When I wasn’t at work, we were walking at the park, hiking, going on drives to the country, and camping. Each weekend I had to get out of town, away from the premonitions about people around me that would suddenly zing in.

I was torn between being sane and trying to save people, warn people about something I saw in their future that was bad, and make decisions on whether I should try to save them and how to warn them. It was the usual chaos. As I often felt the need to warn strangers when I had a premonition about them, I had many people treat me as one would expect when a stranger walks up and warns you of an upcoming disaster: “Get away from me, you freak. Are you insane? That’s a horrible thing to say to my wife/father/brother.”

I was also still dealing with a grief from years ago that was pulling me down, threatening to drown me, and horror, images set in sand and flames that I couldn’t get out of my mind. Alongside the grief was rage, too.

One day, on a hike in the mountains, standing on a cliff and looking down, down, down into a valley, Sundance at my side, I had yet another urge to jump. To simply end the mental torture.

That was not the first time I wanted to die by jumping. There were two other times in my life that I seriously wanted to die and could no longer handle what was going on in my own head. It was a hopeless, black, unending desperation. It happened once as a teenager, once in college when I was twenty-one, and at that moment.

I thought about jumping off various things: Bridges. Buildings. A pier. A mountain. Why a death by jumping? I had no idea. The suicidal thoughts were stuck in my head, on a circle, repetitive and taunting. They scared me, they soothed me. I would rather be scared by thoughts of suicide than soothed by thoughts of suicide.

That day, on the cliff, I felt soothed by it. I could leave all the stress and anger and grief and guilt behind.

As if sensing what I was going to do, Sundance started pulling at the end of my shorts with his mouth. He growled and pulled and barked and growled, pulled, and barked. I looked down at that dog and thought, I cannot leave Sundance. It’ll break his heart. I stepped away from the edge.

I walked into work at the corporate office of the chain bookstore the next day and quit. I bought an old but well-maintained VW van with a table in the back and a roof that poofed up so you could sleep in it. I sold everything except for my warm, comfortable clothes and all my camping and hiking gear and started driving. I mailed my book collection to Rose Bloom Cottage.

Luckily, it was spring when I started. I went to national parks but hiked and backpacked away from the crowds. I went to quiet campgrounds. I went to the beach. Mountains. Rivers. Lakes. I slept in the van. I woke up when the sun rose, hiked and read books, and went to bed after staring at a campfire.