madelyn jones

late last august, i was sitting on mt. rainier’s third burroughs with the emmons glacier sprawled, shimmering, beneath me. it was sweating in knife-edge streams, water beading on its surface like perspiration, wheezing like a chain-smoking grandma with wind in her yet. as the sunlight flittered across the surface as if it was carried on the backs of schooling sardines, i could see a million tiny faces winking in turn — baby-faced, round-eyed, droopy-jawed, eyebrow-furrowed, laugh-lined, and eye-crinkled. it was beautiful and irresistible. 

“i really don’t see what i did wrong”—

is what i said, after i had tiptoed to the edge of the burroughs (after i had begun a glacier-bound downward scramble, after i had mistepped and put my weight on a rock that was loose like a wiggly tooth, after my body had tumbled to the foot of the emmons glacier). 

as i fell, my heart must have gotten ahead of me — fallen out along the way. i like to say “i gave my heart to the mountain.” either way, my heart took a beating just like my body, but mt. rainier wrapped me up real fine anyways. she wrapped me up like ralphie’s little brother in “a christmas story,” so protectively tight that i couldn’t feel the ache of my bones or the sting of the scrapes on my back, my elbows, my knees. it’s like she’d decided those last impressions of seracs and crevasses, on top of the undulating hollows (the gentle crests of the hills that cradle my house, the water-filled three-section basin of the puget sound), the lace-edged gaps (the way the ground froths green with lichen, moss, banana slugs in the wetness of winter rain), the shallow snarls (the smooth black-rocked breakwaters that the burlington-northern-santa fe railroad runs across, the ridgeline of the olympic mountains when viewed looking west across the water). 

i say she wrapped me, but her knots were none too tight. it’s me holding on – clinging tight, like an old-fashioned belle gathering her skirts about her. and what woman could weather the shame of being seen in public without a petticoat, bloomers, stays? not me — not yet. so, wrapped in my skirts, my 4mm neoprene wetsuit, i have been unable to feel since i drove over snoqualmie pass and decided to grit my teeth, zip in, and lace my stays tight. 

someone asked: “what does it feel like?”—

to which i say: my body has imposed a uniform texture: the prickle of grass, the roughness of bark, the ache of gravel underfoot, all feel as forgiving as gauze. everything feels like the softness of a pottery barn quilt or the faux-fur throws my mom got everyone for christmas one year — it’s like i’m cocooned in a body-shaped ugg.

someone asked: “how do you deal with it?”–

well— in the dead of night, i slip into the anderson f-sec bathroom. i leave the lights off, so the room is enveloped in a uniform darkness. i turn on one shower, as hot as it can go. then, i turn on a second shower, this time ice cold. i turn on the third shower, lukewarm. i strip, then run naked between the three showers, relishing in the indulgence, the absurdity, the excess. i stand beneath the hottest shower until my skin wrinkles, hissing, shrinking in the heat, the steam rising from my skin, hot air filling my lungs like smoke; then i slip into the second shower, and gasp, my chest heaving involuntarily with the sharp intake of breath. i grit my teeth against the cold, my lips and toes turn blue, and i begin to shudder violently. finally, i step into the lukewarm water and feel nothing except phantom sensations of heat and cold. it’s reminds me the hot-cold hot-cold rhythm of swimming in the puget sound in the summertime. 

or­— (also) in the dead of night, i wade into the duck pond, fully clothed so the folds of my jeans, my t-shirt, my button-up, bob sodden about me, like i imagine milfoil caresses the bodies of the lake-bottom mermaids. i stuff my pockets full of oyster crackers, saltines, and sandwich crusts, and once i’m kneeling in the center of the pond, i scatter them around me (slowly, so it lasts). it’s worth it, if only to be surrounded by the warmth of avian bodies, to be unable to hear anything except for the ruffle of feathers, the ripple of water, and the quacking of ducks. it is indulgent and selfish, but at least i’m amidst a natural geography that begins to feel familiar— wherever you go, there will always be ducks. 

but— i worry that i’m only brave enough to feel the hot and cold of too many showers, to be surrounded by flocking ducks, because they fit into the shapes my heart already bears. 

sometimes, i take a deep breath, and i dare to peek under my wetsuit, my christmas story snowsuit, my tightly laced stays, and i see exactly what i am afraid to see ­— unmarked skin. the scrapes and scars of mt. rainier, of the puget sound, of seattle, of home, are fading. still, i gather my skirts about me, but that doesn’t change my need to be acquainted with, to feel at home with, to scrape my knees on.