Laura Ring
Range of Dead Childhood Selves

The Range of Dead Childhood Selves (aka the Senecas) is a chain of mountains covered in northern hardwood, only exceeding the alpine line at its westernmost peaks.

They used to be taller once. The tallest peaks in the world, snug in Pangaea. So much of their death has already happened; they are stumps of their former selves, humbled by the long assault of water & ice. The Senecas appear now as if shaped for your comfort—a hiker’s paradise: high enough in altitude to be free of biting flies, but not so high as to hinder the lungs. The density of the canopy means perpetual shade, & the forest floor of such interest, with its toadstools & newts, not even the children will notice the arduous incline.

Trails follow the long dead streambed, turf sharply roofed by the former water’s haste, rocks rounded & coming to rest as they may—geomorphic proof that all things indelibly rearrange themselves for that which will eventually leave them.

As you pass the tree line, the children’s soft middles pressed against bare rock, you realize it will be a harrowing descent—the trees a phalanx of spears, pitched at the galloping withers, & no tool or device to pin the children safely in place. You will suffer their deaths a thousand times, awake & in dreams, & believe yourself spared.

The Range of Dead Childhood Selves is no longer tectonically active; still it rises, the way a boat rises in the harbor when emptied of its cargo. I don’t know if we become more or less of ourselves in the emptying. Some things are brought forth in pain, & what is a mountain to the mantle but a wound forced open forever? A strike where it is most tender. A weapon left standing, brashly, in place.