I don't usually post. I'm not trying to convince
anyone of anything weird, This is just what happened to me and
my boyfriend on a 2 day backpacking trip last fall.
It wasn't our first overnight, but we're not hardcore either.
We do weekend loops close to home, keep our gear simple, and
stick to marked trails. We picked a long but moderately
popular trail because the reviews said it had reliable
water, decent campsites, and one stretch with good views across a
valley. Nothing about it felt like a
gamble. The weather was clear, the high
was in the low 70s with a breeze, and the forecast
mentioned a bright moon after dark.
We left a simple plan with my sister where we'd park our loop
direction when we expected to be back, and we carried a small
first aid kit, a whistle, a PLB we rarely use, and the usual
overnight stuff. I say all of that because we
weren't winging it. We did it the way you're
supposed to. We started late morning and took
it slow. The trail climbed in gentle
switchbacks through mixed forest and then settled into a long
contour around the shoulder of a Ridge.
We saw two day hikers and a trail runner in the first few
miles, then no one. The path was obvious, a little
dusty from a dry spell, and the wind came through and soft
pushes that move the tops of the trees and then passed on like a
wave. We didn't talk much, we just
fell into the rhythm of stepping over roots, checking the map and
the wayfinding posts at junctions and keeping an eye on
our water. The stream crossings were as
advertised, knee high at worst, mostly ankle, and the water was
clear but left a mineral taste on the tongue.
We stopped twice to snack and wants to retape a hotspot on my
heel. All of this is boring detail,
but to me it matters because the day itself was ordinary in a way
that throws what came later into sharp relief.
There was nothing else strange, no out of place sounds, no bad
feeling, nothing you could point to and go.
That's when it started. We made camp in late afternoon.
The site we chose was a small Oval of flattened Duff under two
big firs and a sugar pine, with a thin line of trees behind us
and an open view straight across the valley to a parallel
ridgeline about a mile away. The spot looked used, but not
abused. No fire ring, no trash, just the
flat where a lot of people had likely pitched tents before.
The trail passed 30 yards below and then continued along the
contour to our right, tucked back in the trees.
It was the kind of place people pick because it's easy level
near a Creek. You can hear but not see, a few
branches for a bear hang and that view.
The clearing itself wasn't big, maybe 20 steps across and ringed
with sweet Fern and knee high grass where the Duff gave way.
We dropped our packs, walked the perimeter to make sure there
weren't widowmakers overhead, and then divided jobs.
Without talking, he set the tent.
I went down to the Creek to fill the CNOC bag and bring water
back to filter. From the edge of the clearing,
you could see the opposite Ridge cleanly.
It wasn't an overlook with a bench or a sign, just a straight
shot through the gap in our trees like a window.
The Ridge looked gentle and even.
A line of darker green laid against the pale sky.
No trails I knew of ran right along that exact spine.
The main route went lower, traversing below the summit and
then dipping toward a saddle. I know this because I looked at
the map and the printed profile while I waited for the filter to
do its slow drip into our bottles.
The sun was lowering but not gone.
It had that gold tone you get when it's starting to think
about leaving. The air was cooler.
I could smell the Creek in the warm SAP.
The first moment I felt anything like unease, I was three steps
from the tent with the water. I looked up, not for any reason
I remember, and saw the figure on the ridgeline.
It was the shape of a person, standing still against the sky,
not sitting, not hunched upright, feet apart like someone
at rest, arms at their sides. It looked small because of the
distance, but there was no mistaking the proportions.
Head, shoulders, torso, legs. I stopped walking for a second.
I told myself it could be a snag or a stump, but the Ridge had
been a smooth treed line all day.
We had both looked at it while we pitched the tent and laughed
about how we'd scored $1,000,000 view.
There had been nothing like a snag sticking up and nothing
that cut the line of the trees like that.
I told my boyfriend to look. He did.
He squinted, then put a hand up to shade his eyes.
Is that a person? He asked.
I didn't answer because I was still trying to make some non
weird explanation fit. Maybe there was a small rocky
outcrop with a weirdly human silhouette we hadn't noticed
before. Maybe a hiker had gone off trail
to get a view we couldn't see. It didn't feel like a scenic
overlook though. It was just a random high point
among trees with no break in the canopy below it.
I pulled out my phone and tried to zoom in.
The image steadied, then blurred, then steadied again,
all pixels in contrast. The shape was there.
Clean outline, head, the block of a torso.
No color detail, no movement. We watched for 10 minutes.
Not an estimate. I checked my watch because I
didn't want to exaggerate. It was at least 10 minutes.
During that time, the wind moved our branches.
Small insects skated through the light.
The figure did not shift, not even the way a person's weight
shifts over time. No head tilt, no arm motion, no
glint of a phone or a water bottle, no raised hand.
If someone stands still and looks at something, they still
micro move. A foot clears a stone, a
shoulder rolls. This didn't.
It reminded me of the times you see a statue at a distance and
for a second your brain treats it like a person before you
realize it's not alive. But there aren't statues up on
remote ridges. We tried to treat it like
nothing. We finished filtering water, he
boiled water for dinner, and we ate with our backs to the tent
facing the view like we'd planned.
If it was a person, fine. People day hike to weird places
and do weird things. We've all seen folks walk off
trail to stand on a boulder. If it was a snag, the light
would change and prove our eyes were playing tricks.
Yet as the sun dropped, the silhouette held.
The sky went from pale to orange to a bruise color.
The Ridge went from green to black.
The figure went from a cut out of dark against light to a notch
of darker against dark. The feeling I had about it
wasn't fear, yet it was the same alertness you have when
something is just off. An engine noise that isn't
right. A dog that won't come when
called. My boyfriend said Weird place to
stand. I agreed.
We hung our food in a spot that gave us the best angles from the
tent. We stowed toiletries.
We checked that we could find our headlamps in the dark
without rummaging. The normal end of day routine
felt like a list we had to complete more carefully than
usual. We didn't light a fire.
Fires weren't banned that week, but we weren't planning on one,
and I didn't feel like pulling in more attention.
The moon rose later than the sunset and cleared the Ridge
slowly. You could feel the temperature
fall, see your breath for a minute, and then the light came
up enough to throw faint shadows across our clearing.
We zipped the tent and lay down with that small thrill you get
when the day's wait comes off your feet.
The last thing I saw before we close the fly was the opposite
Ridge, now a single black line, no notch, no shape.
I took that as proof that the silhouette had been a trick of
contrast. I woke up needing to pee.
It wasn't a panicked wake up, it was the calm, irritating kind
where you lie there and try to will it away and then accept
you're going to have to crawl out of your warm bag.
The tent was lit in that soft way you get when there's a big
moon. I checked my watch, because I
always do. It read something like 2:30 in
the morning. The woods were quiet, no wind,
just the Creek, and even that was muffled.
My boyfriend was breathing in that deep, even way that means
he won't wake up for small sounds.
I slid my headlamp around my neck, but I didn't click it on.
I unzipped the inner mesh and then the fly, very slowly, so
the sound wouldn't RIP. I pushed the vestibule aside and
stepped out in my socks. The clearing was brighter than I
expected. I could see detail, grains of
dust on the tent, the outline of our bare hang line against the
branch, individual blades of grass laid over by the day's
foot traffic. I turned my head toward the gap
in the trees, out of a habit I can't explain, and saw
immediately that the Ridge was empty.
No notch, no person shape. It was just a line, I told
myself, that was closure, and took two steps away from the
tent, toward the edge of the clearing where the bushes gave a
little privacy. That was when I froze.
Not because of a sound. There was nothing.
Not because of a smell. Because of the edge of the
clearing on the far side, near where the grass thinned back
into the Duff under the trees. A person was standing there, not
on the Ridge a mile away. Right there, maybe 40 yards from
our tent, at the edge, where the moonlight stopped and the first
darkness of the trees began, upright, arms at their sides,
facing us. It didn't process at first.
I think I tried to make it into a tree.
I remember locking my eyes on it and telling myself to find the
branch that would give it away. Trees have taper knots, texture
that resolves when you stare. This didn't.
It had the clean outline of a head, the angle of shoulders,
the vertical run of a torso, the straightness of legs.
I couldn't see the face. The moon was behind it and a
little right, so the front was in shadow.
There was no headlamp, no reflective band, no pack.
I could make out just the shape of a person, the kind of idea of
a person your brain holds even when the details are erased.
I didn't speak, I didn't run, I didn't do anything dramatic.
I turned very slowly and crouched back into the tent, the
way you do when you don't want anything to notice a movement.
I slid the zipper down as quietly as I could and pressed
my hand over my boyfriend's shoulder and then his mouth,
because I knew the first thing he would do was say what out
loud. He woke with a jerk, heard the
air come through his nose hard, and I whispered in the smallest
voice I could make. Someone is standing at the edge
of the clearing. Don't talk.
