Sorren Summits – DH Reed

May 20, 2026

*For Oscar- we shall gyre here in a moment of madness to amuse his memory with ribbons of the mind.*

Star-fire nights like this bring me out like a wolf under the sky.

The trees clear to matted yellow grass on Anderson Peak, cut by a slippery brook, one of many cold little veins running through Tick Ridge. Deer, trout, squirrels, bats, caves. Every ridge has a secret mouth somewhere. I see the bats burst up sometimes from the woods like the mountain is exhaling.

My Toyota waited down the camp road, tucked behind the bend. My shoes were under my towel. My phone was in my jeans. Everything useful was exactly far enough away to become useless.

I tossed my clothes beside my sleeping bag and plunged in up to my neck, chest and nerves frozen in the creek: tits to bits.

Freeze me.

Freeze it out.

A sudden, drowning awareness took me: spiced grass, gurgling moisture, pine, and one big conifer standing alone at the edge of the clearing, eyeballing everyone. Quiet guard of the wood. Noble conifer should call someone if I lose it out here.

Maybe this was already losing it.

The musty green, used, down-feather Air Force sleeping bag was my chrysalis under the stars. I cracked a couple hand warmers into it. Shake-shake. Shake my bones off into my pink lemonade towel, burrow into the bag, and count stars until I miss a number, then start over.

I was never really done freezing. I just pulled on more and more fresh cold layers from my bag.

I am a pro at freezing on this ridge. Stars shine brighter for me. Morning yellows never had such crisp highlights. There is something about the shock of a frozen night, a wink of sleep, and the birth of the sun over Tick Ridge that summons yellow.

Dew and mist drained through the grass in the morning. The whole meadow churned softly, green and chewed and waking.

–

Bats too quiet in cave.

Light bright.

Hunger.

Push rocks.

No bones.

Smell grass. Smell deer. Smell sweet.

Sweet in cloth.

Sweet in bag.

Hungry.

Cave rocky. Climb out, down.

Sweet.

–

My apples were my cold breakfast.

I’d swap the ratio of Fuji, Honeycrisp, and the pectin-rich classic reds that always disappointed. I was generous with those, tossing pieces to two squirrels that would fight over each one.

Nature gave me entertainment.

It helped me.

Sweet smell.

Sweet smell.

The squirrels darted away.

A weird bird call came from the conifer. A mad bird. I thought about snakes. I shivered, checking my legs for spiders, pulling my bag strap up to look around it.

Then its head and ears came over the ridge.

I froze like I had never frozen.

The crackle, like synth from Vangelis, erupted in my skull. An electro-psychic screech:

BEARRR, DUMBASS.

Phone in my jeans. No shoes. No bag. Standing to bail.

There.

Food.

I saw it.

He saw me stand.

Get it.

Yeah, he was going to chase me.

Like a glow stick cracking, I turned and sprang with snap, crackle, and pop.

My only plan was downhill.

–

I hated school pressure: forty-eight-hour cram miracles, three-week hibernations, lab partners doing mercy work in notebooks while I kept the beakers and small talk alive.

Most of my masculine energy went into sweeping floors and modifying my Subaru. The rest went into trying not to wrap it around Mount Anderson.

We’d mostly drift and speed around the mountain and the canyon. At night, the stars streaked like warp speed. At dawn, the whole road entered a new phase of reality.

That morning, the violet-orange marmalade sky lava-lamped real chill. Sickening drifts were waiting for their moment. I could feel the turn down the hill, around into the direct sun, feeling right.

My heart calm.

A cold inhale.

A complete stop.

A woman ran onto the road and jumped onto my hood.

“BEAAAAARRR!”

–

I screamed on the hood as the thing crashed down onto the road behind me.

I gulped air, ready to bolt again, but the car shook forward. Tires squealed in a burnout that ripped at my ears.

The bear ignored the noise.

It snapped the passenger mirror as it jumped for me, just as the car jerked forward around the road. My fingers dug into the space between hood and glass.

