I'm writing this two days after getting discharged from
Flagstaff Medical Center. Triage recorded my core
temperature at 94.7°F and taped my left wrist for a sprain.
I filed a report with Coconino County Search and Rescue and
they hiked up the next day to recover my tent.
If a mod needs the date, I can provide it along with my plate
that's on the trailhead register.
This wasn't a chase views and vibes trip.
I was doing a cold weather shakedown before committing to
longer winter weekends. I signed the kiosk at Lockett
Meadow around 2:10 PM solo one night in her basin, 2 to 3 miles
and wrote my contact number. Forecast from the National
Weather Service called for a hard freeze, clear sky, light
evening breeze gear for the skeptics. 20° down bag, closed
cell foam pad under an insulated inflatable combined R value
around 4 MSR Pocket rocket 2 on an 8 oz ISO Pro canister toque,
750 milliliter pot bear spray in the side pocket.
Black Diamond headlamp rated 350 lumens and a tiny 0.7 oz plastic
mirror in my repair kit. No music, no fire, no
substances, just a yellow two person tent in a notebook.
With times the Inner Basin Trail starts off mellow and climbs
into white trunks and deadfall. Late October meant the Aspen
leaves were mostly down the ground, a mix of slick gold mats
and patches of thin old snow tucked in shade.
Sound travels far up there. When the trees are bare, you
hear boot scuffs from farther away than makes sense.
I parked at the campground loop, used the pit toilet, stretched
and started up with maybe 24 lbs.
I passed old initials carved into smooth bark, a trickle
crossing the tread that asked for a quick rock hop, and a line
of fresh elk droppings the size of big olives.
Around 4 O 5:00 PM, two day hikers came down toward me,
puffy jackets, trekking poles, one in a bright neon beanie.
We stopped long enough to be polite.
They talked fast, mentioned lots of elk, sign up high and the
beanie one said be safe in a bright, upbeat tone that stuck
in my head. I didn't give my name.
We weren't out there to make friends.
I set up about 60 yards off the main tread, behind a low rise
and a cluster of fallen logs screened from casual eyes open
enough to move around. No fire, just the stove.
Dinner was ramen with a foil pack of tuna and a fistful of
salt. I hung my food on a high branch
away from the sleeping area and checked my system for the night.
Bag fluffed, pad valves tight, headlamp on low, knife in the
side pocket of the tent, bear spray within reach.
Sunset eased out around 5:30 PM, the temperature already trying
to bite fingers When I tightened guy lines.
I did the boring routine. Count layers, shake the canister
to hear the fuel slosh. Log the time in my notebook.
It was quiet, the way high basins often are on cold
evenings. No traffic noise, no voices,
breath, fog, and the faint pop of cooling metal from my pot.
Right at dusk. A clean branch snap came from
uphill where the trail bends. Not a rustle.
A single snap. I clicked my headlamp to low and
watched for a beam through the trees from another camper.
Nothing. The air felt steady.
No gusts, no sway in the trunks. I told myself elk move like
trucks when they want to and went back to sorting my sleeping
gear. A few minutes later I caught a
footfall pattern that wasn't four leg light.
It was 2 steps, a pause, then a careful scuff.
It circled wider than my little camp shape and didn't bother
with a greeting. No light, no hay.
The crunch of old leaves would build and fade like someone
walking an uneven Oval, placing each foot with care.
I called out normal voice, not trying to sound tough, not
trying to sound scared. Hey there, sights taken.
I've got spray you good from uphill.
A voice said my first name. Not close, maybe 40 or 50 yards,
but right on pitch. It was the same bright tone as
the Beanie hiker earlier, the same light bounce at the end.
I froze because I had not told anyone my name.
I answered with who is that? The reply came back fast.
Be safe. Same 2 words, same tone, but the
rhythm sagged, like someone playing a song on beat one
second and off the next. I told myself I was hearing a
trick of distance. I told myself people play jokes.
I told myself a lot of things. While my thumb found the safety
tab on the spray, the steps drew closer.
They stopped just past the edge of my fly, the kind of distance
where two people might talk if they weren't strangers in the
dark. Something touched a guy line
twice, light taps that hummed the cord.
I clicked the headlamp off, sat still, and let my eyes get used
to the dark. In the cold, smells sit low and
a thick warm Musk slid under the nylon and into the tent.
It carried a copper note, like coins rubbed on damp gloves.
I reached into the repair pouch, found the tiny mirror, cracked
the door. 2 fingers and angled the plastic to pull a thin slice
of the scene outside into view. In the washed out spill from my
dimmed lamp. Something tall crouched by the
dead fall, elbows or knees at angles that did not look
comfortable. The head tilted farther than a
neck should tilt and stayed there without twitching.
No hands on the ground, no shifting weight like a person
catching their balance. Just a held wrong pose that
lasted one beat too long. I closed the zipper by feel and
tried to breathe slow. Then I heard a zipper that
wasn't mine, 10 feet away, a crisp slide stop.
