animals can and will charge, to know that you visit the park at your own risk. Standing in a visitor's center or on a trail, the line between safety and danger can appear porous. Maybe you touch that boundary and walk away. Maybe you touch it and leave with a scar. Or maybe you touch it and never come back.

But how do you know when to proceed and when to retreat? When to walk into the steam and when to turn around? When do you snap that shot and when do you drop your camera and run?

________

The Great Basin is all wind when I arrive. Dry and unyielding. I've come for a job to curate the...