When the car slowed, I jumped off, terrified of what to do, and hopped into the passenger door that opened with:

“Hurry.”

I didn’t look to see who said it.

–

I punched the gas.

Tires hot. Heart racing.

This crazy, feral woman was running from something. A shadow had ripped my mirror off. I shit. Up to sixty coming down out of the turn, up to one hundred, sun bleaching out the straightaway, one-twenty, one-thirty, one-thirty-five.

I slowed to ask where she needed to go.

I barely dropped to seventy when she shook her head, so I just kept racing and drifted into a turn.

She had the biggest, craziest serial-killer smile, dirty tears running down her cheeks.

–

I turned to him.

“My car is back there.”

He nodded, slowed the car, and turned around. He looked at me for one second.

“Again?”

“Ye—”

But that seemed like a rhetorical question, because we were rocketing back up like a pair of fighter pilots.

We passed where he found me. A few sticks and leaves spun in the road. The Tick Ridge camp road was paved just enough for the brave and the stupid, and he made it easily to my small Toyota.

I opened the door to prove it was mine.

“Thank you!”

–

I looked at her car, this odd clearing on a back road, the mountain, and wondered if she had stopped to take a piss before the bear attacked her, or if she had been out there for a while.

Thumbs up.

She waved.

My head tilted. I thumbed up reflexively.

She shut the door. Her car started, and she backed out, driving down the ridge road like this was an errand she had almost forgotten.

I stared into the ridge.

The conifer.

The marmalade clouds bear-hugging Anderson Mountain to the right.

I closed my eyes in a moment of silence for my passenger mirror. For the gouged, cleared resin and fibers of my hood.

“How did she not fly off my hood?” I said out loud. “How did she hold on?”

I watched dust settle where her Toyota had been.

“Guess she’s good.”

I thumbed my rearview mirror so I wouldn’t have to see the half-missing right side of my spoiler.

Then I opened my phone to call Palmer and the crew.

“Yo, a bear just ate my spoiler and mirror.”

I pointed them to it.

“Joey, that bear ate it! You better Smokey that bear if he comes back,” Palmer laughed.

“Hey, Boo-Boo, how about some of those duckbill replacements, eh?” I said.

“I don’t get it.” Palmer squinted.

“Like the cartoon. ‘Hey, Boo-Boo.’ You know. Those two yoga bears.”

“We had Netflix.” Palmer squinted harder. “I don’t know what kind of bunny-ear Saturday programs you had.”

“They didn’t have any classics? Or streaming somewhere else?”

“Just come back, and we’ll fix up the duckbill. But your jokes are un-BEAR-able.”

They both laughed.

–

When I got in my car, I saw him look at the damage and cry, so I just drove off.

It was an awkward thumbs-up. I think he had to call his mom or someone about the gigantic scratches on the side and the missing mirror.

I drove to the main road.

This compact car could rattle its little engine up to sixty, no problem. Sun washed everything to the east, piercing through my head and eyes.

I pulled over onto the shoulder.

My feet were cold.

Not cold like the creek. Not clean cold. Wrong cold.

I looked down.

“Where are my shoes?”

Then everything caught up.

“Oh no. Shit-shit. My bag.”

The sleeping bag. My clothes. My phone. My towel. The whole little altar of me, still up there.

“Screw it. You don’t need that. Go home.”

I sat with both hands on the wheel.

The trees moved in the wind.

Quiet was dense. Silence screamed at me.

Leaving the bag felt like leaving my body up there. If I went home barefoot, the ridge kept something of me.

I turned around.

–

Palmer hung up.

I started my engine.

In one morning ride, a bear had wrecked my totem of freedom. These guys weren’t going to be able to do much except remove the dangling damage and laugh directly into my soul.

I turned the music on, then off again.

Scrolling on my phone, unable to see what I was enjoying, I got lost in the hollow bap-swipe sound of my colors-feel-good glass house of pixels.

What was I feeling?

Angry?

I breathed deep and couldn’t find anger.

