Some moments affix in your head like the gum that you stuck under the table one day and regretted soon after, tried to get it off before anyone noticed, but it wouldn’t let go. Maybe it was a random experience, a single second out of what you thought was just another day. But there’s something about it that stays around, words that you hear ringing for a long time afterward, and it becomes your moment, the private piece of the time that you saved when the rest of the world forgot.

The years are indeterminable, as is the place, and neither matters. What matters is the summer day, the river, and my family.

The summer day was pleasantly warm with a cloudless and blindingly blue sky, the kind that makes you want to walk slowly. Tall, dry grass brushed against my legs as I made my way quickly through it, immune to the day’s charms in my haste. I half wished I was wearing a t shirt instead of long sleeves, but the horrible, slimy feeling of sunscreen was more unpleasant than the feeling the sunlight on my skin was wonderful, and in end I had made the sacrifice.

The river was not large, but you wouldn’t know it from the roaring behind us where it crashed around rocks on its furious journey ever onwards. It was, however, freezing cold, the reason that we had all decided to go exploring the riverbank instead of swimming. Presently we were heading further inland, but we hadn’t left the water behind: we stood on the piece of land left dry by a bend in the river, but a smaller stream, too impatient to take the long way, cut across the land, and that was what we were heading towards.

My family was walking along behind me, Mom and Dad ambling sedately to enjoy the rare good weather and my little sister anxiously struggling to catch up with me but drowning in the sea of tall golden grass. I ran ahead, pushing through the scratchy shrubs that grew out of the grass at intervals and formed a wall up ahead. There might have been a way to hold back the branches and leave a hole for me, but right then it wasn’t worth my while. I put my arms up to protect my face and shoved through.

There was the little stream, shallow water sitting stagnant under the sun. It was five or so feet across, where the bank rose at least as many feet, raw clay with striations running across it. At one place a little farther down was a little island of clay that stuck up as far as the bank in a column, standing several feet out into the water. Stretching across the gap and resting on top of both the island and the bank was a fallen log, now home to several plants with tiny bright blue flowers. One look was all I needed: I knew that somehow, before I left this place, I had to climb up and sit right there in the middle.

I turned to see Mom and Dad holding back the branches for Ren, who ran through as soon as they were all out of the way and saw the log seconds later, coming to the same conclusion as me about its perfection.

“You should climb it!” she cried excitedly.

“I know; I’m going to,” I said, a bit put out that she had stolen my thunder. Mom and Dad came up behind us.

“You’re going to climb up there?” Dad asked, pointing to the log. I nodded, already having found a seat on a sun-warmed rock to yank off my shoes and socks and roll up my pantlegs to what I hoped was high enough to stay out of the water; I would have to wade through the creek to get to the island.

“Careful,” Mom said, eyeing the log with concern. It was thick enough, but obviously old and possibly rotted, and anyway quite a fair ways up in the air. I suspect she wouldn’t have let me climb it if she thought I was going to succeed.

I stepped up to the water’s edge, hesitating only a moment, and then took a big step into the creek. This I regretted immediately, because what was impossible to realize by observing from the bank was that the mud at the bottom was two things I had not thought of: 1.) it was very, very soft, and smooth, a strangely disturbing quality in mud, and 2.) just like the water above it that had been sitting, unmoving, under the sun for hours, it was warm. I shrieked as the horrifying substance swallowed my foot up to the ankle, dipping the edges of my rolled-pants into the water. This was worse than sunscreen by a whole order of magnitude.

“What?” asked my sister from behind me, head tilted to the side like an inquisitive bird. I swiveled my upper body to answer, trying not to move my foot so I wouldn’t feel the mud sliding against it.

“It’s warm,” I lamented, though I don’t think those two words fully conveyed the entirety of the disgust I was experiencing. In fact, it may well have been the most horrific thing I had ever felt.

But…that log. Never had I seen a better place to sit, soaking up the sun’s warmth and gazing out over the creek and surrounding area on high. I just had to get up there.

