Prompt: Write about a time when you had a pressing question and nature provided the answer.
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How brave am I? How independent am I? Or, to flip it and reverse it, how vulnerable am I?
Nature has answered thusly: Not very, moderately, extremely.
Exhibit A: New Jersey, 2003. I'm sunbathing on a beach towel in the pasture behind my grandmother's house. Laying on my stomach, bikini top untied to prevent tan lines, listening to my Discman.
I feel a series of thuds reverberate through the ground. Over the blaring punk music pumping through my headphones, I hear a guttural snort. I lift my head, open my eyes, and find a buck staring me down from 20 feet away. Preparing to charge? I didn't stay to find out, but sprinted, semi-topless and clutching my boobs, back to the house.
Exhibit B: Northern Utah, 2012. I have just read The Beast in the Garden, a book about a mountain lion that stalked and killed several people in a Colorado community several years earlier. I have a habit of trail running in Green Canyon, a national forest about a mile from our house. There are rumors of mountain lion sightings in Green Canyon that summer, but I tell myself it will be fine.
I'm about 5 miles into my run, about a mile from my usual turn-around point, when I hear a wild thrashing in the brush beside the trail. This is it. This is how I die. It's been real, I guess?
Except, it's only a grouse. A dumb stupid grouse. Shaken (but oddly, not soiled), I turn around on the spot and hightail it the hell out of there.
Nature is great, until it isn't. I am brave, until I'm not.
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