Don't turn on your light. He went still in a way I have
only seen him do once, when a car almost slid into us on black
ice. I felt his breathing change.
He nodded under my hand. We waited like that for a long 3
or 4 breaths while my heart beats so hard I thought it would
move the nylon. Then, without speaking, we
started doing a thing that, looking back, I think we both
decided on at the exact same time.
We packed the essentials inside the tent.
No zippers, no stepping outside. We worked by the moonlight
coming through the mesh, by feel.
I pulled on my pants and socks and shoved my feet into my boots
without lacing them. He slid on his base layer and
fleece. I pushed our headlamps into the
pockets in the tent roof so they wouldn't glare if they clicked
on. He rolled our sleeping bags into
messy bundles and stuffed them loose into our packs.
I unsnap the stove from the vestibule and brought it inside.
We dialed down our movements to only what we had to do.
When a strap slid against nylon, we paused and waited for the
sound to settle like dust. We didn't touch the bear hang.
It was out by the same edge of the clearing where the person
stood. I didn't want to give any reason
to move around outside. I kept picturing stepping out
and having to turn my back to that edge to pull on the cord.
After the first minute, when the automatic jitters burned off, I
felt this clear, weird focus. I could hear everything.
There were no cicadas, no wind. The Creek was distance only.
The person at the edge didn't move.
I mean that literally. I watched through the smallest
gap in the door, through the silver of the mesh, and the
person's outline stayed the same.
Not the little shifts a person does when they stand too long.
There was none of that. I tried to listen for breathing
and heard nothing. That didn't mean anything, the
distance and the Creek anyway. But I tried.
I tried to count seconds to see if anything in their posture
changed. Nothing did.
We had a conversation without talking.
I tapped my boyfriend's wrist to ask if he wanted to try to leave
in the dark. He shook his head once.
We've both been caught night hiking when the trail is less
obvious than it looked on a map. And it's not like the movies,
where a flashlight makes everything simple with deadfall
and faint sidetracks and one wrong contour.
You can end up wandering into a drainage or circling back toward
the same place you started. The idea of moving away from the
tent, into the trees with an unknown person 20 or 30 paces
from us felt worse than waiting. We chose to sit up, packs ready,
and watch. If the person came closer, we
would speak, but not before. If the person charged the tent,
we had trekking poles, pepper spray and a whistle.
The PLB felt stupid in that moment.
It's for when you break a leg and tallis or get pinned by a
log, not for there's someone just standing there.
Time stretched. I checked my watch once, cupping
it to block the light. It said something like 248.
The next time I looked carefully, it was after three.
We took turns keeping eyes on that edge of the clearing, and
each time one of us leaned forward to look, the outline was
there, same as before. I started to get practical,
worries that had nothing to do with fear.
My bladder hurt. My legs cramped from kneeling.
The tent fabric ticked when it cooled.
Every small sound from inside felt like a flare going up.
When a pine needle dropped on the fly, I flinched so hard I
bumped the pole. Not once did the person step
forward or back. Not once did they raise their
hands. I kept telling myself it could
still be a visual trick, that maybe a trunk and a broken
branch made a shape my brain insisted was human.
But I monitored for the kind of change that would show it was
wood. Wind pushing a sway when a gust
came, the moon angle shifting and turning an arm into a limb.
The wind never picked up the outline never wavered.
If you think I'm adding color, I'm not.
That was the fact of it. It stayed shaped like a person
through the time it takes for your eyes to adjust, your hope
to map trees where there are none, and your nerves to settle
into a beat. My boyfriend leaned forward
once, carefully and breathed in like he was smelling something.
Later he said he thought he caught a faint whiff of cold
earth and sweat, like you get off a hat band after a long day.
I didn't smell anything. I kept trying to make out
whether the head was bare or hooded, and I couldn't.
It was a perfect blank. I wanted to ask out loud over
and over, do you see it? But I didn't.
I didn't want words to make anything tip from strange into
engagement around what I think was for or so the cold found the
small of my back in a way I knew meant we were on the downside of
the night. The moon had shifted and the
shadows moved. The outline remained.
There was a window of time, maybe 5 minutes, when a small
cloud took the moon and the clearing went from silver to
near black. During that time, we held
absolutely still because it felt like the lights going off in a
hallway while someone stands at the far end.
When the moon slid free again, everything was the same.
Tent, grass, tree line, and the person where they've been at the
first hint of dawn, and I mean the first thin light that isn't
moon but not yet sun. The person moved.
It was smooth without hurry, like someone stepping into a
grocery aisle because they realized they'd been standing in
front of the same shelf too long.
They turned. Not in segments, not with a
glitch. They pivoted and walked into the
trees at an angle that took them parallel to the trail, deeper
into the forest, not toward the Creek.
There was no crunch of leaves, no snap of a twig.
I waited for it because the ground around that edge had a
scatter of sticks we'd noticed setting camp, the kind that
always give at least one sharp crack under foot.
I heard none. We didn't talk then, either.
We unzipped and packed the tent like it mattered if we left in
10 minutes or five. We didn't touch the bear hang, I
left it. If that bothers anyone reading
this, I understand, but the idea of walking to that tree and
pulling that cord down and feeding the line while I watched
the dark between trunks was not something I could do.
We shouldered our packs with the straps loose and got onto the
trail with a rhythm that felt like a jog, even though I'm sure
to anyone watching we looked like two people walking too fast
with poor balance. The first mile and a half out
you pass three spurs that look like real trails until you
notice the angle is wrong and the tread is soft with needles.
On the way in we had paused at each to check the post in the
map. On the way out we went straight
through all three without a pause because we knew the route
from yesterday's walk and also because stopping felt like
announcing yourself. I kept checking behind us, not
constantly, because constantly makes you crazy, but in regular
intervals every 100 steps or so. I never saw anyone.
We didn't eat. We sipped water without stopping
When the trail turned from pine Duff to the dusty tread of the
start. I could smell the parking lot
the way you do, the faint scent of oil and hot plastic that
means you're near a road. When we reached the car, we
didn't explode into panic like a movie.
We loaded our bags, sat down, and locked the doors without
saying anything. Then my boyfriend put his head
on the steering wheel for a second in a way I've only seen
after funerals. We both laughed once, not
because it was funny, but because my body had been holding
one breath for hours and it finally let go.
On the drive out, we passed a small pull off with a map board.
A Forest Service truck was parked there, empty.
We didn't see a Ranger. We didn't stop.
There's a small Ranger office near the highway where the road
widens for snow plows. We pulled in and stared at the
door. Neither of us got out.
I don't know what we would have said if we had hi.
A person stood and watched us for an hour and then walked
away. It doesn't sound like a crime.
People camp near people all the time.
People go to weird places and look at other people.
We had no description beyond human shaped, no visible face,
no clothes we could name. We went home.
We unpacked our gear in silence. I opened the food bag and threw
away anything that smelled like camp because the association
made me nauseous. 3 days later, I called the Ranger district.
A woman answered and asked me what I was reporting.
I told her as plainly as I could.
She was kind. She asked if we felt followed on
the hike out, if we'd seen any tracks or signs of a camp near
ours, if there were recent reports of break insurance at
the trailhead. I told her no to the first, no
to the second, and I didn't know about the third.
She said they hadn't had any complaints that week, but she'd
make a note and have someone swing the area.
She asked if we'd noticed blaze orange or camo, because the
start of small game season sometimes brings people out at
night and they stand still, or it can be stargazers who walk
without lights. I told her we hadn't seen orange
and that the person stood exactly at the line where the
clearing stopped. I didn't know what a stargazer
would be doing at a random edge like that.
She said sometimes folk don't think about how they come off to
others. She apologized that it made us
feel unsafe. She was professional and calm.
I appreciated that more than I knew how to say.
The thing I returned to in my head isn't that someone watched
us. It's how still they were.
It's not how a person rests, it's how a target sits on a
range. I've replayed it in my mind 1000
times trying to even find a tiny motion I missed.
There isn't 1. My boyfriend brings up the lack
of sound when they walked away. He's not making a point about
ghosts, he's making a point about weight and ground and the
fact that even careful steps have texture.
He says he heard nothing and he was listening like I was.
We both agree on that. We haven't camped since.
We keep saying we will car camp near a busy lake or rent a cabin
or do a short out and back to shake it off, but when it gets
real we find other plans. I still hike.
I still love the smell of pine needles heating up on a shoulder
season day and the way trail dust clings above your socks.
But when a path bends and you can see the opposite Ridge
through a window in the trees, I look too long.
If there's any dark notch that could be a person.
I stare and stare until my eyes water.
Nothing has been there since maybe once.
There was nothing there that night either.
Maybe the Ridge shape tricked us and what stood at the edge of
the clearing was a tree I couldn't reconcile.
I know what my eyes told me and how my body reacted.
