Writer in the Forest

Chapter 10

The trail to the theater

I sat in the dirt and marvelled how nothing had changed since the first day I had seen the Forest Theater. Mom had brought me here when I was a kid. She said it was her special place. Mom said they’d had to build slides down the hills to get the lumber down. I’d run up the bank and jumped off over and over that day, my sweater flying behind me. I was Supergirl. For a few weeks, anyway. Her new boyfriend was with us. His name was Bob.

The valley was discovered in 1909 by members of the Mountaineers Club, intending to hike to Wildcat Lake. They kept returning, entertaining each other with skits held in different clearings.

The Mountaineer’s amphitheater

The skits eventually became plays. They terraced the bank to make the amphitheater, cutting only the trees they needed for light.

Behind the ancient theater is Chico Creek. I’ve waded in it, fished it, sunbathed on its low-runoff “islands”, and forded it.

Chico Creek

But mostly, I just sit here in the theater and watch the play that is my life. Like today, as I try to figure out how to keep my parents in their house. They’re getting older; things are going south. I look on the bright side. Growing old is about as natural as, well, this wild place. It’s just wrong when people die too soon, for stupid reasons like drinking.

I hurried in from my date, late for my trip to the hospital to see my birth Dad. I stopped dead in my tracks.  My mother’s face was wet and for a moment she looked like Tragedy, the mask. I glanced at Harry, who looked away.

“Your father’s dead.”

Her hands reached out as her face crumbled. Harry studied his shoes, then got up and turned off the television.

I’d seen my Dad yesterday, for maybe the third time in the eleven years since we left him.  He looked too old to be my father and seemed humiliated that I should find him malnourished and broken. I promised I’d be back tonight.

“I was supposed to be there.”

“I know, but you have to live your life. He was a good man but for the drinking. Remember that.”

So many questions to ask, so many things to say, but I realized talking to my Dad would just happen in my head now. The world had fallen silent.

Timber down.

He’d crashed to the ground, alone, with no one there to hear the sound.