It sounded like fabric teeth separating on a jacket or pouch,
not on my shelter. I ran my fingers over every pull
on my tent to make sure they were all shut while the smell
got thicker. I whispered to myself more than
to anything else, that I was leaving, that I had spray, that
I didn't want trouble. From behind the tent, in my own
voice I heard Don't leave me, same tone I've used joking with
friends when they start the truck before I'm in.
Same breath pattern. It was my voice without coming
out of my mouth. I didn't think.
I moved. Headlamp in the right hand,
knife and spray in the left. I drove a shoulder through the
door, caught a guy line with my knee and went down hard in the
leaves. The line snapped or tore.
I didn't check. I got up fast and ran the way
you run when you don't care how you look, picking the widest gap
between trunks and trusting that the main tread would feel
smoother under boots than the Duff.
I kept the headlamp on low to avoid blinding myself.
My left boot caught a root. I slid, bent the wrist under me,
felt the hot sting of something pulling, and forced myself up
before the hurt could bloom into a reason to stop.
From above and behind, my voice called help.
I fell. It landed with exactness that
made my stomach flip. It sounded like panic but didn't
carry any breath strain at the end of the phrase, the way my
voice does when I'm running. I nearly turned around.
Instead. I said out loud, because hearing
something steady helped. Nope, keep going downhill
Meadow. Saying the landmarks out loud
organized my head. The trail under me smoothed.
The air opened. A little Cold pooled in the
grass ahead, sharper than in the trees.
At the gate by the campground loop, a pickup idled with the
lights off 2 campers and hoodies were sitting in the cab with the
windows cracked. I must have looked like a mess
because they opened the door before I asked and shoved a wool
blanket at me. They said they'd come down from
a site higher up because something heavy had been walking
circles around them and talking. Not yelling, talking.
Words too clean for how far away it sounded.
One of them flicked the headlights on and pointed the
truck at the spot I just stumbled out of for a second.
I shine. Came back from between the
trunks. 2 points set higher than I'd expect for elk.
Steady, not that quick, low green you sometimes get off a
coyote. No bobbing, no jitter, just
there and then, not like a step backward.
Swallowed it. We called from the turn out.
A deputy met us at the bottom of the Access Rd., Took basics,
checked that I could hold a sentence without slurring, and
sent me with the ambulance when the shivering wouldn't stop.
At the hospital they warmed me up, taped the wrist and kept me
overnight, mostly to be sure I wasn't hiding something worse.
The next day, Search and Rescue took me back up in daylight.
All the angles looked ordinary again, which did not help.
They found my yellow tent slumped against the deadfall
where I'd blasted out. Two poles were bent into shapes
that looked more twisted than stepped on the fly, had a six
inch tear with no clean blade line or obvious claw scoring.
There wasn't much to photograph for tracks.
The crusted snow patches had thawed and refrozen and the leaf
litter was kicked to hell by my exit.
They handed me a damp stuff sack with my stove, fuel, and pot
because I'd shoved them all into a corner before I ran.
Back at the road, I gave a formal statement that the deputy
later labeled Unknown Human Activity.
He said prowlers come up to the Meadow sometimes.
I nodded because arguing on the roadside wouldn't change the
outcome. A day later, I saw a comment on
the All Trails page for the route from a hiker in a neon
beanie. They wrote that they'd passed a
solo camper setting up behind some logs around 4, and we're
back in town by early evening. They used the same phrasing I
remembered, and it lined up with my time notes.
I didn't reach out, I didn't need to.
It confirmed only the part that matters.
Whoever said my name after dark wasn't them.
I'm not going to tell you I know what I saw.
What I know is how a thing moved when it shifted, and how a voice
landed when it used words it shouldn't have had.
I know the weight of steps around a tent and what it feels
like when a smell collects under nylon.
I know my wrist still aches when I twist a jar lid and that the
poles in my closet are warped where they shouldn't be.
I know 2 strangers in a truck saw eyes shine at a height that
didn't fit what lives up there most of the time.
And I know I changed how I camped because of one night
above Locket Meadow. For the rest of that season, I
stuck to drive up spots where other people were in view.
I finished my cold weather testing with neighbors 100 feet
away and a locked vehicle next to me.
I still hike the basin because it's beautiful in a
straightforward way, but I don't sleep up there alone.
If you head in late in the year and set your tent off the trail
behind a set of white trunks, sign the register.
Tell someone your plan, and don't ignore the simple details
your body logs even when your brain wants a tidy explanation.
That's the best closure I've got.
I got out, people can verify enough of it to make it stick to
the real world, and I won't be in a yellow tent above Locket
Meadow by myself again. I'm typing this fast because if
I slow down I think about the parts I can't explain and then I
stop. We were on Holly Lake on White
Mountain Apache Land early November, two brothers doing a
one night fishing trip like we've done a dozen times since
we were kids. We bought the day fishing
permits and the camping permit at an authorized place in town,
read the posted rules at the kiosk when we turned off AZ 260,
and kept it simple. No noise, no trash, no fire
outside the ring, no wandering off the established paths.
I'm saying that first out of respect, because this isn't some
brag. It's a record of how a string of
small stupid choices can pile up until you're trying to out row a
shoreline in the dark and telling yourself the cold is the
only reason your hands won't stop shaking.