I know the way the tent felt, tight as a drum over my chest
while we waited for light. I know the first sound that
morning wasn't birdsong, but our own breath, loud in our ears
when we realized we could finally stand up.
If you're reading this thinking, why didn't you shout?
Why didn't you call out and fix it?
I don't have an answer that will make sense to you if you haven't
sat where we sat. Silence felt like the only
control we had. We didn't want to give whoever
it was any of our voice. We didn't want to move their
needle. We wanted the clock to do its
one job and carry us to daylight.
It did. The person left at first light,
as calmly as if they'd been waiting for a bus.
We walked the 12 miles back without stopping, as if sitting
down would let the night catch up.
That's the whole story. No twist, no discovery of tracks
in the morning, no missing time. Just a human shape holding still
on a ridgeline at dusk and then taking our place at the edge of
our clearing in the middle of the night.
If someone has a clean explanation, I don't mind
hearing it. All I know is we did everything
by the book and it didn't protect us from the simplest
thing. A stranger, silent and still
standing just within the light. The trail I'm talking about is
one I've done so many times I could walk it without thinking.
I started using it when I moved here because it had everything I
wanted from a long day. Steady elevation, a couple of
Creek crossings that kept you honest, a high point with a view
that actually made the climb worth it, and enough foot
traffic that you could nod to someone every few miles without
feeling watched. I used that trail to test packs
and boots, to break in a new filter to get my lungs back
after winter. If I only had one day in a week
to get outside and clear my head, that was the loop.
I knew where the blazes changed color.
I knew where the wind funneled across the Ridge even on calm
days. I knew which switch back held
snow the longest in the shoulder season.
It wasn't a trophy hike. It was my baseline.
I went alone. That's not unusual for me.
I'm in my 30s, fit, comfortable with maps, and not out there
doing stunts. Standard kit, 20 liter day pack.
Printed tapo with a plastic sleeve compass on a lanyard.
Phone with the map tiles downloaded and the phone in
airplane mode. Headlamp with fresh batteries,
filter, small first aid kit, knife, lighter emergency
blanket. The food you throw in a bag
without thinking. Peanut butter wraps, A bar that
tastes like a candle, a salty handful of something.
It was early fall, clear morning, dry trail, not hot.
I parked where I always park, nodded to the same old kiosk at
the trailhead with the same sun faded warnings, and started up
at a steady pace. It was a day where everything
slides into rhythm. Boots and breath bugs stayed
down. The only noise was the Creek on
my left and the occasional Jay that wanted everyone to know I
was there. About 5 miles in, right past a
spot where the trail swings away from the Creek and starts to
gain real ground, I saw the first orange ribbon.
It was tied to a branch at shoulder height. 1 neat square
knot, tails cut clean. Not the old bleach tape you
sometimes see from a trail crew years back.
This was bright, the kind of orange that still carries the
factory Sheen. It wasn't on the blaze line, It
was 10, maybe 15 feet off to the right, angled up into a gap
between two hemlocks. I stopped because it popped out
so hard against the green that it felt like a sign meant for
me. I looked for more and found
another one maybe 30 yards further in that same direction.
My first thought was the practical one.
They must be flagging A reroute. That section had been eroding
for a while. If storms knocked more of the
bench out, it would make sense for the Rangers to move people
to firmer ground. I've seen that done.
They flagged the corridor, run some, cruise through with
Pulaski's, cut the Duff back, and by the next season you're
walking the new line without thinking about the old one.
It fit the pattern. I don't make a habit of leaving
the established trail for no reason, but I do pay attention
to this kind of work because it affects where my feet go.
I stepped off the main tread and followed the first ribbon under
foot. It didn't look like a game
trail. It looked like someone had been
through with loppers. The tips on a few low branches
were clean, not broken. There were faint scuffs in the
leaf litter that looked human, not deer.
The second ribbon led to 1/3. By the 4th I was committed.
They were spaced the way I'd expect, close enough that you
could see one from the last if you were looking.
I was looking. The woods tightened as I moved.
The main trail had a wide, airy feel to it.
Big trees open under story. But this flagged line pushed me
into younger growth. Saplings crowded each other.
The canopy came down. Light felt different, more
green. I had to duck once under a
branch that should have been trimmed if a crew was serious
about getting packs through there.
I made a note of it and assumed it was just early days.
You don't open a corridor in a single pass.
You flag it, you see how it lays, then you come back with
tools. Birds were quiet.
I told myself that had more to do with the hour than where I
was. I kept an eye on the orange
flashes and tried to picture how a new tread would snake through,
how they'd cut drainages across the slope where they'd anchor a
turn with a rock. The part of me that likes tidy
lines was already approving decisions that probably hadn't
been made. I followed those ribbons for
something like 20 minutes. I wasn't watching the clock.
I was moving the way you move when you're scanning for the
next marker and not thinking of much else.
Then I realized I hadn't seen one in a while.
Not a long while, but long enough that the pattern broke.
I slowed. Did the thing where you stop and
turn your head because maybe you just missed one at a weird
angle. Nothing.
I took three steps back, then three more, trying to pick up
the last clear point in the chain.
It's easy to lose detail in dead leaves.
Colors flatten. I didn't like that I'd let the
gap grow without noticing. That's on me.
I took a breath, pulled the phone from the hip belt, and
checked the map. No bars.
That's normal out there. The map tiles were there, but
the GPS jittered. It had my dots somewhere to the
right of the real trail, which made sense, but the drift was
big and the accuracy ring pulsed like it couldn't get a lock.
I held my arm up out of instinct, like maybe that would
help it see the sky through the leaves.
It settled, and then drifted again.
That's not a reason to panic. GPS can lose precision under
canopy. That's why you bring a compass.
I tucked the phone away and shot a bearing back toward where I
knew the main trail ran, then turned around to pick up the
line I'd just walked. I scanned for the last ribbon.
I could not find it. I don't mean I looked for two
seconds and gave up. I stepped back in a slow grid,
looking for flash or not, for the way the sun glances off that
kind of plastic. I saw bits of fungus and spider
silk and one tattered piece of old blue tape that had nothing
to do with what I was following. I didn't see orange.
The small stupid heat that starts in your chest when
something simple stops being simple crept up a notch.
I told myself it was OK. I had a bearing.
The main trail was a clay ribbon, wide enough to hit even
with a sloppy line. I took three more steps back and
paused off deeper. Maybe 50 yards ahead, on a faint
downhill angle, I saw a new flash of orange.
That's the kind of moment where you make a decision that reads
fine on a message board and feels bad in your bones.
The logical thing, what I would tell someone else, was discard
the tape. Trust your tools, go to the
known line. But the tape was what I'd been
following, and it had the weight of an authority it didn't
deserve. The new ribbon was obvious and
recent and in the direction I wanted to travel.
I rationalized it. Maybe the corridor took a jog.
Maybe whoever flagged it ran out of tape for a stretch and picked
it up again. I moved toward it.
The ground pulled me down. It wasn't a steep slope, but the
micro choices I made kept favoring downhill.
The next ribbon hung damp on a twig at my eye level.
Then another, each one just far enough to keep me in them.
The air cooled, I lost most of the big trees and moved into a
stand where trunks were wrist thick and close enough that you
couldn't swing your arms wide. At one point my pack brushed
something and made a sound that wasn't branch against nylon,
more like plastic rubbing over plastic.
I turned and saw a short fresh stub where something had been
cut. The angle was clean and white
and still wet. It looked like it had been done
that morning. There were other little signs if
you cared to see them. A boot edge where Duff was
cleared from a rock, A soft flattened path that didn't read
like deer. I wasn't following animal
behavior, I was following someone's decisions.
The ribbons led me to a clearing I don't have a better word for
then perfect. Not perfect as in pretty perfect
as incomplete. It was a circle not wider than
20 feet, empty down to bare earth in the middle and kept
that way. No sticks, no leaves, no stray
Fern heads. The ring was crisp where it met
the rest of the forest floor. Someone made it and had been
making it for a while. In the center was a deer I hunt
sometimes and I feel dressed a deer with buddies in a legal
season. So when I say this was done
clean, I'm not guessing. Whoever opened that deer knew
exactly where to cut. The belly was split from brisket
to pelvis in a straight line. Not the jagged work you get when
somebody is learning in the field.
The ribs were exposed, white and rinsed.
There wasn't a mess. The entrails were not scattered.
They were gone. The head was intact.
Both antlers had the same bright orange tape tied to them in neat
bands, tails trimmed. There were no ash piles, no beer
cans, none of the trash that says sloppy.
It looked like a station. That's the word that came into
my head. A place where a task gets done.
I don't know how long I stood there, because time does
something dumb when your brain is trying to file a shape into a
drawer you don't have. I wasn't shocked by the idea of
a deer being cut open. I was shocked by the sterile
feeling of it and by the tape on the antlers, like some kind of
label. The only smell was iron and that
sweet rot that comes quick even on a cool day.
