Harvey Mann, a 28 year old carpenter and woodsman

It was an early morning in the thick Oregon forest of the Mount Hood Wilderness area, the sound of pine bristle scratching against snow accompanied the foot falls of a lone individual. Heavily coated and thickly dressed, the hooded figure crunched through the brush of the National Forest with a heavy weight about them that was only outmatched in these woods by the weight on his mind. They stopped, pushing a small branch aside from a tree, ducking underneath the snow that fell from its laden form, and moved into the small clearing beyond.

It was quaint and worn in a way that the rest of the forest wasn’t. No obvious structure, but there had been an effort to keep the clearing mostly free of tangling brush or new trees. Regularly used for camping. The figure stepped into the center, rubbing his aching knuckles. There was a thick layer of snow on the ground, but nothing that the figure hadn’t dealt with before.

And so, he got to work.

He set down his backpack and riffled through it. Taking out a shovel head, he extended out the collapsible handle and twisted it, locking it into place. And then he got to shoveling. One lump of snow after the next, digging out enough snow to lay out his foam foundation for insulation and start pitching his tent.

In half an hour, he had his tent up and a small fire going. It was just enough warmth to remind someone of how cold they still were, but it was enough for him. He unfolded a travel chair and plopped it down next to the fire, some sticks and a few small hunks of wood he’d collected on his way here next to the fire, slowly drying out.

Sitting down, his chair whining at his weight, he finally let himself breathe all of the tension out of his body that had been building up since…he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t put a finger on when exactly he’d started bottling everything up, whether it had been this morning or…or if this tension had been around for a lot longer.

Harvey Mann was tired, that was all he knew. At 6’5” and 311 lbs, not many ever saw Harvey get tired, some couldn’t even really imagine it. Harvey was like a shelf, he carried a lot and there were some important things that he could never let go of. He hadn’t placed those things there, but they were important. And there was no one else to hold them.

Not anymore, at least.

“It’s a little harder now, Dad.” Harvey said, sighing as he spoke out loud. His voice was deep, awkward. It had a weight to it that he didn’t really know what to do with. “Mom’s fine. I think. She’s sleeping more now, a lot less restless. She, uh, she took up yoga? She calls it Wine Night with the Girls, which is cool for her. She’s smiling more, but not like how she smiled with you.”

He stopped for a moment, scratching his beard and pulling his thoughts together again. In the silence of the wilderness, no one was there to speed him along impatiently or get frustrated. He could talk like he thought. Carefully, mindfully.

“Ryan’s birthday was a couple weeks ago. If you are listening, I hope you’ll, you know, pass it along to him. People miss him. I miss him. Enid called me and…well, she was just checking in. Like she always does.” Harvey swallowed hard. “Visiting graves is hard. But you and Ryan got real nice flowers now. Mom picked ‘em out. Tracy, uh, was busy.”

Mentioning his sister made his bruised knuckles hurt. He rubbed them, thinking about this morning.

“She’s going through a pretty tough time. College wasn’t so good for her, Dad. She dropped out, said she wanted to work at the shop, but she’s been…” Harvey shook his head. Even if Dad wasn’t listening…rather, on the off chance his father was, he didn’t want to speak ill of his sister. “She’s been having a lot of fun with her friends and…that just gets in the way of work sometimes. That’s all.”

She was going through her own things. Maybe after today, she’d be going through a little less. Or maybe he’d mucked that up. It was so hard to know sometimes. Messing with other people always felt like blindly knocking down dominoes.

“The shop is doing ok. I actually, uh, well, furniture sales in town are down, the local market’s not that, uh, ‘hot’, but we got this really nice website now. This lady, she’s a real talent, she gave me a good deal on setting it up, uh, I don’t know quite how to work it, but she’s always answering my questions, so…anyway, I’ve been selling furniture to people ‘cross the country now.” Harvey grinned a little bit, looking up and around, before his gaze faltered and returned to the campfire. “I sold a really nice couch to a fella over in the Big Apple pretty recently…that’s pretty cool, yeah? I was really happy how it turned out, his daughter liked fish and…”

And so on and on he went. He wasn’t sure how long he talked for. It was times like these that, uh, time felt…endless? To him, at least. There was something about time being familial or something, but he wasn’t quite sure what that was about. But it was, like, sometimes time felt different depending on who you spent it with.

Being alone, Harvey felt like Time could go on forever.