I'm not giving a site number and I won't swear to distances
because the light was flat and the clouds sat low and the water
eats range at night. I will say the campground felt
close to empty, Two other vehicles somewhere deeper in the
loops and the grass around the lake was that flattened yellow
you get right before real winter.
Thin plates of ice had started to form along the edges,
clicking against the John boat like coins when we nudged off.
We made camp the way you do when you've done it enough times to
cut corners. Truck backed in food tote under
the tailgate, Lantern topped and pumped and hung from a low
branch to keep fumes out of the cab.
The boat is a beat up 12 foot John with a trolling motor and 1
battery. That's usually enough if you
don't drag it around at full power.
We had the 2 oars and PFDS and a small first aid kit and a cheap
cooler in an emergency bag with the boring stuff.
Thermal blanket, tape, a couple packets of iodine, a whistle
I've never used. We plan to fish last light, eat
and crash early. While I was at the self pay box
my brother said he heard a woman calling a few names from the
tree line past the empty campsites.
Not singing, not yelling, just saying names in a straight tone
like you'd take roll. We both looked that way and saw
trees in the slope. No one walked out, no light
moved, nothing. We told each other it was
probably another small group settling in and we didn't
overthink it. And that's mistake one right
there, because that should have put us on a tighter plan.
We pushed off close to sunset when the surface turned that
dull pewter and the Cove we like was still enough to print our
wakes. I did something I never do
because I was fidgeting. I left the truck keys in my
jacket pocket and hung the jacket on the branch to air out
the gas smell from refilling the Lantern.
I even told myself I was being organized.
We slid the hull down the path, broke the thin edge ice with the
bow, and puttered toward the snag that leans over the Cove.
The motor hummed and that was the only mechanical sound for a
long minute. Just us and a few birds ticking
around in the brush up slope. My brother set his rod, I
steered and we settled into that quiet where you don't talk
because you don't need to. The air had that cut in it that
tells you you're going to see your breath in a few minutes.
Then a dog Yelp carried across the lake.
Not a drawn out bark, just that sharp high warning note.
We both turned our heads the way you do when you're trying to
judge range off a single sound. 10 seconds later, less than that
honestly, the exact same Yelp came again from our left at a
distance that didn't match the time gap.
I said two dogs and then we heard it again from behind us.
Same tone, same length, same spacing, like it had been
recorded and played back. It wasn't wind or the bowl of
the lake doing tricks. It was the same sound from
different spots, too close together.
I felt that little pinch at the base of my neck that I always
pretend is just the cold. On the far bank, on a small
rise, a figure stood against the stripe where the trees met the
sky. No headlamp, no phone glow, no
light at all. It was tall enough that my brain
tried to explain it as two people standing tight or someone
on a rock, but it wasn't that. We watched it for a few breaths.
It didn't shift weight or do that little ankle dance you do
when you're cold. It didn't do anything.
My brother said my name. Not to me to it, without meaning
to, because the second it said his name, he said mine back.
The voice came straight across the water, plain and flat.
Not a shout, just a person's voice using our family way of
saying his name, emphasis and all.
I asked who it was louder than I needed to.
It didn't answer. It didn't even tip its head like
it was trying to catch our words.
It just stood. Then there was a small splash
near the snag on our side of the lake, the kind you get when
something breaks the surface and slides under.
I looked at that out of reflex, and when we turned back to the
rise, the figure wasn't there anymore.
We both know the word skinwalker.
We've heard the stories since we were kids, because Arizona has
stories, and if you spend any time outdoors, you hear things
you don't repeat across certain boundaries.
We didn't say the word out loud. We reeled in.
I told myself we were cold and the bite was off and it was
smarter to eat now than sit with wet hands in the dark.
That's how you lie to yourself and still move fast.
The motor felt weak for a second, like the battery
connection wasn't tight. Then it picked up and we eased
back toward the small landing below our site.
The Lantern was a little Halo through the trees that looked
more like help than it turned out to be.
On the path above the water, between the gravel and our fire
ring, were footprints on the damp ground.
Bare, wide, longer than mine. The heel and toe marks didn't
match where they should have for a smooth turn.
Two prints angled one way at the heel while another set angled
the other at the toes like someone changed direction
without the pivot that leaves a smear.
The skin texture pattern that wet feet sometimes leave wasn't
there. Just shape and depth.
My brother said he'd seen kids run barefoot in the cold for a
dare. I said nothing because the
Prince came in at a line that didn't match the use path and
stopped in a place where you'd have to walk through a tangle to
make them 30 yards out between two trunks.
The tall shape stood again, closer now still no light, just
mass and height and that same stillness that doesn't read like
a person conserving heat. I felt my tongue go dry.
We did the smart thing 1/2 step too late.
We got in the truck, locked the doors, and that's when the world
went thin because the keys were in my jacket on the branch
beside the Lantern. I slapped my pockets like that
would change the truth. My brother looked at me without
moving his head. I turned the Dome light off and
we sat and listened for human noise, zipper cough, foot on
gravel, and got nothing. He said he'd go.
I told him to keep me in his sight the whole time.