Flies were there, but not in a cloud.
I remember the sound of one against my cheek, because
everything else was quiet. Then I heard the whistling.
If you've ever blown across the mouth of a bottle to make a
note, it had that same hollow, thin tone.
High, not shrill, not musical. It came from behind me and just
to the right, close enough that the hair on my arms lifted
before the sound fully registered.
It wasn't a bird. It wasn't wind in a weird crack.
It was someone making a sound. The word someone landed very
clearly in my head. I turned.
Because that's what you do. I didn't see anyone.
I saw dark verticals of trunks and the mid story and the angle
of a slope that would hide a person with two steps.
The whistle came again. Same note, same breath length, a
little longer at the end. Like you do when you want
someone to know where you are without shouting.
I didn't say anything back. There's a version of me that
thinks I should have called out, announced myself, turn the
situation into something simple. Hey, sorry I followed your
flagging. I'm leaving.
The version of me that was standing there did not want
whoever was making that sound to know more about me than they
already knew. I backed up and stepped off the
circle's clean edge. I kept my eyes up and on the
gaps. I put my hands on the straps by
reflex, like I could shrink the pack around me.
The whistle came again, closer by a little, and the space
between the trees felt tighter even though I hadn't moved far.
I didn't run until my heel caught on a root and I felt how
easy it would be to go down if someone stepped into my line.
Then I ran. Running in a forest that isn't
groomed for it is different than track speed.
It's little bursts and ricochets and reading the ground two steps
out. I kept downhill because water is
downhill and the main trail when it finally swings back toward
the Creek is to the left of a drainage.
I know I crashed through mountain Laurel and got laced by
briars. I took one answer on the chin
when a branch went exactly where my face was going and popped my
lip open. I made more noise than I wanted
to, but less than I feared because the brush ate it every 5
or 6 seconds. I listened, and every time I
listened I didn't like what I didn't hear.
No yelling, no hey, just that whistle now.
Not on a fixed spot, but coming and going the way sound does
when somebody's moving in the same direction you are and
pacing your pace. I stopped once because running
blindly is a good way to run into something you can't move
through. I put a tree to my back and
tried to pull the map in my head into focus.
If I kept dropping, I'd hit the side Creek that splits off
before the main fork. That Creek runs into the one the
trail crosses on stepping stones.
I didn't need the phone to tell me that, because I'd sat on that
creek's bank in summer and watched minnows flash in little
pockets and told myself I'd come down from the Ridge that way
sometime, just for the change. I moved again.
I knew I was bleeding a little when the salt hit the corner of
my mouth, but I didn't feel hurt anywhere that mattered.
The ground got damp before I saw the water.
It always does. The Duff darkens and the plants
change from the scrubby stuff that tolerates dry to things
that want their feet wet. Then I heard the Creek, Thin at
first, then clearer. It wasn't wide. 2 paces across
in places, 3 where the bank gave way but it was running.
The sight of moving water when you have decided to go to water
is like a hand on your shoulder. I stepped into it without trying
to rock hop because wet feet were a price I was happy to pay
for. The line cold slid up over my
ankles and I kept moving downstream using the bank where
it was clean and the water where the bank choked down.
I looked behind me twice, and both times saw nothing I could
put a name to. Once I thought I saw the edge of
color, a tiny suggestion of orange, low and to the left, but
it might have been a leaf, or it might have been my head pulling
shape from noise to scare me smart.
I don't know how far I followed that Creek before it met the
bigger one, because distance gets weird when you're focused,
but I felt the change when it came.
The valley opened maybe five more degrees.
The sound deepened. The bank got more trampled.
Not by people, by deer and raccoons and the everything that
needs water. I knew where the main trail met
this bigger Creek. There were two big flats where
people like to take boots off and dunk their feet in July.
From there, the trail bent in a way I could see with my eyes
closed. I moved faster.
I crossed a gravel bar with Prince.
I didn't stop to read. The whistle didn't come again.
I hit the real trail as a break in the mess more than as a
sight. Bare dirt boot prints going both
ways, a candy wrapper I hated because of what it meant and
loved because of what it meant. I stepped onto it and felt my
back straighten the way it does when a door closes behind you
and the thing you worried about is on the other side.
I didn't stop there. I turned downstream and put
miles between me and that clearing.
I saw a couple coming up maybe 10 minutes later.
They had a dog on a leash who didn't like me much.
I must have looked like a problem.
Mud up to my shins, leaves stuck to my calves, a smear of blood
where the branch got me. I moved off to give them space.
The woman asked if I was OK. In the tone you use when you
want to be kind but also not get pulled into something you don't
understand, I said I took the wrong line off the trail and
bushwhacked down and was fine. Now that was true enough that I
could say it without sounding like a liar.
She nodded. The man looked at my face and
then at the ground like he wanted to find a reason for how
I looked. We all kept moving.
By the time I got back to the lot, there was a truck there.
I recognized Rangers. Not sirens and lights.
Rangers, the two you see every week.
Rangers in the state rig with the antenna whip and a cooler
behind the cab. They were talking to a guy about
a new trail closure sign. I walked past and then stopped
because consciously choosing not to say something felt like a
decision I would regret. I waited for their conversation
to finish. Raised a hand and told them what
I'd found. I didn't embellish.
I said there were new orange ribbons leading off the main
trail 5 miles in. I said I followed them for about
20 minutes. I said I lost them and then
picked them up again deeper. I said they led to a cleared
circle with a deer that had been field dressed and that the
antlers had the same tape tied to them.
I said I heard whistling behind me and that I left.
I said I came down a drainage to the Creek and use that to find
the trail. I handed over the best
description I could give for the location, orientation to the
ridgeline, the aspect, the kind of stand, the feel of the slope.
It wasn't coordinates, but it wasn't a story either.
It was information. One of the Rangers looked at the
other before he looked at me. That small sideways glance told
me this wasn't the first time tape had come up.
He asked what kind of orange, solid or printed?
I told him it was solid and new. He asked if I saw any metal.
I said no. He asked if I saw any bait
piles? No.
Any casings? No.
He asked if I took any pictures. I said no because I didn't take
my phone out once I started moving.
He didn't scold me for that. He thanked me.
He told me they had had some issues lately with people
flagging their own lines, and that the color orange was used
by surveyors, loggers, and hunters, not just trail crews.
He said that if it was an illegal baiting station, they'd
want to know about it, and if it was just someone being dumb and
flagging a shortcut, they'd want to know about that too.
He didn't say anything about the whistling.
I did, and he said he'd pass that along.
If you want a dramatic chase or a clean answer, this isn't that.
I drove home with the window down because I didn't want to
smell like inside air. I stripped on the porch and
shook the leaves out of everything because I don't like
bringing the woods into the house when I didn't leave the
woods on my own terms. I cleaned up the cut on my lip
and it looked like nothing once the dried blood was gone.
I ate food that didn't taste like anything and sat with a map
on my lap like an old person tracing a river with one finger.
The line I'd walked, the one I chose to walk, was obvious in my
head and useless on paper. You can't print the decisions
you make when you're following someone's idea of a path.
This is the part where people usually argue about what it was.
If you want my take, it was human.
Not a weird light, not a creature living in the shadows.
Someone marked away to a place they use, and they marked it
with a color that makes you think you're supposed to go
there. That station didn't happen by
accident. The circle wasn't a random
patch. The deer wasn't dragged and torn
up by scavengers. It was opened like somebody was
taught to open it, then tidied in a way that says they work
there, not pass through. The tape on the antlers read
like someone keeping track of a thing.
The way you tie a ribbon around a key that matters.
The whistle felt like a way to communicate without words.
It didn't feel like a warning and it didn't feel like a
greeting. It felt like a locator.
I didn't name the trail here on purpose.
I didn't leave it out to keep some secret that doesn't belong
to me. I left it out because if it is
illegal, the people whose job it is to handle that deserve the
space to do it. And if it's just someone's bad
idea of marking a side path, I don't want to send anyone into a
spot where the ground has already been scraped down to
bare dirt for something I don't fully understand.
I went back a week later with a friend and we stayed on the main
line. We didn't see any orange off to
the right where I'd seen it before.
If the tape was there, again, it wasn't visible from the trail.
That doesn't prove anything, it just means it wasn't obvious.
If you hike, you've seen tape. Sometimes it's innocent.
A boundary line for a study, a one day flag for a volunteer
event, a reminder to someone's future self of where they left a
camera. Sometimes it's lazy people
trying to stitch together a shortcut without doing the work
of reading the land and respecting the route the rest of
us walk. And sometimes it's not for you.
That's the category I put this in now.
Not for me. I can live with not knowing.
I can live with choosing the blaze I know over the tape.
