April 21

April 21 is a calendar date that joins Hig’s private remembrance of Melissa to his uneasy reading of the post-collapse world. On the night he notes it, he walks away from a one-sided firefight without a gun or night-vision goggles; the date is also Melissa’s birthday. His attention to the day gives a personal anniversary a wider weight, linking love and memory with the losses that have altered the landscape around him.

The Night of April 21

Hig places the night of the firefight on April 21 according to his calendar. He notes that it is not, as far as he knows, a solstice or equinox, yet it feels significant to him, as do the twenty-first days of the month. The date is therefore marked by personal association rather than an established seasonal observance.

After the one-sided exchange, Hig passes the west hangars and leaves the airport area on foot. Jasper stays behind, and Hig chooses not to call him away. He carries neither a gun nor night-vision goggles, and considers the possibility that Bangley could kill him and Jasper if he judged their actions a threat. Hig nevertheless refuses to make each daily choice according to that possibility. The night gives April 21 a second significance: it is a moment when Hig acts on his own judgment despite fear and dependence on Bangley.

Melissa’s Birthday

April 21 is also Melissa’s birthday. She disliked parties, so their observance was quiet: they usually had dinner, sometimes sushi, a food Melissa regarded as extravagantly impractical but still loved. As particular fish became unavailable and the remaining choices grew too expensive, they stopped going. The remembered birthday meal thus carries both the intimacy of a shared custom and evidence of a world whose familiar abundance had already begun to recede.

Hig also gave Melissa a book each year. He chose old hardbacks from a used-bookstore section associated with children’s series and worn copies of The Hobbit. Their covers might be missing, but a motif from the illustration often remained embossed on the cloth beneath. Remembering these tactile details, Hig recalls not an elaborate celebration but a repeated act of attention: finding a book whose worn surface could still be explored by touch.

A Date Set Against Ecological Loss

The date’s meaning sits within Hig’s broader mourning for a changed natural world. He remembers the trout disappearing from the streams, including brook, rainbow, brown, cutthroat, and cutbow trout. Their loss affected him more deeply than the disappearance of other animals he names. He still goes fishing, but now catches suckers and carp, having to adapt to different fish and to streams made too warm for trout.

Seasonal signs have also become unreliable. On the April night, Hig observes that the warmth seems early for mid-April, while the old seasonal benchmarks have become matters of nostalgia. Although the mountains received snow that winter, there had been two consecutive years when the peaks held almost none. Hig says this prospect frightened him more than attacks or disease: the trout are gone, and the possible loss of the creeks would mean a further, more fundamental change.

Memory, Ritual, and Significance

Hig’s fishing gives this environmental grief a recurring practice. In the mountains, he seeks creeks and surviving or recovering forest, carrying the Sage pack rod his father gave him for his sixteenth birthday. His father died the following year, before he could teach Hig to use it; Hig learned by himself and from Uncle Pete. The rod therefore connects the present landscape to family memory as well as to the activity Hig continues after the trout have vanished.

April 21 brings these strands together without resolving them. It is a date in Hig’s calendar, a birthday remembered through modest rituals, and the night of a choice made after violence. Its significance lies in the way private remembrance and environmental loss occupy the same account: the day recalls Melissa, while the changing seasons and depleted streams make clear how much of the world those memories once belonged to has disappeared.