Let’s start in sunshine. Let’s start with the absolute true: My uncle was wild beauty in motion, and I was the one who knew. You couldn’t trench a fence around him. Couldn’t box him with a frame. He was in and out, there and here, a blaze of Day-Glo glory.
He loved me best. He told me so. I was his primo family. Which is why when Mom said, month before last, “Choose your summer adventure—choose—I chose my uncle and his renoed schoolhouse cabin, his swatch of God’s elastic earth, his way of laughing, which made me laugh, which made us both laugh harder. Anytime I got a choice, I always chose my uncle. I chose four highway hours north from here, one quick bump east, one cut up a diagonal road that quickly skinnied. I chose where the hills are almost mountains, and the trees are so green that the shade is black, and the loose gravel rattles the belly of the car. And there are streams, and not just streams but something they call kettles.
I chose my uncle, which means I also chose my friend Matias. The three of us as indivisibles, or that’s what I thought then.