My Golden Friend

Have you ever met someone who truly feels like your other half? Who completes you? Not even romantically, I mean even a friend who mirrors your soul, reflecting back the sweetest parts. Well, I met one of these people last spring. Her name is Zahava, meaning golden. This summer, I bought a plane ticket from Vermont to St. Louis, Missouri, to see my golden friend. It was my first time flying alone, and it was with the money that I earned through my job as a barista after school. We spent two weeks together. The first week was spent swimming, exploring the city, and integrating myself into her everyday life. 

Walking through the front door, you see a house full of color. Her mom is an artist so bright neon sculptures decorate the corners of rooms. Strange and striking paintings cover the walls, and knick-knacks sit on every surface. There is a pile of spoons smaller than my pinkie on the piano in the kitchen, and a bowl of rainbow fidgets by the entry-way. Mornings began by working on the 1,000 piece puzzle that has covered the kitchen table for weeks. We sip jasmine tea as we work, the tea resting in one of their many homemade mugs. My favorite has a sculpted face on it. The squished nose, eyes, and mouth are painted gray, but the inside is painted pink. People wander in and out of the house, as if the whole neighborhood is part of their family. I met new people everyday, who all know Deborah, Zahava’s mom, from some walk of life. 

Deborah wears big, bold, glasses that cover half of her face, and treated me like her own child. On the second week, Zahava and I embarked on a three day backpacking trip. Deborah insisted on us bringing tons of vitamin C packets, a “trowel” from her big red truck that was really a foot-long rusted knife (why was it even in there?), and two portable chargers, one with a mini fan attached. I didn’t have the heart to tell her that I forgot my phone at home, so the fan was the only part used. We weren't exactly lightweight. 

Apart from our unusual collection of backpacking items, Missouri is not where people usually think to go for backpacking. To me though, it was better than my time walking through Iceland or in the Sonoran Desert. What we discovered through adventuring through an unexpected place, is that beauty is everywhere. Sometimes, especially in the unconventional. Every view was unexpected and graciously welcomed. Our conversations mainly consisted of, 

“Wow. Look.” 

“Wow. So beautiful.” 

“Wow. Can you believe this?” 

“I had no idea backpacking in Missouri was this cool.” 

“Aren’t we cool?” 

We were giddy with ourselves, for finding the peace of an unknown trail, and for exploring this small part of the world together. It was each other's company that brought forth much beauty. Our gratitude ricocheted off each other, growing in strength every time.

Leaving a campsite we would say, 

“Thank you beautiful campsite, for being our home last night!” 

The world would respond in its own form of dialogue: nourishment of the body and mind. We knew the Earth loved us as we loved it. 

Our biggest issue was the amount of spider-webs sprawled throughout the trail. The person leading would break the hidden webs with their body or face, sometimes by swallowing a spider. Zahava was better about that than I was. 

We implemented a shift system, each of us doing thirty minutes in front. I would walk with my eyes glued to my watch. 

“Your turn,” I would say at minute 28. 

She didn’t mind that the timing was uneven. We complemented each other. We picked up what the other dropped, and carried what the other couldn’t. 

Deborah’s knife came in handy, turning into what we called our “spider-slayer.” Our legs got strong through walking, and our arms got strong through consistently swinging the spider-slayer, slashing through the spider-webs so that we could walk in safety. 

Too soon, it was our third and final night on our short trip in the Missouri backcountry. We walked off trail to find a flat place to camp. Tents were set up on grass and moss, and the “kitchen” on a rock overlooking our own personal waterfall. We cooked mac and cheese and then bathed in the pool below, eating snickers bars and shoving our sweaty faces under the falling water. As the sun set, we sat together by the stove, talking. We were almost out of our purification tablets, so decided to boil water for the next day, just to be safe. 

Safe is a funny word, looking back. 

If someone was watching, they probably could have given a better description of what happened than either me or my friend can. It was so sudden, my body reacted before my brain could catch up. 

I stumbled away, my vision spinning and blurred, my ears ringing. The stove had exploded? The stove had exploded on us? I remember struggling to focus my gaze to the space between my hips and the rocky soil. Staring at my knees and shins, I could only think of the situation analytically, assessing that the legs I’m seeing are mine, meaning that the skin I’m seeing peel off, that was once mine too. 