He popped the door and sprinted, and I kept the lantern's beam on
him and on the branch and on the space to his right, because
something was moving parallel to him in a way that matched his
cadence, and stopped. When he did, he grabbed the
jacket and yanked the branch, whipped back the shape at the
trunks, stopped right at the edge of the Lantern light like
there was a tape line on the ground.
Then it used our mom's voice and called us both home by our full
names, the exact way she does when she doesn't want to be
angry anymore and just wants you to come inside and stop being
idiots. My brother froze, because you
can't not, Not the first time I yelled his name hard enough to
make my throat sting. And he ran and we slammed into
the truck and locked it and I don't know why I expected it to
rattle the door or grab the handle like a normal creep
because it didn't. It knocked once on the rear
quarter panel with a sound that didn't have the right pitch.
That's the best I can do describing it.
Wrong pitch. Staying in the truck wasn't an
answer if the keys weren't in hand.
We either waited in a cold box while something paced around us,
or we put a barrier between US and it that we could maintain.
Water is a barrier you can hold if you can keep a gap.
I said it out loud and hated myself because it felt like
grabbing the dumbest option on the table, but it was the only
one that let us set a distance line.
We slid the John boat back into the lake.
The thin ice at the edge broke and pushed away from the bow.
I set the Lantern on the stern and turned it low so we could
see without blinding ourselves, and we started to row.
We didn't use the motor, I didn't trust the connections,
and I didn't want the noise to mess with hearing the bank.
If you think that sounds brave, don't.
We were afraid of being pinned to a sound we couldn't place.
As we eased away, I raised the Lantern just enough to clear the
gunnel, and I made eye level with a pale shape in the low
branches above the path. I'm not going to describe it
like a mask. It wasn't a face in the way you
think of eyes and a mouth. It was a pale Oval where a face
goes too high above the ground for a person kneeling on a limb,
and it stayed still while we moved, and that was enough to
make my hands lose the rhythm on the oar.
We got about 50 yards out, call it 1/2 football field if you
want a picture, and held that line along the middle of the
Cove. The sound on shore matched us.
When we pulled, brush moved. When we paused, it paused.
Then the dog Yelp again, precisely the same from 2 points
that would have needed a Sprint between them.
And then our mom's voice telling us the house was warm and asking
what we wanted for dinner in that tired way that used to make
us come in, even when we were trying to squeeze the last
daylight out of a game. We didn't answer because we
couldn't figure out where to aim the words, and also because
neither of us wanted our voices on that water anymore.
The motor coughed once and died when I tried it out of panic.
I'm not proud of that move. Maybe moisture on the contacts,
maybe the cold. The oars were enough.
We kept the bow toward the center so both banks were in
view and took short, steady pulls.
Our breath turned to small clouds and blew away on a thin
wind that slid along the surface.
I watched frost lift off the grass along the far bank in a
line as the wind passed, and it looked like a pale ribbon moving
around the Cove. When it reached the path where
the prints were, the Lantern flames sagged for a second and
then came back up. We didn't talk.
We didn't layout plans or theory.
We watched the shore and counted heartbeat, long gaps and
corrected our drift. The night wasn't endless.
It just felt stretched at the first thin Gray that makes the
trees grow depth again. A truck idled near the ramp.
The engine sound was normal and boring and the most welcome
thing I've ever heard. A tribal officer stood by the
bumper and called to us in a clipped, regular voice to row in
slow and keep the light on so he could see our line.
He didn't step down until our bow scraped the gravel.
He looked at us, looked past us, at the water, and then walked up
the path with us without asking a pile of questions.
He saw the footprints that were left and the scuffs where our
boots had run over them and the branch bowed from where the
jacket had been yanked. He didn't ask for a story.
He asked if we had permits. We showed them.
He told us to pack up and go home today.
He said not to camp here again without a group.
He didn't smile, and he didn't make it sound like a suggestion.
He didn't write a ticket. He made a short note in a small
book and then sat in his truck while we broke down camp so we
didn't have to keep one eye on the tree line and one on the
cooler. Back at the branch, the jacket
hung twisted like someone had wrung water out of it and then
changed their mind. The keys were still in the
pocket, the cooler lid was open, but nothing was inside that we
hadn't put there. No trash on the ground, no
theft, just small changes that add up to a message.
Leave. We loaded the boat, strapped it
too tight on the first try, loosened it, strapped it again.
I could have cried out of simple relief when the ignition turned.
We drove out past the kiosk and the rules sheet and neither of
us spoke until we hit town. We didn't make a formal
complaint beyond the officers incident note because I didn't
want to sit in a room and say the same thing to a second
person who would look for corners in my story.
We told our family what happened in the same plain voice I'm
using here. And then we stopped telling it
because we started sleeping badly near any kind of water,
even the kind that sits calm in a park with a walking path
around it. That's the end.
We left and we listened and we didn't go back there alone.
If you need a label to make sense of it, we have one.
But we didn't say it out loud up there, and I'm not saying it
again. Now you know it already.
We weren't out there chasing anything strange.
