GUN

Back in California before the semester started at Tiburon College, I missed being out in the wild hills around Cadaques so much that I started driving mornings to the wilderness parkland that extends for thirty-two miles along the East Bay hills from Richmond to Castro Valley—to hike alone. (I’d stopped trespassing around the reservoirs.) But one day, a stranger appeared in the distance and seemed to be following me. After what I’d gone through hitchhiking, I was frightened enough by this latest experience that I met with the wife of an acquaintance who was a reservist in the police force—to discuss getting a gun to protect myself.

After the truckdriver’s attack in Spain, I was left with a sense of outrage that anyone could imagine they had a right to violate my personal space—to reach in and grab me and try to overpower me. (And yet, it occurs to me now, this is exactly what men are taught they have the right to do—to reach in and grab and try to overpower someone else—that is, to fight—if they are given a reason to or have their own reason to. So, of course, why would it be a stretch, I realized, for a man to do the same thing to a woman?) Nevertheless, understanding after my conversation with the reservist that target practice would have to become a part of my life, I abandoned the idea of carrying a gun. Instead, regretfully, I stopped hiking in the “wilderness” by myself as a way of communing with the natural world—for me, a profound loss.