No one calls me Jimmy anymore.

I went backpacking alone in the Sawtooths once.

I brought the mushrooms given me the week prior by my younger brother gene.

I stumbled through the mist, unsure of any destination. The Snake river meandered through the valley.

I contemplated the morning previous where I woke up early on a queen sized foam mattress in Salt Lake City… Awoken too soon by a kiss on the forehead from Lauren and I opened my eyes to hers.

She squeezed my hand and said, do you love me?

And in that rare truthful place between dream and waking, I told her plainly, No, and drifted back into the former.

I live alone now. I live alone now. This was my mantra gazing up into the aspens and the wild snowdrifts cast like wigs on mountaintops which I’d never summit.

A week prior, I’d given Lauren a bushel of roses. Wilted now and bereft of scent, I’d brought them with me. Stuffed in my backpack between a plastic bottle of bourbon and some unpublished fiction by James Dean that I’d recently acquired with a little more than half of my life savings.

At every turn in the trail now, I dropped a petal, each descent magnified with a comprehension never experienced by anyone other than me… there… in those circumstances.

From a nearby stand of trees I heard a rustling and, more childlike than I’d ever been, I went to investigate.

I saw the mother first… head nearly as high as the lowest pine cones and then, to my despair, the two children following behind.

And I remembered the rant that Gene was on by the fire pit at the Twilight.

Bears, he’d said, are scary… but there’s nothing more dangerous than a mother moose with her calfs. The best thing to do, he’d said, Is just to walk away.

But that wasn’t going to work this time.

My instincts were firing and I did what I always do… Try to talk my way out of it.

Hello, my name is Jeremy, I said to the moose. I seek passage. I mean no harm yet, somehow, I hurt everything around me.

This time two days ago, I told the moose, I forgot to call my mother on her birthday… So.. these are your children? Beautiful. Are they baptized? No? They should be. They must be.

I’m an ordained minister. Online course but, qualified, I assure you. You wouldn’t want them to end up in some outer ring of heaven. We’ll just have to follow the rose petals back to my camp.

It’s on a river. Just a quick dunk and they’ll never have to worry about anything again.

I’ll build a fire. No, no… No trouble at all.. I was going to build one anyway. I’ll be glad for the companionship and honestly, I brought too much food, I’ll be glad not to carry it back.

We were vague apparitions, the four of us, trudging back to camp. All the trail markers suddenly less sorrowful for my sudden wealth of company.

I was almost a changed man. My destiny irrevocably altered and, finally, for once, for the better. The breath of god whispered in the yonder leaves.

Do you love me? I asked of the moose.

And there in the golden hour, I closed my eyes and waited as my prayer, like every prayer ever uttered before or since, was met with but silence.

For the moose had gone. Drifted off without a word into another wing of their 4 million sq ft expanse. I checked my pockets and found no invitation to follow.

Back at the fire, I threw in a can of Spaghettios.

Nothing had changed.

Everything you love will be taken from you or, you from it.

I live alone now. I live alone now.

And fuck you Lauren.