“That’s probably not good,” was my scientific conclusion. 

I look behind me, where the explosion’s ghost still hangs in the air. Its residual light pulses in between the trees and rocks, still imprinted into the whites of my eyes. The rocks of our “kitchen” are blackened. The insistent reply is interrupted only by Zahava rushing toward me. 

Her eyebrows were burnt off, her arms, face, and legs charred. Our hot hands grasp each other, frantically asking, “are you okay? Are you okay? Are you okay?” 

As if either of us knows yet. 

With one bar of service and one phone between the two of us she dials 911, a number I had never used before. A man who deals with horrific accidents all day every day responds robotically, as we scream and cry, realizing quickly how much burns hurt after the medicine of shock wears off. He reads off a script, asking us to calm down (as if), and saying paramedics will be there soon (as if!). 

We pour clean water on our burns, our bodies shaking from the moment’s intensity. 

The robot asks us, “Why are you two yelling? Just try to take some deep breaths.” 

I sit in one spot and rock back and forth. The smell of burnt gas, hair, and skin, ensure that I cannot fool myself into disbelief. I play everything back in my mind: that explosion, that eruption of fire that seemed to be fueled with malicious intent. I see it play over and over, everytime hearing the ringing in my ears grow, the popping noise of our fuel tank bursting to flames, slapping our bodies and licking us up like cardboard. It sounded like opening a champagne bottle, but it was no celebration. I play it over in my head, trying to figure out how I watched as a bystander, looking down at my legs and thinking only that those cannot be mine. They do not look how they have always looked before, because my legs have always had their skin attached, but here is someone whose knees are peeling and bleeding. 

When thinking takes too much out of my spent body, I focus my attention towards breathing in and out. I go back to the basics of human function. Zahava paces around me in circles, letting every suppressed emotion either of us has ever felt flood out. Sometimes I join her, our voices cracking with such sudden catharsis. It is a loud and piercing song, but to me, we sound good together. We sound like finally, there is nothing holding us back. We have simply found an excuse to release what already sits in every person's chest. A strong, emotion-filled scream. We sound like truth. Raw, hard, painful, and true, we continue our dance of me rocking back and forth as she circles. 

We were there for an hour. For an hour, there was nothing to do but perform our horrible song and dance. There was nothing to do but sit in the one spot and feel every single nerve ending sizzling in impatience. Interestingly, some part of me did not mind feeling time slow as it did. 

I thought of a quote from Ocean Vuong’s poem, “Someday I’ll love Ocean Vuong,” where he says, “Ocean - Ocean - / get up. The most beautiful part of your body / is where it’s headed. & remember / loneliness is still time spent / with the world” 

Except, I wasn’t even spending my time with the world through loneliness. I was with my other half. I was with the half of me that mirrors my soul, and reflects back the sweetest parts. Glass is not licked by flame as easily as skin. Every slow tick of the clock was a reminder that our hearts were still beating, and that beating was beautiful. I had never felt more alive then in that hour. I had never been so shocked into gratitude as I was then, with nothing to do but look at the waterfall in front of me, or the nebulous clouds above. It was almost a joke, how beautiful the world still was, despite how much my body writhed in pain. Life, like that waterfall that occupied my attention for that hour, continued flowing. 

Once I realized the permanence of beauty, I realized that everything was okay. It wasn’t a joke, it was a reminder of what gifts are always accessible, sometimes only found after the shock of contrast. I felt so much love from the Earth, and so much love for my friend, that it made the pain bearable. Who else would I rather be with? Zahava and I are here to feel and experience life together. So, we went above and beyond and felt immensely. We exceeded expectations and not only experienced life, but experienced the harsh reminder of life’s fragility and unpredictability. Whether unpredictability means the beauty of Missouri, the creation of the spider-slayer, or a surprise trip in a helicopter to a burn clinic, it is part of embracing humanity to embrace the unknown. So, what else was there to do, in the slow time spent waiting there in the woods, other than to learn how to embrace?