As a child, I often lost myself to adventures within my own mind. I’d escape my body and instead find myself riding on the backs of dragons, or being hunted by some immense, destructive presence, bent on killing me before I could save the world. Wherever I went within my own mind, I was the hero, the strong one. Because of me, everyone was safe. Despite my small frame and quiet personality, I managed to defeat the dark forces of the world with a mighty sword. These thoughts would consume me for hours, and whenever I would come back to myself, I’d catch a glimpse of my parents’ worried glances. They feared one day they would lose me completely to the world within my head, lose me to the stories where I wasn’t shy and scared of everything. Where I could run free, escape school and people, and climb trees just to see how high I could go. Despite their fear, my parents let me disappear in these daydreams, because there was little else for me to do.

On a Tuesday in summer, I sat with my cheek pressed against the warm glass door in my room that led outside. The forest swallowed most of the Rockies where I lived, all the way down the steep slope behind my house to a river that glittered on sunny days. It was still, without a breeze to play with the pine needles that covered the deck. I wondered what it would be like to open the door and run into the woods without an idea as to where I was going.

Movement outside pulled me from my thoughts. Off the deck and up the hill to my right, something shifted between the trees. This hilltop area was about forty feet away from me, with little more than glass between it and whatever lurked outside.

Out of the shadows of the trees, a form broke into the small clearing, her camouflage doing little to protect her in the open. Her tarnished brown fur—spotted with even darker splotches to break up her silhouette—stood at a stark contrast in the space between the leaning pines. Her black-tipped ears faced straight ahead as she strode up from the lower half of the mountain and through my field of view. At first, I didn’t even notice she had a tail as I stared, breathless, watching such a creature walk unafraid through human lands. My heart pounded in my ears as my body begged me for oxygen I simply couldn’t give.

She was beautiful. Her form took up my entire vision and I couldn’t look away. She was wild and free and had seen more than I had in my entire life. I could tell. Her presence alone told me that, without so much a twitch of her ear, she could break me. She was powerful. She was wild.

In an instant, I desired her attention. I desired for her to see me, to stare at me and find me worthy of her fleeting time. I had won my own battles, like her. I had defended my friends from physical aggressors, I was the fastest runner in my class, and I had once kneed a boy in the crotch for trying to break my wrists. Surely, she knew this. She had to see my potential. Why wouldn’t she?

The bobcat didn’t slow, she didn’t even flick one ear towards me. She didn’t meet my gaze, and we didn’t share some mutual look of respect. She didn’t notice me, a scrawny nine year old, staring at her strength and grace in awe. She walked through our lands without a care for who owned it, for the dangerous beings that could kill her if they really tried. She slipped into the trees and vanished from my view, headed towards the distant road.

I took a shaky breath. I sat there for at least another hour before I found will to move again. I told my mother, who was preparing lunch in the kitchen, what I had seen. She smiled at me broadly.

“That’s so cool!”

“I saw it!” I repeated, probably for the fourteenth time. I wanted her to know I wasn’t making this up. I really had seen this beauty, this master of the forest, this feline who didn’t even care to look at me. I wanted my mom to understand how breathless I had been, how strong a presence this creature had. But all I could say was, “I really saw it!”

She chuckled.

“I believe you,” she said. I gazed at her, stunned. How could she be so nonchalant? I scampered back into my room and watched the line of trees again. How come she didn’t get it?

I was too afraid to go outside the next day to find the bobcat’s tracks. I knew it was silly to think she, for whatever reason, stayed nearby. She was travelling, seeing more of this forest than I ever would, and she would find a better place to hunt and struggle to survive than that of the land outside my door. It was foolish of me to think she’d grace me with another visit. It was. But I couldn’t help it. Part of me believed her to be nearby, hunting for something to devour. And perhaps if she was, she wouldn’t spare the curious child in the woods. She never saw me before, never met my gaze and deemed me worthy of respect. She would have no reason for mercy. She would devour me, and I would be helpless to stop her. I sat by the glass doors in my room, staring out, afraid. I told myself I’d search for her trail tomorrow.

It rained.

California rains up in the mountains aren’t light, and they drowned out any hope I had at finding her path through the trees. I sat up in bed and stared out into the forest, frustrated at my own fear to go searching for her.

She had been so much to me in those few, momentary seconds. She had shown me what it was like to be wild. Compared to her, I was small in size and mental fortitude. She was everything I wasn’t—everything I pretended to be. I saw her and desperately wanted to be noticed, and I wasn’t. I couldn’t help but take it personally.

My anger twisted itself momentarily towards the water that now swallowed any trace of the bobcat. Her path would be gone, she would be gone, and what was I to do? How would I ever follow her, how would I ever become her if I had no idea where to go? No idea where she had gone? I was without a marker, a trailhead, or whatever other synonyms to describe what I lost. And I hated the rain for that.