We drove to Fish Lake for the color, for the kind of gold you
can't get in town. My partner likes studying tree
bark and leaf patterns and sketching ideas in a little
notebook. I run trails to keep my head
from buzzing. Late September, almost October.
The air up there sits around 58°F by mid afternoon and smells
like dry leaves in cold water. We parked at Doctor Creek, day
use off Utah State Route 25, looked at the paper map on the
signboard and set a simple plan. Take the Lakeshore National
Recreation Trail toward Bowery Haven, then cut back near the
road before it got late. We told each other we'd turn
around by 4:30 no matter what, we weren't showing off.
We had the basics, 1.5 liters each, snacks, a small first aid
kit that happened to have a coil of bright paracord, an air horn,
bear spray, and headlamps. At noon the trail had people on
it. By three it didn't.
The first miles were nothing but easy.
The water was in and out of sight.
On our right, a dad and his kid were flinging stones at the flat
part of the lake near Bowery Creek.
A couple with trekking poles asked us where the big Aspen
stand, the one everyone calls Pando actually starts.
We told them what the Ranger station had told us.
You're already inside parts of it.
It's not a single patch like a parked lawn.
Then it was just our footfalls, the paper dry flutter of leaves
dropping, and two elk calls from up the Ridge, far enough away
that sound came thin and plain. If we turned back at Bowery
Haven, this wouldn't be a story. We kept going because the stand
past a shallow Creek crossing looked older, wider trunks, lots
of healed scars on the bark. The ground there was a matted
gold. Everything looked like the main
path because the leaf fall filled in the sidetracks.
It didn't feel enchanted or special.
It felt like we'd picked a good day and beat the weather.
The first odd thing was in the mud.
My shoes have a specific tread blocks on the edges and a broken
ladder up the middle. We crossed that little iron
smelling seep and my partner pointed at my heel prints inside
my heel cup, dead center. There was a second heel strike,
deeper with a longer stride than mine, like someone heavy had
stepped exactly into my tracks and stretched the step.
It wasn't beside my Prince, it was nested in them.
I thought it had to be an eyesight trick, light and shadow
playing on soft mud. We walked another 50 yards and
found the same thing in a darker patch.
My partner crouched and said it's stepping right in yours.
I made some joke about whoever it was, saving effort.
The joke didn't land. 5 minutes later a coyote crossed the
trail. It gave us a plain 2 second
look, ears up, tail low, and trotted off to the right through
the leaf fall. We both watched it go because we
don't see coyotes that close very often when we're on foot.
Another 5 minutes and the same coyote crossed at the same
place, with the same torn left ear and the same glance and the
same step pattern. I know what deja vu feels like.
This didn't feel like that. This felt like a clip run.
Twice. We stopped without planning to.
My partner said, is it the same one?
I said it has the same ear. We both turned around to see if
maybe we'd looped. We hadn't.
The crooked snag on the left had a sunlit side.
It didn't have 5 minutes before the last voices we heard faded
for good. Around 3:15 wind on the
shoreline came and went, but in the trees it was quiet in the
normal way a leaf blanket eats sound.
We talked about turning back and then decided to walk just one
more shallow draw and aim back to the road From there.
We could smell the lake stronger when the land sloped.
The ground felt soft under the leaves, not tricky, just full of
hidden sticks that wanted to roll our ankles.
We were standing close, like you do when you don't have to raise
your voice. Then I heard my voice up ahead
call my partner's name in the exact casual way I say it when I
want them to pause. Not loud, not hissed, just a
normal flat. Hey, hold up in my tone.
I didn't say it. I was looking right at them when
it came. My partner looked at me fast
enough to flare their nostrils. I said I didn't say anything.
I was weirdly embarrassed, like I'd been caught doing a bad
impression of myself. We both stood and listened.
A few seconds later, behind us and to the left, I heard my
partner's voice say this way, with their clipped cadence, the
way they talk when they're focused.
We turned at the same time and saw nothing.
I don't mean nothing unusual. I mean there was nothing except
white trunks and gold ground and our two sets of prints.
We stopped moving. We stood facing each other and I
pulled the paracord coil from the first aid kit.
We tied it around our waists with maybe 10 feet between knots
we could drop in a second. We agreed to count steps in a
steady voice and stop every 50 to check that the lake stayed on
our right. If we hit impassable brush, we'd
adjust and keep the same general angle until we saw open ground.
One of us would hold the bear spray, the other would hold the
air horn and a headlamp. Even if it felt silly in
daylight, we set it like rules out loud so we'd follow them on
the 1st count at 32, the cord snapped tight across my hips as
if someone had stepped on it. I turned, ready to free it from
a dead branch. My partner wasn't snagged.
They weren't moving. They were looking past my
shoulder with both pupils huge. Do you see that?
They said. I didn't answer for a second
because my brain tried to call what I saw a stump.
It wasn't. There was a shape at the edge of
a narrow cluster of the whitest trunks.
Tall by a head, thin, no visible gear or bright color.
No face detail, nothing dramatic.
Just a vertical body that had no business fitting behind a trunk
that narrow. It didn't sway with anything
because the air in the stand was still.