I took another step, and tried not to shriek as I felt the mud close around my foot and slide through my toes. The log wasn’t far at all, only a few feet really, but I could tell the journey was going to feel long. I imagined myself sitting on the log, the slightly rotten, bumpy-barked wood that I knew would feel better than the throne of a king. I forced myself to keep walking. 5 feet… 4… 3… 2… 1… and then I was standing in its shadow, staring up at my prize.

Only the log was up there, and I was down here. My eyebrows knit together in a look of determination. The island and bank’s sides were rough and bumpy, well climbable (or so I should think), dotted with grass and roots that poked out of the sides. I could do this.

From behind me on the bank, Dad, who had seen me standing in the mud staring up at the log with the rolled-up edges of my pants wicking up water, asked, “Do you want me to lift you up?”

I shook my head, still staring down the island’s side as if it might submit to me and turn into a staircase. Predictably, it didn’t. “No, I’m good.” After all, I had climbed things before: trees, fences, a bookshelf once…just nothing like this. But I wasn’t going to give up on that log.

“Ok then,” Dad said, with just a hint of that amused parent tone that means no matter what they say, what they really mean is isn’t that cute? Parents, of course, will completely deny the existence of this tone.

I shrugged it off, reached up and gripped a bump on clay wall above my head with both hands, and then half jumped, half swung my leg so my dripping, mud-covered foot landed on a patch of grass just high enough up to the wall to be uncomfortable. Then I gathered myself and used the leg on the wall to propel myself upwards, simultaneously pulling myself up with my hands. I tried to find a spot to land my other foot, but before I could I felt the top layer of the clay beneath my fingers give, and I slipped back down the side, leaving me panting and looking for somewhere to wipe my hands, which were covered with a second skin of mud.

And right back where I started. I scowled at the uncooperative side of the island, and imagined myself on top of the log again. Then I took a few grimacing steps to the left until I was looking up at the side of the bank, and examined it for foot- and handholds. It didn’t seem any better really, but none the less I chose a handhold, this time a little lower, and carefully placed my foot in a less than optimal position, hoping friction would be on my side. Then I hoisted myself up. Immediately I realized my hand wasn’t high enough to any good, and frantically tried

to find a grip with my other hand, but it was too late. Putting all my weight on one foot was too much for the slippery clay, and again I slid down the side.

This was trickier than I thought. A part of me wanted to give up and walk back to the shore, after all, the log was just a log, maybe in an unusual position, but there were other logs. But a larger part of me wanted to keep going, to keep climbing up and sliding down until I found a way to the top. I didn’t care if the log was comfortable, if there were other logs, because that wasn’t what this was about. I had to prove I could do this, not for anyone else, but for me. I had told myself I was going to get up there and sit on it, and I was going to do so no matter how long it took.

“Sure you don’t want a lift?” Dad offered, the teasing note in his voice daring me to accept help.

That was tempting. Very tempting. I bit my lip, struggling to decide. Finally I shook my head. “I’ve got it.”

I reached up again, this time straining to grab the top edge of the bank. I put my foot up against the side and dug my toes into the wet clay, only wincing a little. Then I jumped, pushing with my foot and pulling with my hand. My other foot landed on the bank’s side and caught against a gnarly, protruding root, while my other hand gripped the top of the log to my right. I waited a moment, catching my breath, then pulled my right foot out of the clay and quickly replaced it higher, right under the log. Pushing against it, I flung my arm further over the log, and hauled myself over it, hard bark scraping against my stomach. With some effort, I managed to twist myself around, and found that I was sitting on top of the log. I scooted a bit to the right until I was directly in the center, and beamed at my family on the bank, who clapped.

“You did it!” Dad said, sounding pleased with just a hint of surprise.

And I had done it, without help. Even when I wanted to give up, even when I doubted if I could make it, I kept going, and that was what made me happy now. Sure, I was sitting on the log, but the real reward was knowing that I kept going. I persevered. I was - what was the word Mom would use? Tenacious. Like a wolverine. That was me – the wolverine, who didn’t give up on the things I wanted because they were hard.

I smiled, looking down over my kingdom of the creek, every inch of it hard-won, from my throne in the sky. And even when I left my kingdom, I knew I would still have the strength I had found today with me, knowing that I had done this. The strength I had always had – I just hadn’t realized it.

But now that I did, I would be the wolverine – no matter where I would go.