I don't. I can live with the idea that
there are places in common woods that are used for things I don't
share. What stuck with me wasn't the
deer. It was the circle, the clean
edge of it, the way it had been kept.
I carry the same pack. I still hike alone.
I still like the steady cadence of boot and breath and thinking
about nothing. The change is small and total.
When I see flagging now any color, I ask what it wants from
me and whether I owe it anything.
Most of the time I don't. I stay on the paint.
I follow the tread if I want to explore.
I use the tools in my pocket and the skills in my head, not a
strip of plastic someone else tied to a branch.
And if I ever hear that bottleneck whistle again in a
place that should only give back the sound of water and wind, I
won't stay long enough to sort out who's making it.
I already know more than I need to about where that sound leads.
I'm writing this because I keep replaying that week in my head
and I want a record that starts with what actually happened and
sticks to the facts. No embellishments.
My buddy and I had planned the trip for months.
We wanted something simple, Car camping, a couple of day hikes
and cooking over a small fire at night.
We picked a National Forest I won't name because I don't want
to send anyone hunting for this spot.
It was dispersed camping, no numbered pads, no water spigots,
no camp host. Just a tight spur off a forest
Rd. where someone had scraped a loose circle of rock into a fire
ring. We both camped plenty.
We had paper maps, a first aid kit, bear canisters we probably
didn't need, and a half tank of caution in everything we did.
I'm not writing this to dunk on anyone or to make fun of the
person we met. I'm trying to put down exactly
what we saw and heard because the pattern is the part that
still unsettles me. The first night was quiet until
it wasn't. It was around 11:00 when we
heard the cough. It wasn't a clearing the throat
sound from one of us, It came from beyond the fire where the
headlamp Halo falls off dry and close.
We both stood up fast. I grabbed my light and hit it to
high. The beam snagged a shape at the
edge of the light. Jeans stained white T-shirt,
bare head, no backpack, no water.
He was standing the way people stand when they're about to ask
directions at a gas station. Hands at his sides, 1/2 step
forward like he didn't want to spook us.
He said he was lost and asked if he could warm up by the fire.
His voice was calm and flat, like he was reading the question
from a page. We said OK.
Saying no in that kind of dark is harder than people make it
sound. We moved a little to the side
and he sat on a log we dragged over.
He didn't hold his hands out to the heat.
He didn't shiver. He just watched the flames.
It felt like we'd invited a quiet cousin into a family
circle. For a full minute nobody said
anything. My buddy broke 1st and asked
where his camp was. The man pointed with his chin
into a slab of darkness where the trees crowded the spur Rd.
and said just over there. No gesture with the hand, just
the chin like a dog pointing. More silence.
The only noises were the SAP popping in the logs and a night
bird calling down the hill. After 5 minutes of that he stood
up in a single movement and asked you 2 got any sisters?
It caught me hard enough that I said the first thing that would
shut the door. No, he smiled with a lot of
teeth and said that's a shame. Then he thanked us for the fire
and turned the firelight, washed him once and gave back nothing.
Behind him we didn't hear footsteps in a forest at night
with dry Duff and twigs. You hear something when a person
moves. We heard nothing.
We both acted cool for maybe 10 seconds and then did the same
thing. Killed the fire, flooded the
trees with our lights and scanned while we coiled the
hose, doused the ring, threw the stove and food back in the car
and bounced out to the Forest Rd.
We slept at a gas station pull through that night slouched in
our seats, doors locked, windows cracked for air.
It wasn't bravery, it was the most obvious move.
Morning made it feel silly in the way daylight always does.
We got coffee from the station and stood under that bright
humming fluorescent awning with local Flyers taped to the
window. A dog adoption, a lost ladder, a
firewood for sale number written on a tab you tear off.
I took my cup to the windshield and saw fresh swipes across the
dust, long arcs a little higher than my eye line, like someone
had wiped it with their forearm. They weren't there when we
parked. I can't swear it was him.
The station sits on a road with truck traffic.
Wind can do weird things with dust, but I noticed it and I'm
noting it here. We did the rational thing and
drove to the Ranger station. The door was locked.
Offseason hours start early in the week and a cork board hung
outside with maps and notices. There was a print out warning
about increased car break insurance at remote trailheads
and a general reminder not to leave food out.
There was nothing about a person harassing campers.
We stood there long enough to feel dumb, and then we made a
plan that felt grown up. We'd pick a different part of
the forest, move at least 10 miles as the crow flies, and
camp near a spur that saw more traffic.
Not a campground, but not the black hole of privacy we had the
night before. If we saw anything off, we'd
bail before dark. We told each other out loud that
we were not going to turn 1 weird sentence into the whole
trip. We moved SE on washboard and
found a flat bench above a Creek that cut through Alder and rock.
Midday heat crawled up out of the gravel in waves.
We walked a loop around the immediate trees looking for old
trash, fresh scat, or anything that said someone lived there.
We found a few crushed beer cans half buried at the edge of the
clearing, old enough that the printing had gone chalky.
We rolled them into a bag. We rebuilt the fire ring with
three bigger rocks because the circle was too loose and spread
out. We set the tent but left the fly
clipped back in case we wanted to sleep in the car again.
It felt controlled and practical.
We settled in. Late afternoon, a pickup crawled
past a Forest Service green. Two people inside.
They didn't stop, just waved. The sun fell, the Creek got
loud, and the mosquitoes pinpricked the backs of our
hands. At dusk we cooked, ate too fast
and started in on the fire, slow to stretch the wood around. 9A
low fog threaded between trunks on the far side of the clearing.
My buddy who notices tracks said huh and pointed his headlamp at
the dust on the hood. There were overlapping marks
from our gear sliding off and on, and there were smears that
looked like prints, not clear fingertips.
Not some perfect crime show thing, but curved spots like the
heel of a hand pressed and dragged.
They were at the angle you'd use if you leaned in to see what's
inside. We had been standing at the car
on and off for the last hour. Could have been us, could have
been him while we sat at the fire facing the other way.
The fact that I can't tell is its own problem.
At around 10 we heard it again. That dry cough.
Same depth, same casual delivery from the dark line where the
Spur Rd. came in. My light hit nothing but stacked
trunks and Alder leaves. I kept the beam steady and said
hello. The Creek answered.
We did something different that second night.
We didn't invite anyone in. We kept our backs to the car and
our hands close. No one stepped into the Halo.
The cough didn't repeat. A minute later we heard a single
stone click. Not a footstep.
A tap that could be a boot nudging a loose rock.
I went down the mental list, Elk, deer, raccoon.
It's amazing what your brain will do to shrink a problem.
We banked the fire hard, loaded everything but the chairs into
the Hatch and we drove to another pull off, just a wide
shoulder above a drainage and slept there, not talking.
Day three we took the obvious out and moved to an official
campground closer to the highway.
Our pride took a hit, but the way we figured it, 2 miles from
a County Road and 10 other camps within sight was an improvement.
The camp host was the kind of person you want in charge of a
place like that. She had a clipboard, a radio
clip to her pocket and a look like she'd seen every kind of
person in the woods. We told her the short version
without the sentence about sisters because it sounded too
specific and weird. She said they'd had a couple
reports of a man in a white T-shirt walking through sights
and looking for a friend. She said that in a voice that
meant there was no friend. She also said law enforcement
had already looped in, so we should call if we saw him.
We picked a site where the pad looked over a little slope down
to the river. Midday sun on water makes you
feel like you were wrong about the dark.
We kept the car locked even when we were sitting five feet away.
We made eye contact with people walking the loop.
We did a short hike along the river and back.
At the amphitheater bulletin board, there was a damp half
sheet for a missing person from late summer, a guy with a beard
and a ball cap who never came back from fishing.
I felt the picture burning a hole in my mind.
When we walked away, it was a gut check to see a face and a
date. After dinner, we settled into
the regular campground soundtrack.
Kids on bikes, a couple strumming badly, a dad slapping
a charcoal grill that wouldn't catch.
Around 9. Those sounds thinned around 10.
The last laughter fell off and it became river fire and a
distant highway. We got up to hit the bathroom
before turning in. There was a comfort in
fluorescent plastic. Coming back to our site we saw
someone standing under the cedar behind our tent, not moving,
just a figure set between trunk and shadow stained white T-shirt
jeans. I said loud and level.
Hey man, this is our site. He didn't step forward, he
didn't step back, He turned his head slowly, like a dog hearing
a whistle. Then he took three steps
downhill and out of the loop light, which is when my buddy
hit the headlamp to high and caught the T-shirt bright for
half a second before the trunk slid between It sounds brave to
say we followed. We followed for six steps,
enough to see that the beam found shredded bark and wet
earth and then lost detail. Turning your back on the place
you sleep is a bad feeling, and we did not do it for long.