I listened to the rain dance within leaves of oaks and splatter against the deck. I couldn’t help but notice how each droplet captured a bit of the moon during its fall. How the music of its waltz held some hidden promise I couldn’t quite understand. I chewed my lower lip, the water beginning to put out the fires in my gut. How could something as beautiful as this have taken away my chance to follow the bobcat? How could it have maliciously stolen away any hint of her, leaving me with no tail to follow? I closed my eyes. I knew I was supposed to be sleeping, and I knew being caught awake would have consequences. But I didn’t care. I let the song weave within me and allowed the rain to bring life to saplings within my soul. Maybe the bobcat would be forced to take shelter. Maybe her paw prints will create a new path for me. Maybe the rain wasn’t so bad.

On the third day, I climbed off the deck and up to the place she had walked through. While the earth was soft beneath my shoes, and moisture still clung to the bark of trees, there was nothing of her left. No talon marks, no tufts of fur. She had come and gone without even looking at me.

I was really hung up on that. One of those how dare you? moments. It planted seeds of doubt within my inner woods. It grew as choking vines and wrapped around the saplings trying to grow. Back then, I ignored them altogether. My dedication to the bobcat caused me to forget about myself. I shook it off as nothing but a nagging notion of weakness. I was certain it would go away. I would prove to the bobcat I was powerful. I would find her and show her she couldn’t ignore me. And those vines would wither and die. But those vines kept growing.

I knew where the bobcat had headed, and that was towards the road. I fancied the idea that somewhere along the line, her trail could be picked up again. So I cast my gaze past the brush, sucked in a lungful of air, and headed after her.

I picked up her trail in Portland, Oregon, where it rained a lot. I frequently sat in bed with my window open, inhaling the scent of adventure. I imagined the bobcat smelled something like this, drenched in the aroma of the world itself. I wanted to smell like that. To see what she had seen, to bathe in the perfume of everything. The rain liked to tease me with a hint of her location, and this kept me going for a while. I just had to find her path through the trees.

The library near my house was situated atop a hill and a park on a grassy knoll hid behind it. Mom went to the coffee shop down the road, and I sat in the grass, watching cars drive by. Sun wove its way through the branches of the large tree above me, who was laden with hand-sized leaves. I picked at the grass and inhaled, the smell of the restaurant nearby mixing with that of wet grass. The sky above me was speckled with white clouds that did little to protect from the sun’s gaze. I closed my eyes, a smile edging across my lips. I wondered if scenes just as beautiful as this existed elsewhere. I wondered if I could find them all.

Attending a new school was exciting at first. It sat near to the Catholic church it was affiliated with, off a busy road a few streets down from my house. The first day was filled with wonderful greetings and welcoming arms. There was another girl named Lauren there, and we seemed to hit it off. I heard a rumor that a bobcat had been seen around town.

Except that was all it was—a rumor. She hadn’t been seen in Portland, and as I hurriedly tried to find her trail, those who once welcomed me found no joy in my wandering mind. My friend closed a door on my face and never spoke to me again. The only other person I knew joined in making up stories about who I was outside of class. I sat down at a lunch table and everyone there picked up their trays and moved. My teeth tore into my lower lip as I forced myself to keep it together. I would find the bobcat. And she would see that I, too, was alone.

“Lauren!” My teacher shouted my name from the front of the room. I quickly shifted my gaze away from the window and back to her, sweat clinging to my back. “Can you tell me what I just said?” She crossed her arms, her dark eyes set deep in her pale skin. She had caught me, and she knew this. I swallowed and looked down at the book in front of me. I wasn’t even sure if I was on the right page. I had been thinking about what would happen if I got up and left, escaped into the city, escaped these people, and explored everything there is to see. The person next to me snickered when she saw what page I was on. Heat rushed to my cheeks and I kept my gaze down.

“Get your head out of the clouds and pay attention, Lauren.”

I visited the space behind the library a second time, realizing then that the leaves were not nearly as bright as I thought they were. I sat beneath a tree and pieces of bark fell onto my shoulders, stirred to leave home by the wind that bit at my bones. I pulled at my sleeves and ran my fingers over the earth, searching for a path. Searching for some sort of sign. I cast my eyes into the sky, wishing I knew where she was. Wishing she would tell me where to go. Wishing I remembered what this place used to feel like before it lost its magic.

Desperate, I searched for a new place filled with the breath of the world. If the bobcat wasn’t at the park, then surely she was down the street, in that store I had never entered. Or maybe she was at the park across town, the one I never went to. Was she at the top of a nearby tree, the one that swayed dangerously in the wind? She had to at least leave a footprint in the woods across from my house, right?

