When I Was Alone

By Charles K. Youel

i.
I am sitting on a giant red rock. All around me as far as I can see are more red rocks and red dirt. The sky is brilliant blue. There is no one else around, at least not that I can see from where I sit. All I can hear is the wind. I do not know where I am, but the scenery burns itself into my memory forever. I am 18 months old.

ii.
There’s a tree growing next to the fence in the far corner of the back yard, next to a swing set and a sandbox which no one in our family uses anymore. One summer day, I haul some scrap lumber, a hammer, and some nails out of my dad’s basement workshop. I’ve cut up five boards that used to be part of a picket fence, and I nail them to the tree to make a ladder that gets me just far enough up to reach a branch that I can use to climb higher into the tree. I tie one end of a rope around a stack of boards and tie the other end around my waist. I put the hammer through a belt loop, fill my pockets with nails, and climb up into the tree to a spot where three large branches come to a fork. I haul the boards up with the rope and use them to build a simple, sturdy tripod. I haul up more boards the same way and build a small platform on that tripod, just big enough to sit on.

My dad comes home from work to find me sitting 30 feet off the ground in a tree. He is not happy that I didn’t ask permission to build the platform—something that I fully anticipated, and also the reason that I didn’t ask him. But he says that it seems sturdy enough and does not make me take it down, although he does insist that I take off the lowest of my ladder boards so that my little brother, who is three years old, can’t reach it.

That summer and the summer that follows, I will spend hours sitting on that platform, high above a world that I don’t feel like I belong in, can’t make any sense of, and don’t have much interest in fitting into. Mostly, I read science fiction paperbacks: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Larry Niven, Piers Anthony, and other authors I’ve long since forgotten.

I’m as happy as I’ve ever been. I am 10 years old.

iii.
I wake up on the floor of a small church in a reservation town called Towoac in Colorado. Everyone else in the church youth group I’m here with is still asleep. We arrived the night before after two straight days on a bus and basically slept where we fell. I rub my eyes and tiptoe around sleeping bodies until I find the stairs, and, ultimately, a door that leads outside.

I step through it and look out across 40-some miles of desert at Shiprock. It’s hard to miss, because it’s incredibly huge and also because it’s literally the only thing to see. The Navajo call it Tsé Bitʼaʼí, or “winged rock,” hearkening back to the legend of the great bird that brought them from the north to the desert.

I am overcome by my smallness and insignificance in the greater scheme of the universe and history. And this feeling is surprisingly comforting and reassuring because everything else about my life seems uncertain and unnerving and one bad day away from falling apart completely. I am 18 years old.

iv.
Later that same year, my parents and I make the 500-mile trip from St. Louis, Missouri to Saint Paul, Minnesota, where I’m going to college. We arrive at my dorm and carry my suitcases to my room, along with my most important possessions. These consist of my bass guitar, my stereo, and boxes of records, cassette tapes, and CDs.

I am supposed to have a roommate, but he hasn’t arrived yet. We talk for a few minutes, but they are as anxious to be on their way as I am for them to be gone. The door closes behind them, and I sit down on the bed closest to the door, which I’ve chosen to be mine. It feels like a tremendous weight has been lifted off of me, as if I’ve been holding breath for a very long time, as long as I can stand. It feels like I’ve been waiting my entire life for this moment, the moment when I’m finally on my own.

v.
I am standing on the edge of a cliff that overlooks the vast, barren, and seemingly endless expanse of the Badlands in South Dakota. There’s so much to see that it’s impossible to take it in all at once. It’s early in the morning, and I am the only person in this part of the park.

In a few days, I will pull into the driveway of a small house on the Missouri River in the town of Craig, Montana. The driveway leads down a short, steep and uneven hill, and I will drive down it at what must look like a comically slow speed to Jeff, who is waiting for me at the bottom. Jeff and his twin brother, Jerry, are my older brothers. Well, two of them. As it turns out, it’s a long, complicated story.

We were born five years apart to the same mother, but we have different fathers, and we are meeting in person for the first time. I will get out of the car, we’ll give each other a long hug, and I will say, “Sorry it took me so long,” which is not a great joke but in this instance works on a number of levels. And we will walk inside to start a conversation that somehow feels like the continuation of one that we’ve been having for years, maybe even all of our lives.

But none of that has happened yet, and I am standing on what feels like another planet, a beautiful alien landscape that somehow also feels like home. All I can hear is the wind. And for a few perfect moments, I am the only person in the world.

Youel is a writer and creative director. Born, adopted, and raised in St. Louis, he lives and works in Minneapolis with his wife, two dogs, and a frequently fluctuating number of bicycles. He regularly shares words, ideas, photos, and questionable advice on Instagram and Twitter. In what used to be his spare time, he also manages ARTCRANK, a pop-art show and online shop dedicated to bike-inspired poster art.