It stood the way a person stands when they don't care if you see
them or not. We did basic Backcountry
training. You square up, you don't run,
you make yourself obvious. I didn't feel brave, I felt like
my stomach dropped 3 inches inside me the way it does when a
ladder shifts. I pulled the safety off the bear
spray. My partner lifted the headlamp
and rested a thumb on the air horn button.
I said on three and counted it. They hit the horn and pulsed the
lamp at the same time. The sound wasn't even that loud
out there. The light wasn't even that
strong under day sky. The shape moved left and forward
in the same instant. I don't have a better term for
it than a bad cut in a video. It broke line of sight behind a
trunk that shouldn't have covered a thing that size.
It didn't run. It didn't Crouch.
It changed positions in a way my eyes didn't track.
We didn't wait for more. We started the step count again.
I said the numbers out loud. My partner said them with me.
We kept the cord taut and moved the angle until we saw water
through gaps. Every fifty we stopped and
traded the spray so one of us could keep their hands free
without losing that tight feeling in the gut that says
don't be stupid. Once behind us, something
stepped in a shallow puddle and lifted out with no time gap,
like the sound had no distance, not a trickle, a step and an
immediate lift. The land opened before the light
did. Shoulder high grass, a line of
dark cobble, then a cut where the trunks broke and Fish Lake
showed itself blue, Gray and ruffled.
The temperature shift hit my face.
You know that clean, flat cold you get by open water near
evening? That I could taste it.
We walked straight for the road shoulder without looking back,
because looking back is how you fall.
We didn't run, but my thighs were shaking like I'd been on a
descent for too long. When we reached the asphalt
edge, I finally turned. The gap in the trees was exactly
that, a gap. No one stood there.
We didn't do anything dramatic at the car.
We unlocked it with hands that didn't want to work, got in and
shut the doors. I kept seeing the nested heel
prints in my head, the way they fit inside mine like they'd been
measured. I drove us back along SR25 and
didn't say much. My partner stared at their
knees. We slept at a motel that smelled
like laundry and lake mud, and we both woke up at 3 something
in the morning without alarms. I don't know why.
No sounds, no dreams. I can remember we just woke up
at exactly the same time and didn't want to talk.
The next morning we went to the Fish Lake office and told a
Ranger everything. We cut out the part where we
heard our own voices because I didn't feel like being treated
like I needed a brochure about getting turned around.
I still told him about the nested tracks, the shape behind
the narrow trunks, the cord, and the step count.
He said we could walk back in for a look while the light was
good. He didn't make it a big deal.
He didn't make it a joke either. I liked him for that.
I know those stands can mess with your sense of direction.
Every trunk looks like every other trunk.
The leaf carpet hides the small cues your feet are used to.
In daylight. The place felt smaller, and that
made me nervous in a different way.
We found our route easily. You could see where we'd tramped
leaves sideways in a straight lane at the edge of the damp
places. There were heel cups that were
definitely mine. Nested inside a few were deeper
impressions. Bare, not toes like you'd expect
from a person without boots. More like the front had wiped
smooth when it stepped in and out and the heel had sunk.
I don't know how else to say it. The Ranger crouched and looked
without telling us what to think.
We didn't find a camp. No wrappers, no fire ring,
nothing that says anyone had been staying in that draw.
Only traffic in and out and in and out might be too generous,
because the clearest marks were the ones that went where we'd
already walked. When we got to the narrow
cluster where we'd seen the shape, we found the trunk I'd
mentally measured against. It was slimmer than I
remembered. The bark had those black
freckles that Aspen get when they're older.
If someone my height had tried to vanish behind it, half of
them would still be showing. I stepped behind it on purpose
and told my partner to stand where they'd stood.
They shook their head. We didn't do that part.
We followed the draw to where the grass started and the lake
smell sharpened and the temperature felt the way it had
the evening before on the road shoulder.
The Ranger said people sometimes report getting stacked out here.
His word, not mine, meaning tracks that seem like they're on
top of each other when animals follow hikers.
He didn't call what we saw a prank.
He didn't call it a myth. He told us to keep each other
insight in those Groves when the light goes flat, and to remember
that open water is a good handrail when you're spooked.
We drove home the long way down through the valley where the
trees thin out and the sky looks big again.
My partner didn't open their notebook.
I didn't put my shoes on a second time for a cool down run.
We didn't talk until we were across the county line, and when
we did, it was about boring things on purpose.
That night my partner said they were going to hold off on any
solo scouting for a while. I joined a running group for the
rest of the fall and stayed on the busier side of town trails
where you always hear someone chatting or a stroller wheel
squeaking up ahead. I know what the Internet does
with a story like this. People are going to type out
that word skinwalker like it ends the conversation.
I don't know what we saw, I don't know who or what stepped
in my tracks with a longer stride and how a body moved two
ways in one beat without running.
I do know the stand felt wrong, not because it was cursed and
not because we were hearing things, but because it was
copying us, our steps inside our steps, our voices that weren't
ours coming from the wrong places.
If you want to file it under animals tracking hikers or under
a bad trick of nerves, I won't argue.
