3. Davis

Davis wasn’t the best with new people. He tended to be a bit shy and awkward at first, which was why he struggled with dating in high school and during his long path to his college degree, especially after he got sober. But Davis also knew that his tendency to ramble on about topics he was passionate about— which, strangely, included zoonotic diseases, because keeping people safe was what a ranger did — did not exactly make people comfortable. And Jeremy, even though he tried to hide it, was not comfortable. As they stepped outside, Jeremy swatted at an invisible mosquito on his arm and stepped delicately, like a critter might be underfoot at all times.

It was cute.

Davis engaged in a lovely cycle of self-delusion as he led Jeremy away from the visitor center (which did not have any evidence of hantavirus but did have a family of raccoons living in the crawl space who did not appear to be rabid, though they were cute in a feral sort of way). It was a cycle that Davis had begun entertaining in middle school, workshopped in high school, tossed out in college, but then embraced wholeheartedly when he got hired at West Virginia State Parks.

The cycle went like this: 1) See attractive man; 2) tell himself that anyone would objectively notice an attractive man; 3) wonder if he looked as good as the other man; 4) panic that someone would notice him thinking about male attractiveness; 5) remind himself that he also thought women were attractive; 6) think a bit more about a woman; 7) repeat ad nauseam.

It didn’t work.

It never did.

Davis wasn’t ashamed of being bisexual. He had accepted it as a part of himself since he realized that the other guys he was friends with in high school didn’t think about other men like that. But just like he didn’t advertise his sobriety when he met someone, he didn’t think it was anyone’s business to know that about him. It was a safety mechanism, a protection. Not shame.

In the back of his brain, Davis knew that the ranger uniforms were hideous. But he had never thought about it, because he had always tried to keep the part of himself that cared about what he looked like around other men suppressed at work. Because when he had imagined Jeremy Rinci, who emailed back quickly and attached a YouTube video about the history of Smokey Bear that made Davis laugh, he imagined an old Italian designer. Someone who was wrapped in the pashminas that had been popular among his mom and his aunts when he was in high school (and boys like Davis from Anthracite Springs were definitely not supposed to know what a pashmina was). He wasn’t off, per se, because Jeremy emerged from his Prius in a small cloud of expensive smelling cologne. How did he smell more like nature than the actual nature that Davis lived in? Pine and leather?

Davis probably smelled like sweat and dirt and whatever deodorant was cheapest when he went into the closest city.

Davis opened the door and suppressed the impulse to tidy things up. Jeremy was a colleague, a coworker. He was probably used to offices. But for the first time, Davis was seeing his office through the eyes of someone else— someone he wanted to impress— and it was mediocre, to say the least. He had two offices; one in his cabin and this one, which was in the main staff building. He clearly had spent more time in his cabin office, because this one was, well, kind of gross. The walls were a sickly sort of beige, and his desk was cluttered. He did have a nice hand-crocheted afghan over the back of his desk chair, so that made it look almost personalized.

Davis had been preparing for this meeting because updating the visitor center and getting more people of all types out here was a goal of his. Which meant that he had been scrolling through dozens and dozens of photographs of beautifully designed exhibits and had seen every single paint swatch that could possibly be nature related. Drawings and photographs, like trees, had always been easier for Davis to wrap his brain around than the written word. Davis settled into his chair, the afghan knitted by his cousin a comfortable lumpy reminder of home and support behind him.

“Where should I…?” Jeremy asked, looking around the office.

Cursing himself, Davis got up and pulled the plastic chair with the fewest number of cracks over next to his desk chair so Jeremy could see the screen. Davis sat back down and Jeremy folded his long body around the chair. Davis did everything he could to focus on inputting his password correctly the first time instead of obsessing over how close Jeremy’s knee was to his.

“Do you mind if I take notes?” Jeremy asked.

“Of course not,” Davis said, clicking at his computer. “You’re the expert here.” He clicked around on his computer and wished that the federal government didn’t always have to go with the lowest bidder when it came to IT.

“I prefer to view exhibit design as a true union of experts who have something to teach each other,” Jeremy was saying. Davis peeked at him out of the corner of his eye, surprised to find that he had kept his iPad away and had pulled out a sketch pad. He assumed everyone down in cities had moved to entirely digital work these days. Davis focused on the way he crafted the letters of visitor center and not the way that Jeremy’s long, delicate fingers gripped his pencil. Davis, once again, compared Jeremy’s grace to his own. If Davis was holding a pencil right now, he felt like it would look like a caveman gripping a stone tool or the grubby fist of a toddler.

A beep from his computer turned his attention back. “Well, thank you,” Davis replied. “I want the visitor center to be a welcoming space to meet anyone who is venturing out to the forest where they are.” He swallowed and wished he had a seltzer in the room to ease the tickle in his throat.

“Tell me what that means to you,” Jeremy encouraged, and Davis focused on his computer screen, the images he had collected, while Jeremy’s pencil scratched at his sketch pad.

“Well, for me, nature is comforting. So I want the visitor center to be a place that feels welcoming and familiar for people like me—” Davis paused at Jeremy’s slightly confused look. “You know, White dudes,” Davis added, hoping that Jeremy would assume what most people did and make it White straight dudes. “Anyway, I want to encourage them to look a bit deeper at the forest they think they know. Look past the tree to think about all the species that rely on this one pine, or encourage them to roll a rotting log back and see that there’s a tiny ecosystem below. But I also want it to be a call to action for those people, that we can’t take the forest for granted with the pressures of climate change and, well, everything.”