Just the shape of that woman on my hood, fingers locked between the glass and metal like she’d been born there.

–

It was like a dream when I came back.

The conifer watched me.

Was this some kind of park? Some kind of test?

I gassed my little Toyota back up Tick Ridge Road and parked. Took a deep breath. Started walking toward my stuff.

Ready to chase this damn bear.

My bag was torn open.

The bear stood over it, sniffing through my things.

I couldn’t move closer.

I couldn’t run.

I was frozen.

Then that broke.

Like a video game, I was walking to my sleeping bag. My fist tightened so hard I felt my nails deforming my calloused palms.

The bear lifted its head.

Sweet in cloth.

Sweet gone.

Hard thing coming.

It huffed once.

The bear walked away as I got close.

Not scared. Not beaten. Just done with me.

It disappeared up the ridge where it probably lived.

I grabbed my sleeping bag and stood there, examining my mess of clothes and things tossed across the grass. Hands shaking, I stuffed everything I could into the torn bag. Jeans. Phone. Shirt. Towel. Apples gone. Pride gone. Shoes found.

I slipped them on.

The conifer stood quiet. No angry birds on high alert.

I walked over and slapped its trunk.

“I think that’s my last night at Tick Ridge, mama.”

I peeled a few gray-red scraps off the bark like a cat sharpening its claws.

Once I sat in my car, I threw my stuff into the passenger seat.

My conifer chunks rested in the cup holder.

I smiled.

“I am pretty sure I died out there. There’s no way I am alive right now.”

The wind moved through the trees.

The ridge said nothing.

I started the car.

“I had to get my damn shoes back.”

I didn’t want to open my eyes. The dream was too vivid. I hadn’t been in such a world for so long. My feet were freezing, the corner of my mouth poked by a down feather in my pillow, my dark room, and I was wide awake like I had slept a lifetime.

The stove said 4:38 a.m. I got the electric kettle going and sat peeing in the void, wondering where I was. I don’t think I’ve ever been camping. The sleeping bag felt like a lost treasure in this waking world. I mourned its heavy weight. The name stamped on it. What was it? Butler? That felt right.

My head hung for a moment as I ached to just have a night of racing and speeding through the country. I always pulled myself back to that if I felt even a bit lucid, and I almost got it tonight.

The burr grinder shook loose my grip on so many details of the dream. Haunted by a conifer I saw as a hungry bear, a feral woman, a scared student.

“Screeek! Eeek!” I put down the filters and coffee grounds. That sound. “Eeeek.” Like the tires. “Eeeek.” No, the crazy bird. The conifer. “Eeek.” I looked out the porch and saw it up on the oak. Screeching. “Is that a damn owl?”

A reddish animal tripped the motion light on the fence. A fox. I flicked on the porch lights. “Sorry, neighbors.” There were two foxes.

I ran to my room and grabbed my phone to take a few pictures. Foxes, batty belts of an owly, and these moon-drenched clouds. Dreams, home, coffee. Could I just get a sip on the couch without nature trying to collide with roads, old college days, and random animals?

“You’re a magician, Harry,” I joked to my finger. Oscar meowed at the door like he could take the foxes, but probably just wanted a shot at a bird.

“Is this my cycle? I think I’m about to start my period,” I told Oscar.

“Meorw.” He definitely called me crazy.

I walked back to the coffee, making it like a little campfire over a bloom of pour-over. Sanity was on the way.

I poured. Waited. Poured. Waited. 4:52 a.m.

I filled my mug with heavy-hitting coffee. I curled on the corner of my couch with an oversized pillow and blanket, wrapping my ice-cold feet into my cushions.

“Why did nature design all the blood to rush to protect my ovaries instead of warming my toes?” I asked Oscar. He said nothing. His paw shook in disgust. My brows raised. “You’re not going outside.”

I went to set my mug on the side table and knocked something to the floor. I lurched and stretched to pick it up. It kind of squished. Is this bark? I set it on the table and ran to turn on a light.

