I’ve been thinking about this post for so long and I’m still not sure how to write it. I’m not really sure where it begins.  I guess this story begins with Lollie, a friend I met in Vermont who had a huge heart and like so many of us, was haunted by the sexual abuse in her past.  She was a lion, though.  She looked forward to realizing her dream of creating an outdoor program for women who had been through similar abuse. It would be a way for women to find inner strength and heal their cuts into scars–battle wounds of survival, not defeat.  She met her partner on an outdoor, backpacking trip for women.  They were fierce in different ways but I liked them both. 

Some of you have heard this story.  I’ve told it many times because I still can’t accept that they are gone. I still cannot comprehend how two avid outdoorsewomen (tall and strong) camping with a dog on a holiday weekend, could have been brutally attacked and killed.  My mind wants so badly to know if there was any misstep that I could learn from so I never meet the same fate.  This is at the forefront of my mind because I went camping alone last weekend, for the second weekend in my life.  It was not as hard as I thought it would be but I can’t say that I didn’t have panic as I laid in my tent listening to all of the noises.  I can’t say that I wasn’t scared every time my dog stiffened and lunged at leaves crunching in the night. 

I ponder the details of their deaths frequently.  The last time I went camping with a friend, I asked him how we are to protect ourselves.  Sagely he answered that we don’t expect anyone to harm us.  We are not likely to come out ahead if someone with a desire to harm others targets us.  Above all, we aren’t equipped to fight off a predator we don’t see coming.  And it’s not possible to treat every human as a potential predator.  I don’t want to live in that world, anyway.

The horrors of this story were refreshed for me yesterday, after talking late into the night with an old, close friend.  She has a friend, P., who was brutally attacked by a stranger who entered her home in the middle of the night.  It’s believed the stranger intended to kill her.  Maggie implied that he did everything but. The trump cards: Maggie said P is the strongest person she knows AND she has a dog. The attacker made noise outside.  Stumbling out of her sleep, P opened the door, the dog ran out and the attacker, who had been flattened against the side of the building, stormed in, locking the dog outside. 

How many times have I let my dog into the backyard thinking of this as a method of self-protection?  When women travel in pairs, when women are strong, when women have dogs–and they still are attacked and/or killed. How do we protect ourselves?  I wonder if it is truly so random that all we can do is live our lives.  I have always felt strongly that I cannot stop running, camping, walking, travelling, or biking because of fear. I cannot compromise my quality of life, my love of adventure because that is, in a larger way, letting misogynists I’ve never met hold me back.  And I wonder if instead of instilling fear in all of my sisters, I should not repeat these stories so that when all of us do what we would be doing anyway, we won’t be terrified doing it.

It’s not that easy for me. It’s not that easy for Maggie, either.  She said she can’t stop telling people about it.  I know the feeling. It’s a desperation because ”she” can always be me. I don’t want to have anymore friends get hurt. I don’t want my sisters kidnapped, beaten, raped, murdered, videotaped without their consent, coerced, trapped, or intimidated.  I want us all to be self-aware and cautious, shielded by the armory of knowledge.  But how?

I’m going to keep pondering this.  For step one, I’m going to rig my window so that I can’t be seen in my bedroom at night.  I recently found that my new blinds are useless when they are backlit.  So many predators start off at peepers.  I’m going to think harder about the security of our house and ways we can make it safer.   P is going to the shooting range and getting a gun.  This pascifist says, I would, too.  But we all know that’s not enough, in itself. Any weapon can be used against us.  We can turn to the hope Christina has given us.  She escaped bodily harm in the most hopeless of settings.

Here’s to all of us learning how to escape the demons inside and out.