Rodents of the Forest

Tonight, I wear my flip flops in our High Sierra camp, which I normally wouldn’t do, but my boots and shoes are wet and hanging up. The fire has died down, and we’re in our camp chairs watching the stars and talking memories when I feel something scurry across my naked feet, something furry, something small.

I yell and stand, and then we all laugh. In camp, all summer long, we live with rodents like squirrels, chipmunks, mice, rats, and even a family of marmots that moved in this year, and they’re fine. This is their home after all, and they generally stay out of our tents because we have no food in them. We all wonder out loud how often a critter runs across our toes when we are wearing shoes.

There’s something so natural about these little creatures when we live close to the earth like this, something that doesn’t frighten me. Last year, we had rats invade the attic of the house I was renting in the city, and it felt unclean. It felt like a violation even though the rats were simply living their lives.

Out here though, rats don’t scare me and neither do any of their cousins. It is something about living outside, living close to the earth. It’s something about living with nature rather than in opposition to it. It’s something about not spending the day boxed unnaturally in a building but rather wandering freely around.

When I sit back down, we take joke bets on how long it will be until another animal scrambles across me. Truly, I would not be offended if one did. These animals are of the forest, and so now am I.

a flash memoir from John Brantingham

John Brantingham was Sequoia and Kings Canyon National Parks’ first poet laureate. His work has been featured in hundreds of magazines, Writers Almanac and The Best Small Fictions 2016. He has nineteen books of poetry and fiction including his latest, Life: Orange to Pear (Bamboo Dart Press). He teaches at Mt. San Antonio College.