Jayce Morin's Questionnaire

I don't really live in a town or a city - I'm a bit of a wanderer. Evelyn - my car - and I go all over; I've spent time in Colorado, California, Wyoming, Washington, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Texas, Louisiana... really all over. I mostly live in national forests - I've got hunting and fishing licenses all over, and I'm a rap hand at foraging, so the land provides most things for me. My home is the woods - I have a sturdy, weatherproofed tent to keep me dry and warm, a sleeping bag rated to -100 F, and a folding mat to help keep my back in shape sleeping out in the woods. It's beautiful, and I know all the mushrooms.

I work as a firewatch officer over the dry seasons, and use the time to scope out where I want to camp and explore next. It pays decent, and I have very few expenses; my hobbies are all survival and writing, so it works out. I mostly spend my money on gas, repairs for Evelyn, bullets, and maps, rope, and other camping or spelunking supplies, plus my tools. If I run short, it's never hard to find day jobs in the small towns near the national forests; I know a few people most places by now, and they typically have something for me if I have a big expense I need to take care of.

I want to live in a world where things are free to be the things that they are. Most humans today have never seen a sunrise; never smelled the dew on the dawn grass or woken up to find a lizard in their tent. Most humans today don't know where their food comes from and care less; most humans today don't want to know how their food winds up on their table. Most humans today don't understand who they're supposed to be - most humans today don't want to be who they're supposed to be, content with television revisions and superficial satisfactions. Most humans today don't respect the world they came from; they fear their mother and shun their brothers and hate what they can't control, when having no control is what it means to be human.

I want a world where we're animals - where we eat mushrooms, find berries, kill a deer for dinner and make love in the pine needles and the ferns. I want a world where being a man means what I want it to mean and it doesn't matter that I think I'd look nice with breasts or that I can't grow hair on my chest. I want a world where we can be free to be, and nobody and nobody can tell anyone not to be.

Evelyn died for it, I guess. I suppose I can too.

Sophomore year, 18 and counting. She has red lipstick and freckles and hair that matches them both. She's white like stripped pine and soft like the dawn grass, and she laughs when I put my fingers where I know she likes them. We met in forestry class; she's there for an easy A, I'm there for the field trips, she calls me tutor and pokes my cheeks when it makes me blush.

Sophomore year, 18 and counting. I'm younger than her - she's on the edge of 20, and I started college young. It's my birthday soon, and she says she has a surprise. I get that weird tightness in my gut and she helps make it go away with the lipstick stains she leaves on me. When I worry about it, she drags me off into the campus woods and makes me forget.

Yosemite at night - the dry season makes the grass gold. Camp stove fish chili caught on a hook and cut with a damascus knife she put in my hands when she got in my car. She makes fireworks go off behind my eyes, and I spill my food and it gets in her hair and she laughs. The empty brandy bottle shimmers in the firelight, and she says she wants to make fireworks go off in the sky too. We argue. The argument gets bad, and she goes for the lighter and the fireworks and I don't let her and she-

Sophomore year, 19.

Evelyn stayed in Yosemite.

I didn't go back to school.

Jason Mattison: A ranger and fireman who works in the Apache-Sitgreaves national forest. He's an old friend of mine, and helped me get on my feet when I ran out of money after I dropped out of school. He taught me how to hold firewatch jobs - how to be comfortable in the silence and the solitude, when there's just a radio to connect you to the other towers. Whenever I need some extra work, I know I can drive to the rez and he'll help me get what I need, even though I'm a bit of a white boy. He's good people.

Leana Dench: Leana's a talented blacksmith who lives in Silver City, New Mexico. I get all my camping tools from her - she makes the most beautiful damascus, and has friends who make great boots that keep my feet safe in the woods but don't make a sound when I'm hunting. I've crashed on her couch a few times.

"Ruby" - I don't know Ruby's real name, but she does firewatch every summer, just like I do. I think we're both hiding from something, but when things get bad, I know I can call her. Most summers we coordinate and try to work in the same forest - I think she's close to my age. She's the only person I've ever met who knows more about mushrooms than I do, and there isn't a secret I have I don't trust her with.