We walked back fast, got in the car and drove to the camp host's
pad. She answered on the second knock
and called it in by radio, calm and clipped, like she'd practice
the exact phrasing. A sheriff's deputy rolled in 20
minutes later, lights down, no siren.
He was kind, took notes and shined his own beam and careful
sweeps. He said what they always say,
which is they'd had a few complaints, they'd keep an eye,
and that we had done nothing wrong by calling.
That last sentence helped. When we got back to our sight,
our chairs were angled differently.
Not much. The right hand chair pointed 3
inches farther toward the fire ring.
I know how easy it is to move a chair by bumping it with a knee.
I also know that we left both chairs square to the fire when
we stood up. Those are facts I can hold side
by side without forcing a conclusion.
We slept in the car with the keys in the cup holder and the
headlamps ready on the dash. I woke just before three with a
Stinger of panic in my chest and no dream I could name behind it.
The windshield was fogged from our breath in the river air on
that close white fog, there were finger lines, Not writing, not
drawing, just a set of streaks from right to left, the way you
might wipe a window to see inside.
The fog was fresh. Our breath makes it and the
streaks were newer than that because beads of moisture had
formed along the edges. I nudged my buddy and we stared
and listened. The campground was quiet as a
hospital corridor. I don't scare easy, but the
combination of that quiet, the fresh streaks, and knowing we
had been in a well lit area 15 minutes before pushed me into a
decision point. We talked low and agreed to cut
the trip. The plan was to get a few hours
in the car and then go at first light.
We made it to light, broke camp in 3 minutes, and made a goodbye
stop at the bathroom. When we came out, a man in a
faded baseball cap stood by the vending machines.
He wasn't the man in the white T-shirt, he was older, eyes on
the gravel, and he nodded at us. When my buddy stepped ahead to
toss a bag in the bare bin, the cat man asked me if we'd had
company in the night. I asked what he meant.
He said there was a guy who walked the loops looking for
propane tanks and coolers left out sometimes talking to people.
He said, almost in a whisper, that the guy like to ask real
personal questions to see who'd bite.
He followed that with not my business and looked away.
It was such an ordinary half conversation that it steadied
me. I thanked him and we rolled out.
We decided to drive to a trailhead on the edge of the
forest and do 1 short hike to reset our brains before heading
home. It was an easy loop around a
little lake posted as 3 miles. The lot was mostly empty.
We locked everything and tucked the obvious stuff under the
seats out of habit. The trail was smooth and clear
about a mile in. A thin line hung across the
tread at shin height. It was fishing line tied between
two slender branches. My buddy saw it first and
stopped me with a hand across the chest.
I touched it with two fingers and felt the give.
It wasn't old. No dust, no leaf litter
attached. Somebody had strung it on
purpose. If you hit it at a walk, you'd
stumble. If you were running, you'd go
down. We stood there a long minute and
then snapped. It made the ends obvious and
walked on slower. At the far side of the lake,
there's a bench where people watch ducks.
We stopped, drank water, and looked at the lot through the
trees. Our car was the only one visible
from that distance. The windshield looked like a
single dark pane. A person could sit in a car and
never be seen. A person could stand behind one
and watch the reflections for movement.
I'm not saying anyone did. I'm saying that's the thought
that ran and once it starts it spirals.
When we got back our rear license plate had a smear
through the dust, like someone had dragged one finger across
the numbers. A line about as wide as a dry
stick. You're seeing things, my buddy
said, and I said I want to be. We took the highway toward town.
A mile from the campground Rd. A white T-shirt shape stood in
the ditch facing the traffic. He wasn't thumbing a ride, he
wasn't walking. He was standing like a mile
marker. I registered the jeans and the
angle of his chin. My buddy saw him too and went
still in the passenger seat. We didn't slow down to turns.
Later I checked the mirror and saw a tan pickup pull in behind
us from a side Rd. It's the woods, everything is a
pickup. I took the next turn and the
truck took it. I took another and the truck
took it. My palms went slick and my chest
got tight. It could have been nothing, it
could have been a person headed the same direction on a grid of
limited choices. When the road teed at the county
highway, we took a hard right and stayed steady to a grocery
store lot. I pulled in and parked nose out.
The truck kept going. I realized this section reads
like 1000 posts where people confuse coincidence with intent.
I'm writing it down anyway because of the way it felt to
move from trees and fire light into a broad parking lot and try
to convince your body that the open space made you safe.
We went inside and bought dumb things we didn't need sodas,
jerky, a phone charger because we were doing the normal motions
to get our breathing down. At the end of the candy aisle.
A person stepped in front of my cart and my shoulders went up
into my ears before my brain caught up.
It was the camp host from the previous night off duty,
groceries in hand. She made a point of saying hello
and then softer, told us she'd heard radio chatter about a man
matching our description seen near the amphitheater bathrooms.
She said they'd patrol again that night.
She was steady in a way that helped me more than the words.
In the parking lot, 2 older guys loaded propane canisters into
the back of a car and talked about fishing the next morning.
Like the world hadn't changed, that normalcy was a bridge we
could walk across. We could have gone home then.
We should have. We told ourselves we'd do one
more night but make it cautious. Motel on the highway, Deadbolt
and chain. A morning hike well in the open.
The motel had that old carpet cleaner smell and a window unit
that rattled. I slept hard until one of those
late night sounds that normally means nothing.
A muffled thud snapped me awake. I lay there and listened.
It was quiet for a while, and then there was the soft,
unmistakable sound of someone trying a car door, not
wrenching, the careful pull of a handle to see if a habit failed
you. Then another door.
Then another moving down the row like a person testing a line of
lockers. I got up and parted the curtain
with two fingers. The lot was washed in sodium
light. My car sat second from left.
The first car's front passenger door handle twitched and the
figure moved one step. White shirt, jeans, thin
shoulders. He came to my driver's side and
paused. He didn't try my handle.
He looked straight into the glass for two long seconds, then
slid on. It was surgical, no hurry.
When he reached the edge of the lot, he turned and scanned back
across the cars like a fisherman looking for floats.
He left the lot on foot, walking toward the far end where a chain
link fence separated the motel from a stand of second growth
trees. I woke my buddy.
We called the front desk, then the non-emergency number the
host had given us. The night clerk and the officer
both said the same thing. Keep the doors locked, stay
inside, they'd send a car. The cruiser rolled in 15 minutes
later, did a slow lap with its spots on, and departed.
I watched the fence line and saw nothing move.
Morning came with that hard slam of embarrassment and relief.
It's hard to hold both. We checked out.
When I opened the driver's door, a smell hit me from the car that
wasn't ours. It wasn't smoke or Cologne.
It was the stale, chalky smell of long, unwashed cotton.
It faded fast on the passenger window, down in the corner where
the manufacturer puts the tiny white dot letters.
Someone had traced a short arc in the condensation, just enough
to show you the glass had been touched.
We skipped the hike and drove to the Sheriff's Office in town.
The deputy at the desk listened without interrupting and took an
actual report. He wrote down our descriptions
and asked for the make and color of the truck that had followed
us to the grocery. I told him we weren't sure, and
he nodded like he expected that answer.
He said they'd had other calls. He didn't say how many about a
man approaching camps at night and asking odd questions,
sometimes wandering through sights.
He said they'd made contact once and told him to move along.
He also said they didn't have a name, so he wasn't trespassed
from the campground. The way he said it made me
understand that this was a person slipping in and out of
different people's weeks, the way wind slips through trees.
He gave us a case number. That small thing.
Ink on paper, a line and a Ledger helped.
We decided to make the long drive home in one push.
We took the straightest route out and didn't stop until we hit
a wide pull through with semis sleeping nose to tail.
We got out to stretch and checked the car like two people
checking a stove before leaving the house.
The hood had two clean half moons on the lip where a
person's hands would grip if they leaned over to look at the
engine. Again, we couldn't swear those
prints weren't ours from the day before.
Again, the shape of them lined up too neatly.
I wipe them clean because there's only so much you can
carry forward. We didn't talk much on the
drive. Every now and then one of us
would bring up the most defendable pieces.
The camp host, the deputy, the motel clerk.
Like touch points to prove we hadn't dreamed it all.
We avoided the sentence he asked because the shape of it made our
stomachs flip. In the days after we got back, I
kept thinking of little details. I didn't clock in the moment.
The way he pointed with his chin instead of his hand.
The way he watched the fire and not us, like the flames were the
thing he actually wanted. The way he moved without sound
through Duff that crackled under our boots.
Each detail on its own is nothing.
Together they make a picture I don't like looking at.
I'm not trying to wrap this in advice.
I don't want to make a list. I'm writing it down because it
happened over several days and in different places, not just at
that first fire ring. And that spread is what kept me
off balance. The first time we heard the
cough, I thought we were dealing with a single weird moment.
What we were actually dealing with was a person who moved
through the same space as we did and treated them like hallways
instead of rooms. He crossed our doorways again
and again at a distance and watched for an opening.
