Inheritance

Words: Cheyenne Coxon

After living in big cities on both coasts of the US for work, it’s been a relief to come back to the West Coast and really start to be “of” a place again the way I was growing up. After landing in Oregon a few years ago, lots of giant trees and a few stretches of coastline have already witnessed some of my most pivotal decisions to date — lands and waters have a way of making us feel small that encourages a healthy sense of proportion. In any case, I have been fortunate to be regularly moved and instructed by nature.

Of all the outdoor places I feel connected to, none comfort me like the ones introduced to me by my dad. I am from a stunning place in southern California and, as a rural kid, had no shortage of meaningful experiences outside. Both my parents instilled a love of nature in my sister and me and modeled two distinct ways of enjoying and caring for it. To this day, there is nothing like the sight of those hills and beaches.

Many memories of the lands I am from involve following my dad somewhere we were probably not supposed to be. Beautiful and remote were a given. All the better if we could ride in the bed of the truck the moment the highway was behind us. I see the creek in an oak woodland where he brought us to find wildflowers for a science project, the plains where we first learned how to hunt and check for ticks, the mountains where we followed generations-old black bear tracks through the trees, the lake that was his favorite place in the world, and for a time, ours, because he was his happiest and best self there.

My dad died three years ago in a place he called “the Moon” during a seasonal hunting trip with his best friends. He was out on a clear January morning looking for quail when his heart stopped. It was like him to take off early and unlike him not to return for breakfast. Heartbroken as we were, he immediately had us laughing from the grave, and we had to admit that it was a poetic way to go after a lifetime of trailblazing. Anyone who knew him can attest that following him taught you to be up for anything, and his leaving was no different.

My sister and I journeyed to his favorite place later that year when we knew there’d be no snow. Doing what he would have done simply seemed the thing to do: set out before the sun came up, barely stop, hit the last real grocery store, get to camp. It had been 12 years for me, longer for my sister. We were a little worried that we wouldn’t be able to find everything without him, or that it had changed beyond recognition. We needn’t have.

Since we weren’t towing a boat, we made it in 10 hours. We rolled down the windows and took a deep inhale of sage, like we did as kids. We found the saddle, the red dirt road, the sandhill cranes, the ancient fishing spot. We tread carefully and checked for animal tracks, like he taught us to, then stood tall again and looked ahead (also like he taught us to). “Watch for snakes!” “Leave it better than you found it.” Our old spot was overgrown, but we found a place we could set up camp next time we wrangle our chosen family.

Being there was a relief I don’t think I would have found anywhere else during that time. It’s one of the places I feel closest to who I sense he really was. Now that I’m in Oregon, it’s a safe place to sleep when I drive between the two places I call home, weather permitting. He’d like that.

It turns out that I’m more like him than I ever appreciated while he was alive. I care for the people and places I love in some of the ways I do because that’s how he taught me to move through the world. That sounds obvious but, in my experience, the roots of where we come from go deeper than we realize and show themselves in surprising ways in the wake of loss. Seeing him in myself and having others reflect him back to me has been one of the bittersweet things about this new life without a dad. It has been a bit like a tree fall — the space created by its absence allows sunlight to hit the forest floor, and there is a burst of new growth there.

In the early days after my dad’s death, there was so much paperwork. And accounts and belongings and decisions about things that felt really stupid in the face of shock and grief. My real inheritance is in hidden corners of California: Big Pine, the Point, “the Moon,” down countless dirt roads. It’s surprise clumps of lupine and paintbrush, ripe choke cherries, the sting of manzanita and yucca scratches, and the smell of warm white sage. It’s the call of a California quail, the cries of Clarke’s grebes carrying over water, and leaving tide-pooling with a little of the Pacific in my shoes. My inheritance is the love of these places and the gift of getting to someday share them with people I love, too. That, after all, was the whole point.

All my dad knew came from a lifetime of exploring and joy in sharing his discoveries. He believed that some adventures are best had while you’re young and strong. He also modeled that “young” is a relative term. I’ve always been in awe of that, how much he lived.

There’s so much I want to ask him; I sometimes wish I could follow him through the brush again and keep absorbing everything, pore over maps while he explained, bring them with me now. Then I remember that I can still follow, in a way, because he left me the places to start. It feels fitting that I’ll have to pack the car and find the rest out for myself.