Jeremy made a thoughtful noise that encouraged Davis to continue talking.

“And there are other people, of course, who feel like nature is a reminder of what’s been taken from them. My boss is a member of the tribe whose land was a part of this forest, and he struggles with working for the government office that helped take it away from his people. So I’d like there to be a portion that is Native-designed— I can connect you with Eric, because that’s not for me to say.”

“I have some professional relationships with Tribal Archaeologists at the University,” Jeremy added. “I’ll reach out and see if they’re willing to consult. You have a budget to pay them, right?”

“Of course,” Davis said quickly.

“What else?”

“I think it’s important that people realize that a tree or an elk doesn’t give a shit about who you are,” Davis said, immediately feeling bad for swearing. His gram would have pinched him. Jeremy gave a questioning look, and Davis continued talking. “But the people who manage the land do. Like the color of your skin or the clothes you wear or who you love means more than your connection with the land.” Davis didn’t know why he was still talking, feeling his cheeks warm under his beard and stumbling his way through a sentence that probably made Jeremy Rinci think he was even dumber than he was. “I mean, a lot of people feel like the forest isn’t for them. I want to change that.” That was as close as Davis ever got to acknowledging his sexuality at work, couching the need to make natural spaces more welcoming to queer people in the general discourse of diversity and inclusion. Which was a half-assed attempt, really, considering the fact that just last week, he had seen a drag queen climb Half Dome on his social media.

Everyone has their own journey, he reminded himself. Something he had learned from one of his counselors.

“I love that,” Jeremy commented, his pencil stroking across the paper. Davis felt a warm pulse below his sternum, the way he would before he stepped up to the plate and knew he would smash a home run in high school. Emboldened and maybe a little cocky, which was a feeling that Davis didn’t often get in school. A feeling he never really got until he took his first ecology course at the local community college and realized that he was good at this, that it didn’t involve reading books, because it was about listening to the natural world around him.

“And there are people who are afraid of the forest. Who think that it’s scary out here or dangerous, when really, the only dangerous thing is being unaware of your surroundings.” Davis let out the remainder of his breath, realizing he had been talking more to Jeremy than he had to most people over the past few months. And perhaps had just slightly insulted him.

Jeremy’s pencil stopped moving. “Are you alluding to the fact that I am not a nature person?” A shock of fear bolted through Davis. He worried that he had offended Jeremy and would have to find a new exhibit designer. That fear was assuaged when Jeremy let out a surprisingly loud and goose-like laugh. “I’m just saying, maybe don’t lead with a virus carried by mouse poop in the exhibit.”

Davis let out a nervous laugh. “Oh, well. Yeah. Sorry about that.” The two men shared a small laugh, looking at each other for just a moment. Davis noticed that Jeremy had light blue eyes, the color of a glacial creek at the height of the snowmelt. He looked down at the sketch pad, where Jeremy had taken notes and drawn a few trees. Aspens, from the look of it.

“Have you been out here before?” Davis asked, breaking the silence.

“Eh, no,” Jeremy replied. “I’m much more of an indoor cat. As you may have noticed.” Well, if Jeremy was an indoor cat, then Davis was a feral tomcat who was probably missing half of one ear.

And he didn’t know what inspired the next words, but Davis opened his mouth and said, “Would you like me to take you on a hike?” When he saw a look of slight terror flash across Jeremy’s face, Davis quickly added, “Just the little visitor center loop. It doesn’t even have any elevation.”

Jeremy looked indecisive for a second, like he was having a conversation with himself, then replied, “I guess it’s good for me to understand what this whole forest is all about.” Davis clicked out of his computer, then dusted his hands on his pant legs, partially out of nerves, but partially because there was always a light layer of dust and dirt on everything out here. He took another peek at Jeremy’s linen pants and hoped that there weren’t any mud puddles on the trail.

“We can talk more about your process as we walk,” Davis added.

“I’m better at that.” Jeremy sniffed.

Davis led Jeremy outside and around the back to the small, one-mile loop that wound through a patch of aspen trees to a clearing where Davis would sometimes teach lessons to school groups but more often went to clear his head when he was stuck underneath a mountain of emails and the letters started to look more like squiggles on a page and less like words he could hear in his head. Walking helped. Movement helped.

“This is gorgeous,” Jeremy said, and Davis turned around, assuming that Jeremy was talking about the small wildflower garden that was used to show the native plants of the area. But when he turned, he saw Jeremy looking at a trail sign, tracing the script with one delicate finger. The trail sign that Davis had made himself, wood burning a quote by Gifford Pinchot to add a bit of a personal touch to the trail:

Conservation is the application of common sense to the common problems for the common good.

Something that Davis had learned about in his first ecological history course, in a discussion about the theoretical differences between John Muir and Gifford Pinchot, who had founded the government office he worked for. While Davis had loved Muir’s writing, something about Pinchot’s practicality spoke to Davis. People like Davis couldn’t wait for fancy policies and grand plans, but it was the day to day, a series of small, good deeds to better his community, that Davis was drawn to.

“Thanks,” Davis said, bringing himself back to the present. “My pressure was a bit inconsistent on the first few words, but I’m happy with the way it turned out.”

“You made this?” Jeremy asked, surprised.

“Don’t sound too shocked. I’m not just a dumb redneck.” Perhaps a bit too defensive; perhaps Davis showed his own anxiety a bit too freely.

“Never crossed my mind,” Jeremy replied breezily, and Davis wished he could believe him.