Harvey stood up, throwing another chunk of wood in the campfire, making sure that his pit was built to code. There’d be no forest fire on his watch. That taken care of, he began to stir and with his camp set, he needed to go out and gather wood for the fire tonight. It was going to get pretty cold and he wanted to bundle up.

He’d even brought some ingredients for s’mores for himself to enjoy. They’d be better with friends and family, but…

Well, they’d still be pretty great. S’mores were his favorite.

Wandering through the woods, making sure to tie some markers around the trees he passed to make sure he could follow them back if it got too dark, Harvey picked up chunks of wood lying around, hefting them up on his shoulder with ease. In a stroke of luck, he happened upon a fallen tree, which seemed pretty recent too.

Taking out his hatchet, he started to hack away at some of the chunks and branches, getting a few good sized pieces for tonight’s campfire. With his hard work’s reward in hand, he came back to his camp and began to get it sorted. Would this be the last time he ever got to do this?

The question sort came out of nowhere as Harvey took out one of his journals from his backpack. He’d barely begun to put pen to paper. Maybe it was the way his knuckles ached as the pen balanced between his fingers. It all felt final, like the last hurrah.

Harvey decided that, if this really was his last time getting to enjoy himself for a while, then he wanted to make the most of it. Maybe it was time to get out those s’mores a little early? No, there was a pattern to this. A pattern that he wanted to respect.

So he put the pen to paper and started to draw the woods around him. The branches that twisted into odd shapes, the rare little critter that’d run from one hollow to another in the distance. Harvey wasn’t an artist, not really. But when he looked down at what he’d drawn, he was satisfied that, maybe, someone could see the forest a little bit more like he did.

He thought he could draw a little more, ink down a few more sketches, but the sun was going down and the fire crackled and heaved, **** for more fuel to be thrown into the pit. Harvey tossed a piece of wood into it, satisfying it for now, before standing up and making his way to get the s’mores ingredients when he stopped.

A branch had snapped nearby. A pretty hefty sounding snap, not something that a bunny or fox would have snapped. Human? Maybe, but then he heard the heavy breaths coming from the tree line. Harvey cast his gaze warily, and felt some coldness grip him as he watched the heavy, four-limbed mammal that was an Oregon Black Bear wander near his campsite.

It gave a little grunt, almost half of a roar. Harvey picked up his hatchet and his shovel and waited. He didn’t want to startle the bear before it showed signs of aggression. Right now it was just wandering. Oregon Black Bears weren’t active predators. Once it noticed Harvey, specifically Harvey’s size, it should wander off.

And yet, as the black bear inched closer, another half-roar coming from the back of it’s throat, Harvey swallowed hard. Habituated? Maybe. Or maybe just hungrier than it was scared. Harvey took a deep breath and suddenly bellowed.

“GET AWAY! GO! THERE’S NO FOOD HERE FOR YOU!” He banged his tools together, trying to create as much noise as possible, his voice bouncing off the trees like it was born too. The bear startled before answering with a loud roar of its own.

For a moment, it looked like it was going to back off, before it clacked its teeth in a wide yawn, the bear pounding the ground once or twice as its head lowered.

Harvey felt his heart pounding hard in his chest. This bear wasn’t bluffing anymore. It was about to charge. It was going to charge and Harvey’s gun was in his tent. Was he fast enough? No. Bears were fast. So fast.

As the bear charged forward, it proved Harvey’s thoughts. It bolted at him, roaring in challenge as it rushed into a crash against him with tooth and claw. Harvey roared right back, feeling the entire day’s events pour out of him in something primal as he rushed forward with his tools straight at the bear.

His hatchet caught it on the side of the jaw, he felt a searing pain on his side. He jammed the shovel into the bear’s mouth, he could feel his back being ripped apart through his coat.

The bear roared and Harvey lost the grip on his shovel. His hatchet sank into the bear’s neck, getting caught as Harvey began to breathe heavy before he let go and just pushed up into the bear, grabbing it and slinging it down, feeling everything beginning to go white as a voice he didn’t recognize suddenly echoed through his ears despite everything sounding far away.

“Well, that makes for quite the cold open. Let’s get you cleaned up, Master.”

And with that, the bear was suddenly left bleeding and entirely alone in the clearing. It roared in confusion, fear, and pain…before it lumbered over to the back and started to feast on marshmallows and graham crackers.

Even bears like s’mores.