I prayed to the universe. “If you don’t want to know, close your eyes. I have to know where this came from. I don’t deal in magic.”

The little piece of bark was just that. The light revealed its finer parts. I walked back to my sofa.

“And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.”

I read the little plaque next to my crosses, gathered on my world travels. “Truth.” I sighed. “Rule everything else out, and anything left, no matter how unlikely, must be true.” I leaned to see if there were more bark pieces on the side of the table. Nothing. Yet as I reached to move the sofa arm, I saw more bark clinging to my sweater.

I walked into my room and turned on the light. There by my pillow were pinecones, bits of bark, nuts, and I realized what was happening. I looked sternly back at Oscar.

“Did you knock down the vase, Oscar? You lil shit. All of this mess and these dreams for what? Wet food? Was it Wednesday? I’m sorry, Oscar. I just fell asleep.”

I surrendered into bed, breathing in the pines and the coffee on my hands. The debris was swatted off to the floor. Light off. Back to bed.

I heard Oscar move close to purr near my chest.

—

I couldn’t shake off the odd dreams from the night. The bear, my feet feeling cold all day, a sense that I could run up a wall or tree. The weird dream man in his car. Usually I praise a dream as the driver, but me—woman. Writer me. Journaling me. Not this auto shop kid.

I looked at Oscar. “You didn’t have to work at a desk all day thinking about your sabotage, Mr. Pizza Box.” He always immediately sits on any pizza box I put on the counter. It’s his classical orator Cat-cero thing. Should’ve called him Romulus.

I held out my hand, and he put his paw on it to shake. Our one trick during the pandemic to settle arguments. Mostly over not letting him smell what I cooked.

“It’s too late, Oscar.” I popped open a day-late can of Thursday Wet Food. “I am going out tonight.”

I looked at him as I changed. “What if I did die in that dream? And you, this box, my writer memory—it all just booted up. Are you here to make sure I accept the reality?” I reached to pet him, and he grabbed my hand like a pigeon and kicked it. Biting. “Hey, shit, not cool.” I turned, realizing I left the wet food on the shelf. “Damn, here you go, dude.”

I rinsed my arm and pulled on a leather jacket. I was determined to go out and write some notes at the local spot: Scarlet Haminey. I ordered my glass of wine. The pen took over.

– bear, butler, bag
– ridge, park, conifer
– Anderson Mountain, canyons
– cold plunge, creek
– beaker, crucible, powder
– yoga bears, Boo-Boo

I couldn’t remember running from the bear. I just remembered being him in the car. Then me on the hood. Back and forth.

My mind drifted to teaching high school seniors out of my master’s program. I thought I had life figured out. I had gone through school after working as a showgirl on the Strip, met Jack, my Navy SEAL husband, and hammered among many things—books and writing. I thought I’d grow old teaching Candide, The Fountainhead, and coasting.

One day, I just took that senior motive I dished out so casually. “I never want to see you again. Go make a wonderful life. Adventure. Don’t come back here. It’s going to piss me off to see you.”

“Another?” the Irish bar owner asked.

I nodded, and she was already pouring the chilled glass.

“How are you doing?” She looked at me, suspicious. The silence was dense for me.

“Yeah, no, I am good,” I was saying when a man sat next to me. A stool I realized I had wished would remain open.

“What can I get ya?” she asked him with a smile.

“Could I get a gin and tonic?” he muttered. “Oh, uggh, gin and tonic,” he spoke up.

Then he scanned my notepad, then the bar, then me, then the bar. Something was bewildering him, so I waited in a thought with my wine glass up, ready for his line.

“Are you a writer?” he interrupted with observation. It went on like that. Basic observable. Basic confirmation.

“I had actually just started writing.” He held up his phone. He tapped our phones to share contacts and pasted a giant, messy poem into the first message.

It all seemed pleasantly distracting.

“I was inspired to write by this dream. It was vivid. It kind of scared the shit out of me.”

I tipped back a quarter of my wine.

“Do you have a cat?”