I'm the one who still ties a 10 foot length of paracord in my
pack and says the step count out loud when the trunks get close
together and the ground turns to gold.
That's the part I can report without trying to convince
anyone. We kept our rule, we stayed
together, and we made it to the road before dark.
That's the only ending I wanted. Read this before you decide on
one more quick loop above Jackson Gulch when the clouds
sit low and the park gate is almost due to close.
I'm not posting for drama. I'm posting because I still ride
Manco State Park all the time and I don't want anyone making
the same mistake we did. mid-october shoulder season.
First dusting of snow on the ground, campground half empty,
wind pushing a cold front across the water.
My cousin and I drove up from Durango to run laps while the
high country froze. We were on good trail bikes with
big 29 inch wheels and wide knobby tires.
No inner tubes. Since it was cold, I kept the
tire pressure low, about 23 PSI in the front and 26 in the back
for better grip. I had a bright headlamp that
could hit 400 lumens. My cousin only had a smaller
handlebar light and swore it was enough.
We rode the Jackson Gulch reservoir loop the usual way,
counterclockwise so you get a short climb and then a smooth
downhill straight back to camp. We finished a late pass on the
shoreline and we're back at the truck eating jerky when a small
ATV rolled by. Camp host, older guy, calm voice
friendly without being nosy. He pointed at the posted hours
and said gates locked at 10, Cats are active at dusk, you 2
be back before then. He asked about our lights,
nodded when I told him the lumen number and idled away.
We looked at the sky, looked at each other and said the line
that comes before most bad ideas, 10 minutes.
Instead of the easy shoreline, my cousin said we should climb
the spur that pulls away from the reservoir toward the Manco
Spur junction, drop the switchbacks and be at camp in
five. He said it sounded right.
The first snow sat in the shade of the evergreens, like flower
dust. We climbed steady, spinning,
quiet, each breath visible. I marked a glove print in the
thin snow at a junction so we'd know the spot on the way down.
Everything felt normal until we heard the dog.
It wasn't bark or growl. It was a thin, strained wine
from up trail, the kind that gets you to say hey, buddy.
Without thinking, we stopped, called out.
No answer, no human voice. We rolled forward anyway, just a
few yards. The line we took was a side cut.
We don't usually ride narrow between spruce, enough snow to
see tracks. There were our tires, our boots,
and then nothing else. No pads, no claws, no prints
from a dog of any size. The wine came again.
This time it came from behind us.
We turned lamps, searching. My cousin's light drew a weak
Oval. Mine punched a hard circle down
trail. In that circle stood a tall
figure behind a screen of spruce, Not walking toward us,
not turned away either. The body was angled a little,
like someone trying to aim an ear at a sound.
The height made my brain put it in the adult human category.
The posture made my stomach do something I won't bother
describing. I said.
You OK? The figure didn't answer.
From that direction, with the same breathy tone as before,
came the dog sound. My cousin muttered it like he
had to get it out once to make it smaller.
Skinwalker. The word didn't help either of
us. I swept my lamp along the
ground. If a dog had been moving with
that sound, the first dusting would have taken an imprint
somewhere. Instead, we saw long, lazy
scuffs that could have been heel drags or a stick pulled through.
I said we're dropping. He nodded right away.
Fastest way home is gravity switchbacks to the reservoir.
Reservoir to campground Rd. road to gate.
Truck done. We counted the hairpins out
loud. 2 to the first tight 1/4 to the lake, maybe 6 minutes to
the campground if we didn't get dumb.
We clicked in. I kicked the spot to full and
rolled the dirt under. The snow was slick in a way only
October can manage. The first two switchbacks forced
me to stay loose or go over the bars.
My cousin rode the brakes and skidded.
The only sounds I had were chain breath tires on wet clay.
The trees to my right stayed dark and close.
I didn't see another headlamp. I didn't hear normal trail noise
from anything else, but something kept level with me
through the timber. If you ride enough, you know the
sound of weight moving fast. This wasn't that.
This was the absence of the usual mess of footfalls where
footfalls should have been. At a left hand hairpin my cousin
slid out, The bike went sideways and his shoulder hit dirt with
the kind of thump that puts you on one knee.
Without asking I threw my bike down, grabbed his bar and forced
it back straight. The rotor had a small wobble.
He had blood on his lip. I was saying the usual checklist
you good elbow, good wiggle fingers when a voice behind us
said need a hand. It was the camp hosts tone, not
a match in pitch, but the same calm as if you were right there
with the ATV idling. We spun our lights.
Nothing on the bench above, no ATV, no radio.
My lamp caught fresh marks in the snow on the slope, a shallow
dragline that stopped at a tree well and didn't come back out
the way it went in. My cousin swore I said we're
walking The next two turns. We did.
On the straights. We got back on the pedals.
The dog sound came again, Not long this time, just two short
yips placed like points on a map.
When the shoreline came into view, both of us found another
10% we didn't know we had. We cut one last switch back and
went straight down a slope, both bikes rattling in a way that
would make any mechanic sigh. I didn't care.
Gravel hit my calves. We hit the reservoir trail and
ran it toward camp. Lamps hot and the world squeezed
down to two moving cones. We hit the campground road and
sprinted. My cousin kept saying, almost
there, like that would change anything.