The last piece of this came three days after we got home.
I was unloading the last of the gear in my driveway.
The tailgate has a strip of paint that holds dust no matter
how often you wipe it in that dust, dead center on the
vertical glass above the handle, someone had drawn a small notch,
like a smile turned flat. It could have been a fingernail.
It could have been my kid brushing it when she walked
past. I don't know.
I know I stared at it until my neck went hot.
That night I lay awake and thought about the firelight
shining off a stained T-shirt and a question asked as casually
as a weather report. I don't have a good way to end
this, except to say we did the simple unromantic thing and
changed how we camp. We still go out, but we don't do
dispersed sites anymore and we let people know where we are
down to the Spur Rd. It doesn't make me feel brave to
write that. It makes me feel alive.
If you read this and think we overreacted, I get it.
If you read it and recognize some version of the man I'm
describing, I hope you call it in the first time and not the
third. I don't need this to be a movie
to know it was real. The cough was real.
The way the chair pointed at the fire was real.
The finger lines in the fogged windshield were real.
The question was real, and so was the way the man smiled after
I said no. We never heard his name.
We never saw his camp. We saw him at the edge of every
circle we drew, like he was waiting for us to leave a gap.
We only made it out of that week by closing the gap ourselves and
walking away. I'm not a dramatic person, so
I'll tell it straight. It was a Saturday in late
September, clear enough that we left the car without jackets.
The sky was the sort of flat, untroubled blue that convinces
you the desert is simple. We had checked the forecast that
morning in town and saw storms marked on the radar cells 50 or
60 miles off, moving slow. We said what people say far
enough. Different watershed, not our
drainage. I had run this slot once before
with a different partner and carried the same worn rope, 1/2
length with an ugly sheath scar I'd taped.
I was with Dan this time, who keeps his gear clean and his
words cleaner. He's good in narrow places and
does not pretend to be what he isn't.
We both knew the basic rules. Start early, watch the clouds,
read the rock. Neither of us said out loud the
rule that mattered most miles distant storms can flash flood
slots because the plateau is 1 roof and the Canyon is the
downspout. We knew it.
But we also knew the drive was long and our calendars were
crowded. And knowledge that stays in your
head doesn't always reach your feet.
The approach was the usual treadmill of sand and
cryptobiotic crust and the low whistle that wind makes when it
scrapes a Mesa edge. We racked at the head of the
slot and found the first pour off dry, the sand at the lip
unmarked, and the Canyon floor Bony with pebbles that clinked
when we shifted weight. No smell of rain, which in the
desert comes through the nose the way metal does, And no
standing water. We down climbed a short chimney,
then a second, and set a hand line for a tight squeeze.
Dan doesn't like something with an awkward flare at knee level
that wants to spit you into space before you're ready.
By late morning we were 100 feet below the rim and maybe a
quarter mile from the first real constriction, the place where
the Canyon tightens to a shoulder's width and the walls
get that polished, waxy look from past floods.
There were dark streaks on the sandstone several feet above our
heads, damp like bathtub rings. We both saw them and said, looks
recent. The explanation we agreed on was
last week's storms, which had made the dirt roads soup.
If you come to the desert wanting to go, you can make the
signs point where you need the slot narrowed until our packs
rode on our chests and our elbows touched both walls.
I remember a good feeling in my legs that clean worked fatigue
that comes from careful movement.
I remember thinking about lunch, the tortillas I'd mashed in the
pack and the tired cheese. The air was still enough that
our breathing sounded like a metronome.
When we stopped in one wider chamber to plan the next down
climb, I pressed my ear to the right wall because I thought I'd
felt a low vibration through my palm.
It wasn't wind. Wind stops and starts and comes
around in gusts. This was steady, a distant hum
in the faintest irregular thump. Dan heard it too, and we both
looked up. Even though the only sky we
could see was a thread between stone.
The Canyon acted like a pipe and carried the sound better than
the open would have. It felt like the sound lived in
the rock. There was no Thunder overhead.
The line of blue remained unbroken.
We talked quietly about options and then, in the same tone,
decided to keep moving. Backing out of that slot would
have meant reversing a couple vertical problems that are
easier to go down than up, and neither of us wanted a rope up
retreat with unknown anchors. The next landmark ahead was a
chalk stone lodged above a pour off a cube of rock the size of a
desk with a comfortable top enough for one person to sit and
swing a leg, a place I remembered as a natural rest
stop. Past that the slot pinched
tighter and took an S bend where the light goes dim and the only
way through is a sideways shuffle with toes on nothing and
back pressed to the smooth wall. Our thinking, which I have
replayed without locating the flaw I want, was to get to the
chalk stone while we figured out what the sound meant.
Meanwhile, the damp rings kept their height above us, like
measurements somebody had left behind.
The walls were cool to the touch, and small sand grains
filmed my palms in a way that said the last water hadn't fully
gone. That's a tell.
I know now. I should have waited more
heavily. In narrow country, the first
sign of trouble is often sound, and the second is silt where it
should be dust. The Pebble that skittered past
my boot heel didn't look like anything until it knocked two
more loose and they pattered like a handful of beads on tile.
Then a trickle appeared from the bend above.
Not clear, but tan, then brown in a way that doesn't make
ripples, only a moving skin. I've heard people describe the
first flood water as chocolate milk.
That's true about the color, but the more important thing is the
texture. It moves like something mixed
too thick and carries sand in suspension so that your hands
come away polished in a single stroke.
Dan said my name in a plain voice that would have been right
for reading a label. I said OK, and we both reached
for high holds even though the rock was slick.
Because you do what every animal does first.
You get higher if you can. The wall arrived with no preface
I can describe, just not water and then water through a slot
narrower than my shoulders. It wasn't tall like movie waves.
It was dense, and it carried branches and shredded grass and
foam that collected at the corners where the Canyon made a
brief ledge. The sound went from hum to roar
in one breath. My chest surprised me by taking
a loud gasp without my permission.
Dan had one knee on the chalk stone and one boot scumming the
far wall, and I had both hands on the stone below, hanging on
the lip by my fingertips while the flow tried to decide where
to put me. He pulled up to sit, which made
space for me exactly nowhere. I love my friend, and I also
thought in those seconds about my own body weight and grip
strength, and it is an unpleasant thing to report both
truths at once. There was no platform except the
top of that stone and only enough of it for one person.
The other option was the blind chimney just before the bend and
off width slit in the right wall that I had noticed when we
passed but ignored because it looked like a dead end.
I went for the chimney because there wasn't another place my
feet could go that didn't say river and because I'm smaller
and because I didn't want both of us to fight for the same
square foot of safety. It was a sideways move into a
dark seam, maybe a foot wide at shoulder level and tapering with
height. I jammed my forearms, then my
knee and the lip, chewed the skin there in the way sandstone
does, methodical and hot. The flood hit the bend and
climbed my thighs and tried to peel me off the wall.
Sand rashed my calves fast enough to feel like heat.
Somewhere in it a log the diameter of my forearm railed
past and pinned for a second against my hip and then was
gone. Dan was above and to my left,
his boots grating on the chalk stone, both hands on nothing.
The white noise of the water filled the space where words
should have gone. I don't remember him saying
anything soulful or me answering.
I remember the feel of the chimney tightening until my
chest creaked. I buried my shoulder blade into
one rib of stone and breathed in a measured way, slow enough to
fit. And then I stopped thinking and
tried to become friction. The 1st 20 minutes, if it was
that long, had one job not to be struck by the bigger pieces.
The flood had lifted sand and branches and had a foam head on
it like a river after a rain, but this was in a corridor not
wider than a person. Sticks jammed at my thigh and
then freed and slapped the downstream wall and turned end
for end. Once a rope of grass packed with
clay wrapped my wrist and I had to work it off finger by finger.
The chalk stone sounded hollow when the logs hit it and three
times I thought the stone might move.
It didn't. What changed, and this is a
thing people don't understand if they haven't seen it, is that
after the first push passed, the water stayed high.
There's an idea of a flood as a single blow, but in a slot the
pulse comes through on a hydrograph you can't see, and it
sets a new normal. We were in the new normal, chest
deep, moving brown, with a pressure that worked on us like
steady hands. The roar leveled into a sound
that hit all other sounds. We started to feel our holds
erode. The little shelves that had been
crisp an hour before turned soft under our palms, as if somebody
filed them while we looked away. The grit that made traction
burned it away too, and the walls grew slick where they had
been rough. I angled my back and feet and
felt my right boot sole start to peel.
I reached for the wall with my bare hand to check that I was
not imagining it, and the callus on my palm shaved off like soap.
Dan kept both hands pressed down flat on the top of the stone,
because curled fingers hurt too much and because even the
smallest nubbin had become marble.
We exchanged maybe 6 words in that hour, none of them deep.
You good? Still here?
