Montana is a place overflowing with nature. That is not to say according to preconceived notions of nature, as in the forest is especially green and spacious, or that the animals are particularly frisky. Such is, in fact, the case with Montana and its Glacier Park, and may in fact lend influence to another type of nature. But stories of that type of nature, the environmental, are overdone and usually banal. Environmental nature is not what this story is about. No, by nature, we are referring to the base state of a thing; what a thing is reduced to when unmanaged, left untempered, raw.
Ah, there’s the word: raw. Montana is a raw place. Like the human body without clothing, every tear, every flaw in the flesh left exposed to the world. The scorches of forest fires are unpretending, erosion unstoppable, infestation a burden to bear. Houses have been built around the lakes, lovely wooden structures that are restricted, by policy, from receiving updates or additions. They must remain as they are, no pretending. Even the glaciers, the things that give the park its name, have almost melted completely away. And yet, somehow, it all remains so markedly beautiful. This decay, after all, is only natural.
Two hikers, Robson and Brooke, have made the long trek up one of these glaciers, and stopped for a snack. Surveying the pristine view, they are struck with awe and wonder that eluded them during the climb, since the mind tends to focus on pain over the pleasure that surrounds it. Filled with pride, energized by accomplishment, the two friends laugh and point at the trail they left thousands of feet below. This is the literal and metaphorical peak of their trip, the final stop before their Spring Break ends and they must return to the sloughs of university life. All that remained was the final hike down the glacier, to their hostel above a convenience store, to gather their things and take the train back to Seattle. A place where all was most certainly not raw, where people wear proper clothing and engage in proper interactions.
Over the course of the trip, Brooke and Robson were exposed to natural beauty, both around and within themselves. They had met over a mutual interest to travel, in a campus club, and soon arranged the trip for just the two of them to go out and “experience nature.” They meant, of course, nature in an Environmental sense. But they also experienced nature in a raw sense, for one would never agree to accompany the other if there was not an innate carnal attraction at the onset. And so they travelled, stopping at cheap hostels, engaging in raw animalistic intercourse most every single night. They explored the root of youth, and, finding it pumping and swollen with another’s blood, suckled from it. They could not help it – it was just too tantalizing to pass up.
The urge again passed between them at the top of the mountain. There, thousands of feet in the air, heads heavy from the dense atmosphere and intense muscular strain, they found themselves lusting after each other. They could see it in their eyes, they could smell it in their pheromone-mixed sweat. Both Robson and Brooke wanted no more than to plunge into the seismic throes of momentary passion, the thrill multiplied by their natural surroundings. It was a bedroom of the ancients, where man and woman, still developing language, relied more on instinct and physical assertion to communicate. Aroused beyond the proper considerations of a hike, the two grasped each other, and copulated among the ferns.
Naked and sleek, weak from mounting both the mountain and each other, the pair sat near the edge of a precipice. It was sufficiently clouded by scraggly trees, and broad enough that their footing would not be accidentally lost. They peered out over piney valleys, collected in pockets surrounded by the cruel, gray stone that packed the bases of mountains. They beheld a misty mountain morning, and there was no one else around to witness it but Mountain Goats and eagles.
In the midst of all this splendor, Robson was struggling with unfamiliar terror. It was not terror wrought by the vast verdant pit below, no, but rather by the young woman next to him. Following their long week of adventuring, it was clear to him that Brooke was immensely frailer than he. He knew this by throwing her around in the bed alone. As he absorbed her aura, felt the comfort of her being next to him, an unexplainable, contradictory urge struck him: the urge to nudge her off the edge of the cliff.
Why? Why would he conjure such a frightful action up in his mind? What could possibly possess the human will to encourage such a ghastly crime for no reason but impulse? For it was impulse that goaded Robson on, with the promise of some forbidden pleasure. To take that lithe, capable, helpless body and render it dashed on the rocks below – a tragedy. To betray at once the trust that was built in mind and flesh between them, satiating a rash desire for the thrill of denying life its once-inherent value.
And yet, was that the pleasure promised by the impulse? Or, was it that part-and-parcel sinking feeling, to commit the ultimate crime in a place where it would never be detected and live with the secret? It is reasonable to believe, natural even, that a hiker would take a tumble attempting the perfect selfie on the edge of a precipice. There is no one to say otherwise, and a phone is easily broken to bits from a mile-high drop. Ironic, that the least traceable murder requires no planning, no cover-up – a contrived end almost natural. Such a surprise is the height of sadism; the plummet commences before the victim comprehends what has happened, their last few seconds of existence futilely devoted to understanding why a supposed friend just sent them to their death. There will be an investigation, there will be an autopsy, but there will be nothing to point back to Robson.
Robson’s gut churned with anticipation. He looked down, down, and was afraid. But, again, not of the height below, but of his sudden lapse of morality. He turned in a daze to Brooke, smoking her cigarette, unaware of the danger looming so near to her on two sides. With just a look, his animalistic urge was redirected – he now simply wanted to have another go in the grass. Relieved to discover it had been but a fleeting thought, Robson smiled at Brooke with a little nervous confusion. He would never be able to shake the memory of thinking this thought, no matter how natural, but at least he could drown it out with orgasmic distraction. He felt Brooke stand next to him, and he unconsciously rose after her.
All Robson felt was a shove, before icy coldness inside and out told him he had fallen off the cliff. The wind blasted his hair back, and tears burned his eyes. In the moment of shock, in the denial of death, he made a last-ditch effort to turn around. He wanted desperately to see, if not what happened, the reaction on Brooke’s face. Sunlight burst over the peaks, illuminating what had evaded him since they’d been together.
What he saw was a reflection of his own mind.
Unbeknownst to Robson, as he had been pondering dangerous fantasies, so had Brooke. But whereas Robson’s was founded in her vulnerability, Brooke was intrigued with subverting his power. And that is what drew her to use the precipice, to hurl this fellow animal to his death from the draw of impulse – just another Mountain Goat losing footing. Robson’s very curiosity looked back at him through Brooke’s misted gaze, tracking this raw figure on its hopeless trip down the glacier. Almost as quick as it came on, the curiosity vanished, replaced with a horror no doubt brought on by moral implications and their physical manifestations. She covered her mouth to prevent the scream from coming out, and knelt down in despair. Then the altitude concealed her face from Robson.
In his last few meters, Robson was astounded at his fate. A one-in-a-million chance, Brooke being borne from the same mind as he, and he still could not put his finger on why he did not act first. One simple act of savagery, and her corpse would be watering the ferns, not his. But he did not act. She did. And now he could still only wonder why his thoughts condemned him to execution by whim, what small twang of conscience was in him that was not in Brooke. His bitter consolation was that she would have to live with the shame (he could see it in her face), and for that he was partly glad he balked at the chance. But that is what he dismissed it as: a fluke of chance, an enigma, impossible to understand reasonably. She was human, he was human, and they shared in thought if not in action. It was his fault, his weakness that he did not act first. But at least dying first gave Robson a sense of dignity. He was almost relieved she had been the one to give in, and not he.
The fall seemed to last for ages. Nevertheless, the end is always expected – it always comes. Fear gripped Robson, another communal human quality, as he braced himself for inevitable crushed bones and mangled muscles on the cracked stone rising to meet him. With unintentional violence, the rocks smashed his skull and spattered his brain all over their worn surfaces, a brain carrying Robson’s last uncomforting thought:
This was only natural.
Morning's Early Dark 