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    Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, my daughter, and me
    Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, my daughter, and me
    Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, my daughter, and me
    Ebook41 pages35 minutes

    Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, my daughter, and me

    By Micah Perks

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    About this ebook

    What do you do when fate hands you a wild daughter? As Micah recounts her struggles to raise a brave daughter and to keep her safe at the same time, she also tells the story of her own sometimes humorous, sometimes harrowing two week solo adventure in the Adirondack Mountains as a teenager. Micah Perks’ candid short memoir takes an insightful look at women and the wild, the wildness she experienced as a child on a commune in the Adirondack wilderness, the ways women and wildness are depicted in movies and books like Cheryl Strayed’s bestselling memoir Wild, and the wilderness she discovers inside her own daughter. Micah Perks is the author of a novel, WE ARE GATHERED HERE, and a memoir, PAGAN TIME, about growing up on a commune in the Adirondack Wilderness. Pagan Time is an audiobook from Audible and an ebook and has been translated into Korean. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Epoch, Zyzzyva, Tin House, and The Rumpus, among many other journals and anthologies. She's won an NEA Award, a Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts grant, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and several residencies at the Blue Mountain Center. She lives with her family in Santa Cruz and codirects the creative writing program at UCSC. You can find more information on her and her writing at micahperks.com. This is a short e-book published by Shebooks--high quality fiction, memoir, and journalism for women, by women. For more information, visit http://shebooks.net
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherShebooks
    Release dateJan 2, 2014
    ISBN9781940838014
    Alone in the Woods: Cheryl Strayed, my daughter, and me
    Author

    Micah Perks

    Micah Perks is the author of a novel, We Are Gathered Here, and a memoir, Pagan Time, about growing up on a commune in the Adirondack Wilderness. Pagan Time is an audiobook from Audible and an ebook and has been translated into Korean. Her short stories and essays have appeared in Epoch, Zyzzyva, Tin House, and The Rumpus, among many other journals and anthologies. She's won an NEA Award, a Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts grant, two Pushcart Prize nominations, and several residencies at the Blue Mountain Center. She lives with her family in Santa Cruz and codirects the creative writing program at UCSC. You can find more information on her and her writing at micahperks.com.

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      Book preview

      Alone in the Woods - Micah Perks

      Author

      Chapter One: Some Deer Mystery

      One early morning I looked out the window into the overgrown backyard and saw a deer. This was when I was pregnant with my second child, living in the country in western New York. The doe was reddish, legs long and slim, dancerlike. She was so pretty that at first I didn't notice that her stomach was swollen and her hide ragged. The doe mouthed the barren grapevine, nosed the bare ground. I realized she was pregnant.

      After that she seemed to spend every morning in my backyard grazing while I grazed indoors. Together we grew larger and larger. This seemed like a good omen. Deer have always charmed me. I like the way they live close to us, but skittish, just out of reach, so that seeing them feels like good luck. Indeed, our double pregnancies seemed like double good luck.

      One morning while I watched in my swollen state, the white-tailed doe grazed her way out of the woods and into the yard, followed by two spotted fawns. The fawns pulled up grass, raised their heads, and pranced sideways. One began to nurse. The other pricked her enormous ears and raised her narrow head—she seemed to be staring straight at me with her big brown Bambi eyes.

      After that, the three of them spent the mornings in the yard while I grew bigger, read, wrote, corrected papers, and waited for my own deliverance.

      I gave birth to my daughter a month later. I had meant to give birth in a hot tub at the birthing center a half hour away, but she came so quickly that there wasn’t even time to fill the tub.. After she arrived, though, we floated peacefully in the warm soup together.

      On the fifth day after her birth, I ventured out into the world to return some library books and pick out new ones. I was walking back up the driveway at dusk, clutching the books to my chest, when I heard my new daughter crying in the house, a high wail as thin as a thread. Her cry pulled at me, and the front of my shirt soaked through with milk. Then, I heard something in the bushes. The doe high-stepped out of the woods. Where were her twins? Hidden somewhere? Had a predator eaten them? The doe didn’t even notice me; she was that intent on the crying. Her neck strained forward, her ears pulled up and back, her eyes focused on the sound. She walked right up the cement front steps, her muzzle nearly touching the screen door.

      At first I found this charming, but minutes went by, and I was still standing in the driveway while the doe blocked the path back to my crying daughter. I grew disconcerted. I cleared my throat. She paid no attention.

      Shoo, I said tentatively. Her ears twitched,

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