Don't move. Copy.
There was no room for speeches. If a person had seen us from
above, we would have looked like barnacles.
The decision that changed the shape of the afternoon wasn't
whether to run. That had been decided for us.
The decision was which of us would move and which would hold
the only spot that wasn't being sanded out from under our bones.
Waiting felt like the cleanest choice, and also like the
riskiest one, because waiting meant letting the erosion
process continue and betting that the river would fall before
the rock did. Moving meant one of us had to
commit to an unknown in a narrow place with force working at us
from hip level. I suggested I try to climb
higher in the blind chimney to see if it opened above the bend.
I didn't say the second-half of the sentence, which was that if
it dead ended I might wedge in and not come out, but if it
went, maybe we could get off the floor.
Dan nodded once and didn't argue because there wasn't anything
else to propose that didn't take his legs off the single surface
they had. I went from jam to jam, chest,
back, knee, a little at a time without the speed the gym
climbers think they will have in a situation like that.
The water felt like a patient hand against my hips and my
harness snagged on the wall 100 times because the webbing stuck
where the rock was rough and slid where the rock was glass,
which meant it always did the opposite of what I wanted.
I took off my pack by inches and clipped it to a loop because
getting light mattered more than having food.
The chimney narrowed enough that I lost the boot on my right foot
in a torque and felt the cool of the wall on my skin above my
head. The seam kinked and I had to
turn my face to breathe. The sound changed in the smaller
space. It became a dull pressure in my
ears instead of noise. I put my cheek to the stone and
felt it vibrate. The smell up there was clay and
mouse. Twice.
I thought about trying to place a Cam in a constriction.
And twice I remembered that cams won't hold in sugary sandstone
under load when the shapes wrong.
I used what I had, which was my body and 1 hex old enough to be
called vintage. I wedged that hex in a choppy
crack as a directional not because it would save a fall,
but because it gave my brain a leash.
The chimney topped at a scallop that was almost a shelf and then
passed it a tight sideways tube that turned and seemed to widen.
There was sky as a thin pale slash, which told me the tube
wasn't infinite and that there might be room to stand.
I could not see beyond the bend. I banged A carabiner twice on
the wall and waited. Dan banged his once in response.
That had been our agreement before the water rose.
That carabiner on stone would be our signal when voice was
useless. I tried the tube sideways and
found that my chest fit if I breathed out and that my hips
did if I twisted and that the wall there was dry and rough in
at least one spot. Like a new idea.
I worked through the 1st 3 feet and then stopped because the
tube narrowed abruptly and the far side fell away into a pour
off with an overhang. It was not a way out, it was the
ceiling of a room we could not reach from below a trapdoor
without a ladder. I backed down a little, tried to
look again, and confirmed what I had seen.
People get rescued from spots like that if somebody knows
where they are and if the river cuts them slack.
Nobody knew. Backing down the chimney while
the water shoved my hips and tailbone wasn't brave.
It was slow and reasonable. Every choice felt like that, not
noble, just small and careful. And the only one.
When I rejoined the level of Dan's stone, we couldn't meet
eyes because the geometry didn't allow it.
I told him what I'd seen, and he said OK, in the same tone he
uses when he checks a knot. The river began to tick down
sometime after, not dramatically, but enough that
the foam line on the wall made a new ring, lower than the last.
Floods don't often recede in grand gestures, they sag in
increments. The light in the slot shifted as
the day leaned toward afternoon and gave the water a metallic
look even though there was no sunbeam, and the sound fell into
a register that let us hear each other at 3 words a sentence if
we leaned hard to our left. We tested the holds above Dan's
stone and found one crisp edge that had not yet rounded.
We agreed on three steps. I would traverse back into the
flow, get to his perch. We'd stack bodies to reach a
notch. I could see its shoulder height,
and from there I would chimney to a ledge that looked like it
wouldn't crumble. If the ledge held, I'd anchor
the rope around a horn that might exist just out of sight.
If the ledge didn't hold, I'd go back to where I was and we try
to outweigh the river until the light told us we'd run out of
time. I moved on a count, not because
counting controls water, but because it makes your body obey.
Step, press, breathe, move. The flood still had enough force
to spin my hips out if I let my feet drift, but I didn't let
them. I made the chalk stone and set
my chest against Dan's back. He set his palms flat and let me
make a platform. My forearm went numb under his
boot and then woke. I stood and pushed my spine into
the crack and reached for the notch.
My fingers found the first part of its sound and the second part
rotten. I lay backed anyway, because if
a thing holds for one second, it can hold for two, and sometimes
that's enough. From the notch I got into a
better chimney that was less polished, and the friction made
that old happy rasping sound you hear when the rock wants you to
stay. I reached the ledge and tested
it with flat hands and it didn't crumble, not at once.
So I shifted weight and then more weight until it was my
whole weight and the ledge said nothing.
The horn was there as a bumped bulge around the corner, small
but real. I slung it with the rope because
webbing was buried on my harness under paste the color of coffee.
I lowered the loop and shouted, and after two tries the words
landed. Dan clipped and came off the
stone with a tighter body than I've ever seen, moving through
the flow like he knew every piece of furniture in a dark
room. We sat on that upper shelf with
our backs pressed into the corner and our feet braced, and
we did the thing you do when you have a little room.
You start inventory. No injuries that would change a
plan, except the grazes everyone gets in slots. 1 barefoot for
me, one pack gone to the river that had the good headlamp in
it. 2 liters of water left between us, which would have
been funny if we had been the kind of people who laugh when
their mouths taste silt. We waited until the river fell
from chest to waist to thigh and then the push turned into a pole
and the bottom felt like bottom again.
We crabbed sideways for 30 feet to a place where there was a
cross joint that let us break out of the main drain into a
trashy side crack with a jam of tumbleweeds that look dumb and
saved our lives above. That was what passes for a
weakness in those walls, a slope if you were generous with pencil
wide footings and one slick plate the length of a
countertop. We did that piece the way kids
steal apples, fast and quiet and topped to a shelf with coarse
sand that hadn't been watered yet.
The silence that came with Air and Space felt big enough to
stand in. The walkout was ordinary.
That deserves to be noted. The sky stayed blue on the far
horizon to the north. There were anvils with sheared
tops, perfectly normal late summer monsoons marching across
somebody else's county. The wash we followed back to the
truck was damp and smelled like clay, and there were logs the
size of fence posts arranged in makeshift geometry where the
flow had braided. We passed a boulder with a fresh
scrape that you could read like a diagram.
Here's where the river had lifted it and here's where it
had set it down. The truck started.
Our clothes left a brown tide line on the seats.
We ate what we had left and didn't say much.
I wore 1 boot and one sock and felt rocks through the thin part
of my foot for a week after that night.
When we turned the water on in the sink at the motel, it ran
clear, and that also deserves to be noted.
People ask later what we did wrong because it's comforting to
find the mistake, circle it, and believe you wouldn't make it.
There are answers I can give. We knew there were storms, even
if they were 50 miles off, and we went anyway because the sky
above us was clean. We saw damp rings on the wall
and called them older than they were.
We heard the sound and used minutes discussing it in a place
where minutes mattered. We moved past options because
moving felt like progress. If there is a list of seeds you
can plant for floods, we watered all of them.
Sound first, then silt, then skittering rock, then a trickle
that turned brown, then the wall that carried logs and sand and
foam, and then the part nobody rehearses when the first blow
passes and the water stays high and the Canyon becomes a machine
that keeps operating with you inside it.
In that machine, people don't drown the way movies stage it.
The river pins you under a branch, or the sand builds up
around your legs and sets like cement, or your foothold wears
away while you're using it and you go from held to falling in
the space between 2 swift breaths.
It's not dramatic, it's mechanical.
If there's a morality here, it's not complicated.
The desert doesn't hold a grudge.
It takes what it needs to take and leaves the rest.
Sorted by size. We chose who moved and who held.
I picked the blind chimney because I was small and because
a bad choice is still a choice and you own it.
Dan stayed on the stone because two bodies on one square foot is
not two times safer. Afterward, we did what people
do. We cleaned the grit from the
cuts and wrapped a new layer of story over the old one.
Every time I walk past an air vent and hear a steady hum, I
think of that Canyon behaving like a pipe and consider how
many roofs feed 1 gutter. I check forecasts now like a
superstition. Morning, night, the night before
the radar loops, the storm motion, the basins.
I noticed damp rings. I noticed silt in places where
there shouldn't be any. I don't pretend I'm brave and I
don't make speeches about respect for nature because the
word respect has been asked to do too much work already.
I will say this in a voice you can trust.
We were lucky, and luck is not a plan.
When I close my eyes on quiet nights, what I see isn't the
wall of water. It's my palm on stone that used
to be rough and had turned smooth while I held it, As if
time had speed up just for us and then gone back to its
regular pace without apology.