I was a good kid.

Pretty normal - shy, decent at sports, good at school. It's not that I'm smart, I'm not - not really - I'm just good at paying attention and I always liked learning. Daddy worked an office, mommy worked a phone - good parents, good money, but I got used to being alone.

I was a good kid.

School wasn't hard, but it wasn't easy either. I liked class - speak when spoken to, raise your hand and ask or answer. Always rules, tools, methods to communicate on where you know what's gonna happen. Not like talking to kids, or my parents friends when mom and dad want to show off the slingshots I used to make. Not like trying go make friends. It's not that I didn't fit in - I just liked the woods on the playground more than the other kids. It's not that I didn't fit in, I just didn't know what to say when people wanted to talk. It's not that I didn't fit in, it's just that there's so much nicer things to do than listen to a bunch of kids be loud. It's not that I didn't fit in, though.

I was a good kid.

14, 15, 16, 17.

Wasted time is wanted time, but time wanted is well remembered. Growing into an adult is messy and strange; you start a kid, but wind up somewhere in the middle stuck in between, mixed up and messed up and trying to figure out how to be with only bad guidance and bad advice to go on. We were never new to each other; at 13, 12, 10, we'd seen each other's faces time and time before. I don't remember how we met, at least not in the common phrase, but I remember the day we met.

We were 16 - we were juniors, but she was older and I was younger because birthdays are bullshit and the public school system waits for nobody. AP Bio and cross country club and Advanced Classic American Literature and so much shared outside. I was a good kid, but not a very social one; perceptive and observant and good at remembering what the teacher said so I got a lot of A's. She didn't get a lot of A's - at least, not on her own, but she was so much smarter than me. So much smarter, so much brighter, so much better at people and words so everything I write is stuck chasing the shadow of what she never will. I remember when we met - after class, when I noticed her slip away into the woods behind the school and decided to follow. She was never sneaky - loud and bold as much as I've always been quiet, as much as I've always been subtle. Rosy and orange like fire, and bright like it too. She wasn't hard to follow.

I found her painting flowers on her poems, and writing the names of the species she always had a hard time remembering on a test, under pressure, under scrutiny. I watched her until she noticed me, and when I tried to run she stopped me with her eyes first, and then her lips, and asked why it took me so long to follow her.

I always followed her after.

I think I still am.

My worst fear is the fear of the deer who has no hunter.

To be is to be something - to have a reason, a rhyme, a position in existence built in your bones billions of years before your birth and passed baton-like generation down generation. To exist is to have a purpose and to have a purpose is to have relationships, because nothing has a purpose in isolation. The deer is made to eat: to chew grass and juicy slugs, to sip the dew from leaves, to rut in the soft meadow and bask in the warm spring sun.

The deer is made to feed the wolf.

Without the wolf, the deer starve. Without the wolf, the deer grow in number, far too rapid to help, far too fast to survive. Without the wolf, the deer eat their homes barren, strip the grass and the trees from the mountainside, drain the ponds they use to bathe. Without the wolf, the deer make themselves sick; without the wolf, they rot.

Beginning, end.

Sunrise, sunset.

Summer, winter.

Deer, wolf.

My greatest fear is to die somewhere nothing can grow from my bones. 

My greatest fear is to be a deer in a world which has no wolves.

Everything can be replaced except for Evelyn.

If I need more tools, I can get them from Leana. If I need to replace my books, I'd just need to take a few months to tour the used bookstores on my usual circuit. If I need to replace my clothes, I can visit Jason's family again, and make them take my money this time.

I don't know how I'd even begin to try and replace Evelyn.

She's been my closest, constant, only companion for almost 5 years; I've lived out of her, cried in her, laughed in her, loved in her even though I tried so hard not to. She's carried me everywhere I've been, played host to every poem I've written or joy I've known. 

She reminds me where I come from, and what I've paid to be where I am.

She keeps me steady, honest.

She is my home.