I drowned in rain caused by my own wanderlust. While I struggled to keep my head above water, everything began to wither. Everything, that is, except those vines. No, those thrived. They grew to tremendous lengths, wrapped around my ankles, and pulled me under.

            Stay, they whispered to me. Why leave at all? Why desire to see more of this wretched world when you could stay here and choke on water instead? At least you’d know what to expect.

These talking plants in a metaphorical forest had a good point.

“The bobcat doesn’t stay anywhere,” the rain argued, butting in where not invited. “She travels, sees the world. You want to find her, don’t you? You want to see what she has seen?”

“Do I?” I considered this. “Does she even have a home? Does she ever stop fighting to survive? Does she even care whose lives she walks in and out of?”

The rain stopped. And for a while, it did not return. I sunk further beneath the surface of the ocean created in my mind. Until, one day, I couldn’t handle myself. I couldn’t handle my family. I couldn’t handle anything. Near the end of my Freshman year of high school, I chewed through the vines. I escaped.

A sane person would’ve found a way to drain the water, perhaps by finding adventure in their own day-to-day life. They would’ve figured out how to take care of their own soul. I was not sane.

Of all the days I could’ve chosen to run away from home, this was definitely one of the better ones. White clouds dotted the light blue sky, and the coming warmth of summer allowed me to wear shorts and a tank-top. I grabbed a bag, stuffed it with food, and sat down on the steps before my front door to put my shoes on. I chose my most comfortable pair. I wouldn’t be back.

I ran down the shared driveway we had with three other neighbors. Needles of adrenaline stabbed into every vein, making my hair stand on end. I paused a moment to look both ways before I crossed the street, where a large, forested park sat. It sunk into the earth, a winding gravel path leading into its shadowed depths. I chose each new turn at random, my lungs burning as I sprinted. I didn’t even realize I had no money on me.

Something caught my eye and I slowed.

To my left, a moss-covered log lay over a small, trickling stream. Vines and ferns crowded the edges of the water, and a sliver of sunlight broke through the tall trees around me. A few leaves broke free of their branches and spiraled through the air. As my breathing grew quieter, I could hear birds singing all around me. A sweet smell filled my skull and mosquitos buzzed around nearby. I stepped towards the log, one foot off the path laid out before me. A vine snagged my ankle.

I hope that’s the only time I ever sit in the backseat of a cop car.

My mother slept on the hardwood floor outside my door for the next three days. I slept on my mattress, beneath layers of blankets, warm and comfortable. She had asked me why I had done it. She asked me why I left. I told her I couldn’t handle her anymore. I couldn’t handle anyone anymore. I wanted out. I wanted to leave, to find a place where I could start over, a place where I could finally find that damn bobcat. I don’t often see my mother cry. I don’t often see her afraid. Those tears of fear haunt me even now.

I pulled my knees to my stomach and tried to sleep on my side, pretending I didn’t know Mom was outside my door. Water rushed in from all sides of me. Vines wrapped around my arms until I couldn’t fight to find the surface and I was stuck, holding my breath, straining to see the light filtering in through the waves above me, trying to think, wanting to breathe, unable to struggle, unable to fight, lost, lost, lost—

I inhaled. I was never supposed to find the bobcat.

In Colorado, I let in the sun so the ground would dry and cut up the vines choking my trees. They began to grow again—those that had survived—and new ones were planted in the place of those who didn’t. I spent time in my own forest, ensuring it grew. Not because of the bobcat, not because I wanted her attention, but because I wanted to explore it, to see how it changed through the years. To see how it changed the more I saw. And when I was ready, I set out into the world again, searching for everything. Searching for everything she had seen and more. I found a few friends along the way.

I’ve always believed rain was the first explorer. Rain takes the biggest leap of faith possible, and finds everything there is to find. It seeps into cracks just to see what’s in them, it splatters against flowers just to experience their colors, it soaks a bobcat’s fur just to take in her scent. That day after the bobcat didn’t look at me, the rain decided to give me a bit of what drove it to crash against the earth so recklessly.

It rained last night. As soon as I heard my familiar friend tap against the window, I opened it to let in the smell. The cool breeze sent shivers down my spine, so I curled up under layers of blankets, risking the cold all so I could breathe in the promise of adventure. I closed my eyes and imagined what I would find after it passed. All the trails would be consumed, and there would be no one left for me to follow. And when I was younger, this thought, this notion of being pathless, terrified me. I would be rooted to the ground, eyes wide and breathless, hoping someone stronger would lead the way. But that wasn’t why the bobcat came that day, and that wasn’t why the rain swept away her steps. It wanted me to stumble, lost, through the trees. It wanted me to find what she had found, to figure out what it was that made her strong by coming across it myself. It wanted me to explore. It wanted to show me how I, too, could walk through someone else’s land and not even care to look at them.