The Girl Who Goes Alone<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s the thing about being a girl
\nand wanting to play outside.
\nAll the grown-ups grind it into you from the get go:
\ngirls outside aren\u2019t safe.
\nThe guy in the car? If he rolls down the window and leans
\nhis head out, run
\nbecause the best you can hope for is a catcall, and at worst
\nyou\u2019ll wind up with your face on the side of a milk carton.<\/p>\n
Even when you\u2019re a grownup girl, your father\u2014because
\nhe loves you\u2014
\nwill send you a four-page article about how to protect yourself
\nwhile standing at the ATM, while travelling unescorted, while
\njogging solo,
\nan article informing you how to distinguish phony police
\nand avoid purse snatchers, pickpockets, rapists, and thugs.<\/p>\n
Tell someone you\u2019re going into the woods alone
\nand they\u2019ll story your head with trailside cougar attacks,
\ncave dwelling misogynists, lightning strikes, forest fires,
\nflash floods,
\nand psychopaths with a sixth sense for a woman alone in a tent.<\/p>\n
To be a girl alone in the wilderness is to know
\nthat if something goes wrong\u2014
\nyou picked the trailhead where the ax murderer lurks
\nor the valley of girl-eating gophers\u2014
\nif you don\u2019t come home intact, the mourning
\nwill be mixed with I-told-you-sos
\nfrom everyone whose idea of camping involves an RV
\nor a Motel 6.
\nThe message is clear: Girls must be chaperoned.<\/p>\n
So, when, at the end of the day, you zip up the tent
\nand lie back in your sleeping bag,
\nfleece jacket bundled into a lumpy pillow under your head,
\nthe second you close your eyes every least night noise
\nis instantly magnified.<\/p>\n
You lie there and consider the pungent heft of menstrual blood,
\nhow even your sweat is muskier, louder, when you\u2019re bleeding.
\nNot hard to imagine its animal allure\u2014every bear
\nfor miles around sniffing you on the night wind.<\/p>\n
You lie there, listening, running a mental inventory of any
\npotentially scented item\u2014
\ndid every one make it into the food bag hung from a tree?
\nToothpaste, trailmix, chapstick, sunscreen\u2014fuck.
\nSunscreen still in your pack, nestled right beside you
\nwhere Outdoor Man used to sleep. So you\u2019re up, out of the tent
\nheadlamp casting its too-bright spotlight, darkening the dark
\noutside its reach
\nas you lower the bag, shove the sunscreen in, hoist and tie.<\/p>\n
Far enough from the ground to elude the bears?
\nFar enough along the branch to thwart raccoons?
\nTree far enough from the tent to keep from signaling
\nthe proximity of ground-level, girl-shaped snacks?<\/p>\n
You go alone\u2014in part\u2014to prove that though Outdoor Man
\nhas left you
\nhis body is the only geography he can deprive you of.
\nHe can give his muscled calves and thighs, his shoulders, chest,
\nand hands
\nto another woman, but not the Sauk River old growth,
\nsnow fields of Rainier, sea stacks of Shi Shi.<\/p>\n
He can keep you from the sweet, blood-thrilling hum
\nof his body, but not the sweaty, blood-thumping
\npleasure of a hard-earned panoramic view or high altitude
\nstarlight.<\/p>\n
The thing about being a girl who goes alone, who goes
\nagain and again, is that it freaks
\nthe potential next boyfriend. He doesn\u2019t want
\nto be out machoed and he doesn\u2019t want to admit it
\nand he hopes you can\u2019t tell. The thing
\nabout being the girl who still goes alone is that it proves
\nyou don\u2019t need him and no matter how you show him you
\nwant him
\nit\u2019s not the same
\nand you both know it.<\/p>\n
Zipped back into the tent you remind yourself you\u2019ve never
\nreally been in danger.
\nWhen have you ever been in danger? Well there was that boy,
\nbut years ago
\na teenager like you, driving around bored and pissed
\nat the world, his BB gun and his father\u2019s two rifles
\non the seat beside him. Lucky you.
\nThe gun he leveled on the window ledge
\nlodged nothing more than a BB in your thigh.<\/p>\n
The thing about being a girl alone in the woods is
\nyou know too much
\nabout the grain of truth in the warnings.<\/p>\n
Even if you seem impervious, weird good luck leaving you
\nso far unscathed
\nyou know the other girls\u2019 stories\u2014your sister
\ndate raped after a party in college, a friend
\nraped by a stranger at knife-point, the two women
\nshot on the Pinnacle Lake trail, the singer
\nkilled by coyotes in Nova Scotia.<\/p>\n
The thing
\nabout being a girl
\nwho goes alone
\nis that you feel like you shouldn\u2019t go
\nif you\u2019re afraid. If you go it should mean you\u2019re not afraid,
\nthat you\u2019re never afraid. Your friends will think that you go
\nunafraid.<\/p>\n
This girl
\nwho goes alone
\nis always afraid, always negotiating to keep the voices
\nin her head at a manageable pitch of hysteria.<\/p>\n
I go knowing that there will be a moment\u2014maybe
\nlong moments, maybe
\nhours of them, maybe the whole trip\u2014
\nwhen I curse myself for going alone.
\nWhen I lie in the tent and all I am is fear.<\/p>\n
I walk into the wilderness alone
\nbecause the animal in me needs to fill her nose
\nwith the scent of stone and lichen,
\nocean salt and pine forest warming in early sun.<\/p>\n
I walk in the wilderness alone so I can hear myself.
\nSo I can feel real to myself.<\/p>\n
I go because I know I\u2019m lucky to have a car, gas money, days off
\nthe back and legs and appetite
\nto take me there.
\nI go while I still can.<\/p>\n
The girl who goes alone
\nclaims for herself
\nthe madrona \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0juniper \u00a0 \u00a0 daybreak.<\/p>\n
She claims hemlock \u00a0 \u00a0prairie \u00a0 \u00a0falcon \u00a0 \u00a0nightfall
\nnurse \u00a0 \u00a0log \u00a0 \u00a0sea star \u00a0 \u00a0glacial moraine
\nhuckleberry \u00a0 \u00a0trillium \u00a0 \u00a0 salal
\nsnowmelt \u00a0 \u00a0avalanche lily \u00a0 \u00a0waterfall
\nbirdsong \u00a0 \u00a0limestone \u00a0 \u00a0granite \u00a0 \u00a0moonlight \u00a0 \u00a0schist
\ncirque \u00a0 \u00a0 saddle \u00a0 \u00a0summit \u00a0 \u00a0 ocean
\nshe claims the curve of the earth.<\/p>\n
The girl who goes alone says with her body
\nthe world is worth the risk.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Elizabeth Austen<\/a> is the author of Every Dress a Decision <\/a>(Blue Begonia Press, 2011), and two chapbooks, The Girl Who Goes Alone\u00a0<\/a>(Floating Bridge Press, 2010) and Where Currents Meet <\/a>(one of four winners of the 2010 Toadlily Press chapbook award and part of the quartet Sightline). Her poems have been featured on The Writer\u2019s Almanac and Verse Daily, in journals including the Los Angeles Review, Bellingham Review and Willow Springs, and in anthologies including A Face to Meet the Faces and Poets Against the War. She served as the Washington state \u201croadshow poet\u201d and is the literary producer for KUOW 94.9 public radio in Seattle.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Girl Who Goes Alone Here\u2019s the thing about being a girl and wanting to play outside. All the grown-ups grind it into you from the get go: girls outside aren\u2019t safe. The guy in the car? If he … Continue reading