L U N A T A L K with Eva Moon

Murder Most Foul

August 6, 2007 on 9:02 am | In General Musing |

This is a sordid tale of good intentions gone awry; a confession, a purging of the years of guilt that have shadowed my life. I have laid the blame on the bear, on the power of literature, my husband, the very sun in the sky - anywhere but on my own pathetic shoulders. No more. And what prompts this soul-baring so many years after the despicable deed? We’re arrived last night on Orcas Island for a few days escape. It’s a charming and idyllic bit of paradise in the San Juan Islands and our room at the inn overlooks the windswept Sound. Like many vacation condos, there’s a shelf of paperback sleaze left by previous guests. I’m never averse to a good sleaze-read on vacation and eagerly scanned the shelf. That’s when I saw it: That book. Shardik, by Richard Adams. It swept me back to that awful day.

It was the summer of 1979. Mike and I were backpacking in the Yosemite backcountry and had reached Lake Washburn, several days’ hike past the back of Half Dome. We’d spent several hours huddled under a rocky overhang while a terrifying afternoon thunderstorm bedazzled the peaks surrounding the high lake with near-coninuous lightning strikes, but now the sun was bright and we pitched our little tent. While I was pushing stakes into the wet sand, a movement at the edge of the clearing caught my eye. I peered closely, but could see nothing at first. There it was again. Something very small: a mouse. Not the usual wily critter one sees darting about the landscape though. This one was a lost baby, its eyes still closed. I have no idea how it managed to get out of its nest, but there it was in the open, poking blindly about, helpless and surely doomed. My heart, of course, melted and I picked it up. It immediately nestled into the palm of my hand and I was a goner. Every shred of the incipient maternal instinct that a few years later would lead me to the production of actual children became invested in “Mousie.”

Mousie spent the night in my hand and was still snuggled there when I woke in the morning. His eyes had opened and he was looking distinctly more feral than the previous day, but still content to stay put. He ate a peanut from our stash of trail mix.

Then came the discussion of what to do. We were hiking out that day, heading up to Tuolumne Meadows in the north part of Yosemite and we knew it wasn’t really good form to travel about with a handful of wildlife. But Mousie was tame. I’d ruined him and feared if I just abandoned him now, I might as well be signing his death warrant. Little did I suspect then, leaving him to the swift dispatch of an owl would have been a mercy.

I made a little traveling nest for Mousie out of a knitted glove and provided him with a small assortment of sunflower seeds and raisins. Mouse heaven. We shouldered our packs and headed down, hitching a ride to our car when we hit the road.

The next day found the three of us comfortably ensconced at a campsite at Tuolumne. You may be wondering where the bear and the novel come into the story. I was no stranger to light vacation reading even then and had Shardik tucked in my pack. I was nearly to the exciting climax and was curled up in a camp chair by the fire ring, Mousie in his little glove in my lap, blind to the scenic wonders of Yosimite. Nothing existed but the giant, mystic bear in the pages of that book.

Just then, Mike strode into camp. I had to come see the sunset. Sunset? I was supposed to tear myself from my riveting read for a mere sunset over the jagged peaks above one of the most beautiful alpine meadows in the world? Well, yeah. Without thinking, attention snagged between two worlds, I stood. The glove fell to the ground unnoticed.

And then, in the instant my foot moved forward, I remembered. That fateful instant, too late to retract the step. Time for the impulse of awareness to enter my brain, but no time for the impulse to change the movement to reach my foot. My booted foot descended onto Mousie’s glove. Mousie, who had trusted me, who I had saved from predation in the high back-country. I had murdered Mousie.

To this day, Mousie lies in a shallow, unmarked grave in Tuolumne Meadows; my unconfessed crime likewise buried. Mousie is at peace. And now, so many years later, perhaps the chance reunion with that fictional bear can bring me some measure of redemption.

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• It's Like a Fish. But It's Not a Fish.
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