by Ally Okun
Some of us are anxious about the earthquake. You know, the Big One. The overdue Cascadia-zone subduction earthquake that’ll ravage the entire Pacific Northwest when it does finally hit. The New York Times published a Pulitzer Prize-winning article about it that they love to trot out on their social media every couple years.
The article came out the same year I moved to Portland, but the earthquake didn’t occupy my thoughts much then. I was more worried about running into my ex on campus or procuring a well-paying job with a liberal arts degree. Eventually, some of those worries worked themselves out – I fell in love, putting to rest my decade-and-a-half conviction that doing so would solve all my problems (it didn’t, but it did make them easier to bear), and I found a job, though I suppose well-paying is relative.
Years passed with these preoccupations; then I read Tilt by Emma Pattee, a book about the Big One’s immediate aftermath in Portland. My timing couldn’t have been worse: I finished it right before my boyfriend, Cy, and I spent the weekend at the Oregon coast celebrating my twenty eighth birthday. I had been the one to propose the trip. I wanted to spend my birthday somewhere beautiful. If the plethora of surviving characters in Tilt were realistic, we would at least stand a chance in Portland when the Big One hit. But the tsunami zone on the coast was fucked.
I laid awake in our AirBnb listening to the waves rumbling against the shore, wondering what it would be like to die in a tsunami. If the earthquake hit at that moment, I’d be pissed. Sure, I’d met the person I wanted to marry, but I hadn’t written a book yet. As far as I was concerned, my life had barely begun.
It was raining when we packed up to head home on Sunday. Our car wouldn’t start. We rode with the tow-truck driver the whole two hours back to Portland. A couple weeks later, the car was still in the shop and the earthquake still on my mind when Cy’s parents invited us to dinner at their house in the suburbs. His sister Annie offered us a ride. I knew Annie considered the earthquake; Cy had mentioned she would only stay overnight at the coast in a hilltop house.
Cy and I crossed the street from our house to hers, our happy accident of a neighborhood commune. Annie’s husband and kids dozed in the backseat of their SUV. Cy contorted himself into the trunk, curling up shrimplike, and I got into the passenger seat, trying not to laugh at him.
“I just read this book about the earthquake,” I told Annie as she drove. Her eyes widened. I named the book and asked if she’d heard of it; she shook her head no. There was no need to specify about the earthquake. It was in the parlance of Pacific Northwesterners.
***
A few months later, our car was working again, so we could go camping in the woods. We inadvertently picked the perfect time of year, right before the fire ban began. We gathered sticks and built a fire, something I hadn’t done since my camp counselor days. I was delighted to find I could still accomplish it. With the wood crackling and sparks shooting up toward the darkening sky, we propped up our camping chairs and cracked open beers from the cooler.
“How are you not afraid of dying?” I asked Cy. It was a topic we’d covered before, and his philosophy still baffled me. I’d been afraid of death since I learned what it was as a child. One night, I sat up in bed crying because I didn’t want to die. My mom heard me and came in to ask what was wrong. I said I didn’t know because even then I sensed it was a bit dramatic to fear death so young.
“I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s wrong,” my mom said. Fair enough.
Sitting around the campfire, Cy shrugged. “It’s out of my control, so why worry about it?” He was so zen without even trying.
***
Before I fell in love with Cy, I fell in love with his hometown. I moved to Portland for college and never wanted to leave. Whenever I flew back into PDX and was greeted by the weird, iconic patterned airport carpet, I felt the I’m home warmth I’d been missing.
The last time The New York Times posted the Big One article on their Instagram, a comment read I’d rather die on the West Coast than live on the East Coast. I tapped the tiny heart next to the comment. I grew up on the East Coast – Massachusetts, to be exact. Objectively, there were worse places to live, but I also knew the feeling of not quite belonging was trying to tell me something. I spent my childhood dreaming of leaving and took the first opportunity I got.
Meeting someone worth building a life with only further cemented my commitment to my adopted homeland. Cy was born and raised outside of Portland. Then I got to know his sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew, too, and we moved in across the street from them, and suddenly I had my own West Coast family. Before we met, Cy considered moving to Chicago or Cleveland without ever having visited, which I occasionally poked fun at him for.
“But the prospect of buying a house for eighty-thousand dollars is pretty enticing, don’t you think?” he said once in defense.
“I’d rather rent in Portland than own in Cleveland,” I said. He couldn’t argue with that.
***
Shortly after reading Tilt, I suggested it at the book club Cy and I were part of. I thought it would be a good pick for several reasons: it was by a local author, it would surely spark a lot of discussion about what we would do if the earthquake hit when we were at IKEA like the main character, and it was short.
“It’s cool that it’s by a local author,” agreed one member following my pitch. “No, no, no,” said another. She turned to address me directly. “You don’t know me that well, but the earthquake is why I started anti-anxiety meds.”
The book club did not read Tilt.
***
My post-Tilt anxiety about the earthquake has mostly dissipated, except for when Cy and I drive over a bridge (of which there are many in Portland), and he teases me, “It would suck if the earthquake hit right now,” and I have to punch his arm. In some ways, though, he might be rubbing off on me. The earthquake is out of my control – why worry about it? Death is inevitable, and all I can do about it is love my people and actually write the books I’ve been meaning to write, instead of thinking about writing them.
Annie told me once that her son was crying in bed at night because he was afraid of death, and she had to comfort him. He was just like me, except he could name his fears aloud. The unknown is scary; the promise of oblivion is scary. Fear of the earthquake is a more specific fear of death, though we can at least prepare for the former. I’m trying not to dwell on the timing of either.
Ally Okun is a writer of nonfiction and fiction. Her work has been published in Heimat Review, Same Faces Collective, Wishbone Words, and elsewhere. When not writing or reading, she is probably knitting or watching horror movies. She lives in Portland, Oregon with her partner and two kittens, where she is at work on her first novel.