Excerpts

27. In retrospect, one can piece together the progression of a midlife crisis. Predicting the moment of explosion before the cinder cone blows is an imprecise science.

114. Could the metaphor be more plain? If I survived the ice cave, I could change my life.

Never ever touch a baby bird, you said that one time when we found the tiny fledgling with the broken foot. When I climbed the tree to make sure it was safe: bright, red-chested, small, and helpless—

The mother will smell you and then she won’t love it anymore.

So what put their hands on me? 

...

Washington state, fire evacuation levels: 

Level 1: get ready 

Level 2: get set, and 

Level 3: go. 

All of us have “go bags” to grab as we run out the door, filled with what matters most for immediate survival. Evacuation levels can and do change on a dime, sometimes in the middle of the night. We drive away from our home perched on the hill above a gentle curve of valley just ahead of receiving notice of Level 3. I do not permit myself a glance back. 

Just the other day, during an hour-long run with “All My Friends,” LCD Soundsystem, on a loop, one watched another fat raccoon amble down the trunk of a sturdy maple tree, swagger over to the sewer, and pour himself away. One should have taken a video, but one didn’t. One couldn’t—the sight of him pinned all one’s corners in place, legs frozen bent and crooked, arms stuck akimbo like a couple of to-do lists pinned to a bulletin board. One had never seen a raccoon in real life, and what a petty wonder, the way he moved—so lazily, like he’d woken up in the past and would be content to remain there, whole and unscathed, snug inside this handful of moments stretched out, sustained, swollen with every passing yet to come.

"Lines of Communication [Survival]" by Sue Scavo, from Issue 23: 

"This is what this tree teaches me, the one hollowed, burnt,

twisted: when something happens to the body, it is not reason

to stop. Instead, keep all impossibilities. ..."