Issue 1 Draft 3

The Temporary Brilliance of Life
The sun never sets
during Alaskan
summers, and I had
never felt more alive. A
tundra of glacial streams and
mountains pierced the sky.
Raw, unyielding. No human
belonged in this wilderness,
and yet we persisted, each
trudging step carrying us
deeper into humility.
Today was my day to
shine, a bright-eyed kid from
Florida leading a motley crew
across two mountain ranges,
a forest of willows, and a
surging river. No vestiges of
oceanic bliss here, far from
By Liz Roux
M2, Harvard Medical School
my roots in a harsh and
novel land, but I radiated
nonetheless. The alpine was
a new home offering a most
precious gift: a connection to
my mother for the first time
since cradling her dying frame
last year.
I extended my arm,
flush and grizzled from the
affection of mosquitos, and
pushed through the remaining
willows. An iridescent river
flowed before me, coursing
with vitality. I exhaled with
a grin. And then a rustling to
my left, a growl reverberating
through my spine, and the
world lurching to a halt.
A male grizzly bear
stood twenty paces away. I
had never seen a creature
so wrathful and beautiful. It
reared on its hind legs and
warily sniffed the air. Deep
auburn eyes locked onto mine
as the bear slammed onto all
fours and broke into a run.
A moment in eternity.
I and that enigmatic animal
grappled amid an indifferent
world for the right to carry
on unperturbed. With terror
hardened by inevitability, I
willed myself a final glance
at magnificence, muscles
rippling beneath a sheen
of mahogany fur. I barely
registered deploying my bear
spray. It erupted in a yellow
haze, striking the bear square
between the eyes before
dispersing around me in a
cloud of intoxicating agony.
I crumpled to the
ground and hefted my
backpack on top of me as
my final salvation. The bear,
agitated by the spray but only
angrier for it, crashed into
me as a torrent of claw and
tooth. The sun blotted out by
the domineering shadow. Its
weight forced my breath out
of me, and with it my soul.
I felt the unbearable
lightness of my own existence,
bereft of a shattered body,
drifting up towards the sky. I
gazed down upon a tangible
world to see a sixteen-year-old
girl huddled before the mercy
of Nature incarnate. Blood
oozed from her elbow, head
lolling with each thunderous
strike from the bear. Her eyes
flashed open for a moment,
craning for that effervescent
Alaskan sun, and locked onto
me.
A moment in eternity.
I and that egnimatic
animal grappled amid
an indifferent world
for the right to carry
on unpreturbed.
Urgency.
Emanating from within
my very existence, a dire need
to choose: continue drifting
towards the peace of my
mother’s embrace, or return
to the fervors of the flesh. The
bear struck again, slashing
the backpack in two, and the
girl’s eyes rolled white.
I felt nothing, then
everything. A searing pain in
my elbow, the weight of the
world pressing me into the
earth. Another cloud of agony
as the people accompanying
me sprung into action
deploying more bear spray.
The pressure ebbed away.
Sunshine on my brow. I could
finally rest.
—
It’s still a bluebird of
a day as I begin to stir. A
rush of the river behind me,
people working feverishly
in the foreground, wrapping
my elbow in gauze, mutters
of laceration and infection
and my god it cut her down
to the bone. The world spins
and the sun shines and hearts
beat nonchalantly and I…all I
can think of is the temporary
brilliance of life.
Courtesy of Liz Roux
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