Cameron

A cautionary tale about hiking

I learned from Facebook that he had died. Cameron. He was this tree of a person. A spruce? I don’t know trees. A Sequoia? Maybe. He was this steady and sturdy man-person. Cameron was tall, blonde, blue eyed. Very German/American looking. And in Greece, this very tall, very blue eyed, very blonde, very German/American, smiley man who always wore khaki shorts and solid colored t-shirts, really stuck out. “Are you with that group with the tall, blonde American man?” Strangers would ask. “No,” I’d lie. Cameron hovered over us, kind of like a tour guide in the bush. From a distance, you’d see a body made of khaki with a long arm - also made of khaki - extended and pointing to a nearby island (see above photo.) When I remember him he has a walking stick and a sunhat, but neither is probably true.

He had come from California. Been working a desk job his whole life. Some 15 years. And he had had enough. He was a country song. A California country song. This 4 month study abroad in Greece was a permanent move for him. A relocation. Cameron wanted a new life. He had decided that midway through the trip. Or maybe he had decided on the ferry ride over. Or, maybe, he had decided that 15 years ago but had never given himself permission to have it. There were no other men in the program. Well except for Scott. But Scott was incensed upon arrival. The school wasn’t school-ey enough for him so he was going to huff and puff and firmly walk down the street to this other, more serious study abroad program. Because that’s what you want to be in Greece - serious. So it was just Cameron and 8 other girls. He was kind of our American mascot.

Our group went to Turkey one week and on the way back I wanted to stay on the island Samos. It’s this very Italian looking Greek island with really nothing to do. Cameron stayed too. We rented a tiny car, because they only had tiny cars in Greece, and drove around the island. I don’t remember much, but I do remember laughing. Cameron had a laugh. A laugh that had syllables. A laugh that was kind. That fully participated in the thing that you said that made him laugh. That thanked you. I remember in between laughs he told me he was staying. In Greece. For however long it took him to not be the person he was in California.

I think Cameron was 30’ish. I was 23 so anyone who had a job and was sick of it was at least 30 to me. He just wanted to be set free of decisions that we’re never his own. I’d known another man like this before. Eric. He had quit his job on wall street to travel the world to hike. Literally. That’s all he did. He hiked in Patagonia, in Uruguay, in upstate New York. We’d just walk to Au Ban Pain in Boston and there he was, hiking.

Why do men get to quit high paying jobs to take hiking trips? While women quit low paying jobs to take trips to fall in love. Men are overly applauded for their decision to leave the toxic workplace in order to find themselves. They’re celebrated and revered. Cakes are made and parades are thrown in their honor for this very courageous decision to stop participating in the capitalist dream! And when we do it, were judged as crazy, impractical. Bipolar. Or worse even - insensible. I mean imagine if Sylvia Plath had been like fuck you Ted Hughes, I’m taking a study abroad and going hiking! Take the kids and live in our cold apartment, I’ll see you never. She might still be alive!

I don’t know. Even if we do decide to go on some hiking trip, 9 times out of ten were just murdered by some guy who’s also on a hiking trip. I just watched a video on Tik Tok about an environmental activist lesbian couple who was murdered in the woods in 1996. All they wanted was to protect the trees and fall in love and then they’re up and murdered. I guess there’s a whole van life movement where girls with long blonde hair and perfect skin are kind of hiking. But then they get murdered by their boyfriend who doesn’t seem like they want to be out hiking in the first place. And if those van life girls aren’t murdered by their boyfriend, then they’re making videos about face cream and thermoses and how you’ll get 20% off if you use both at the exact same time.

Cameron stayed. He stayed on Paros. In Paros? On Paros. He ended up working for the school we were on study abroad with. Maybe he fell in love. I either can't remember or never knew in the first place. Then 15 years later he died. Hiking. Hiking! He was back in California. Temporarily or permanently, I’m not sure. And he fell and later died. Men die while hiking by falling. And women die while hiking by being murdered by men who didn’t die falling.

It was so jarring, reading that post. A post by his dad. I was confused. How had it been 15 years? We were just driving around Samos trying to operate a stick shift. Cameron’s knees jutting past the steering wheel, wearing black fleece and making dad jokes that took away my homesickness. Suddenly I remembered the look in his eye when he told me he was staying. It was certain. Those looks are rare. Those decisions where we only feel calm. Where we’re not certain about how it will all work out, but we’re certain the decision is ours.

I think of that certain look often. And I’m met with my own indecision. My fear to make the wrong choice, so I make no choice at all. It’s hard to sit with no choice. Even the wrong choice moves me somewhere. Allows me to unpack. Physically unpack, like my clothes. I bought a coat at Nordstrom 60% off and it’s just been sitting in my suitcase for 3 months. It’s May. It’s wool and plaid and multicolored pink. It’s too warm for this pink wool jacket now! It was a birthday gift to myself for enduring being poisoned with freon and black mold and bird mites and lies by my previous three landlords. I wore it anyway today in 76 degree temperatures.

I’m glad Cameron stayed. Died doing what he had wanted to do. Literally, died right in the middle of it. He was too nice to die though. Too sturdy, tall. Too much like a tree. Those things live forever. Though I do remember him being a little clumsy, so maybe that contributed to the fall. I wish Cameron still existed somewhere. Existed as a tree among us women. A mascot for another tribe.

What would Cameron do? Will that be my new motto? What life will I have felt content living as I fall to my death off the side of a rock while hiking? It’s hard to answer that without being consumed by the thought of falling to my death. But I’m going to try.

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