The wind pushed at us in gusts you could lean into.
The entrance appeared ahead. The gate was a black crossbar
chain in place, locked for the night.
Our truck sat 20 or 30 yards beyond.
A good stupid reminder. We coasted to the bar and stood
there with our mouths open like we had forgotten the host's
warning from 15 minutes earlier. The road shoulder on our side
sloped down to a drainage. That was when I remembered the
culvert. Big corrugated metal tube under
the entrance Rd. We dropped the bikes and slid
down the bank on our sides. I went first.
The corrugations pulled on my sleeves and forearms.
The smell was wet dirt and old iron.
We belly crawled, helmets scraping, lamps blasting the
circle ahead. Above the culvert, something
crossed the road. Steps soft and slow, no rush.
A flat palm hit the metal overhead one time, a full hand.
The culvert turned it into a single huge boom that traveled
the length of the pipe. My cousin's teeth clicked
together. He put his hand over his own
mouth without me telling him to. We waited another step.
No breath sounds, no shift of gravel, just the knowledge that
on the other side of the few inches of steel was a lot of
mass that didn't line up with the amount of noise it made.
An engine approached, not a car. The smaller putter of the ATV,
the host, killed it before the culvert and called out.
Stay put. Not a question, not a
suggestion. The steps above us moved off
over gravel toward trees. I leaned to the side and could
see through the circle of light to the far mouth.
Something passed through the edge of the lamp range.
The way it moved is what I remember.
All the speed you'd expect, none of the ground noise you'd expect
with it. The host's boots appeared at the
mouth. He crouched and asked if we were
hurt. I said, heard the gate earlier.
We were dumb. He nodded once, like he'd heard
that sentence 100 times. We backed out of the pipe, stood
and shook like dogs coming out of a lake.
He unhooked the chain, rolled the gate and told us to load the
bikes into his small utility bed.
He radioed while we stood there, trying to decide whether to
laugh or throw up. He didn't describe it as
anything dramatic. He said possible human prowler.
I'm with them. He drove us to a site near his
trailer and told us we were staying there for the night.
He had us run through what we'd seen, like he was taking notes
in his head. He didn't call us crazy.
He didn't try to explain it. He just listened and kept one
ear on the road. A Montezuma County deputy rolled
in later, young guy squared away.
He didn't joke. He didn't treat it like a
campfire story. He asked to see where we came
out. We walked the shoulder lamps on
low now, and he crouched at the culvert mouth like the host had.
He put his hand by the mud and said, you see this?
It looked like a barefoot impression, not a perfect one
with toes and arches, but the length and the heel were there.
It sat exactly over a boot print mine, heel to toe, same angle,
same stride, like someone had stepped inside my step and kept
going. The deputy didn't try to make it
anything else. He took a photo with his work
phone, told us to stick close to the host for the night and said
he'd drive the Park Rd. once before heading out.
He did. We watched his tail lights go to
the gate and vanish. We didn't sleep much.
Most made the kind of small talk that keeps you from replaying
too much. How long he's been posted there,
how often the wind cuts down off the Mesa, which sites flood in
spring. When he excused himself to walk
his flashlight by the bathhouse, I noticed his hands big, with a
small scar across the palm. The voice we heard on the hill
had tried to put on his calm. It didn't get the weight of it.
Morning made everything small again.
We rolled to Cortez, got my cousin's stitches for his lip,
and drove home. A week later we mailed the host
a thank you card with a small gift card tucked inside.
He had saved us from having to climb that gate with something
waiting. If you need a label, go ahead
and use one. I don't care what you call it.
What matters is how it acted and how we acted back.
It used a dog sound to pull us off the line.
We ride every time. It used a familiar voice in a
place where that voice shouldn't have been.
It moved with speed and mass, but left out parts of the normal
noise. It tried to match our steps.
Here's what I'll tell you. If you ride there in shoulder
season and someone in your group says 10 minutes at dusk.
Don't chase a sound that doesn't leave tracks in new snow.
Don't trust a known voice unless the person's body is attached to
it. Count your minutes against the
gate posted hours like it's not a suggestion.
Know where the culvert is before you need it.
Keep your lamp bright and your plan simple.
We still ride Mankos. We still do laps around Jackson
Gulch. We just don't start a loop when
the light is going. We don't step off our script for
a sound that can't prove itself. And when the wind comes down the
reservoir and moves the grass in the same steady line it always
does, we leave it at that and go home before the lock slides into
place. I'm not new to the Horton Creek
Trail. It's a clean path with real
traffic, families, dogs, people and trail runners who say hi and
move on. That's why my best friend and I
picked it for a late October out and back.
Bright days, cold nights, maples gone red along the water,
travertine shelves stepping the Creek up toward the spring.
We planned it like adults. We parked at the lot by Kohl's
Ranch off State Route 260, read the rules at the kiosk, signed
the voluntary sheet with our first names and plate, and I
even had a photocopied map from the Ranger station.
The plan was simple. Hike upstream, turn before dark,
cook early and camp at a legal dispersed spot well back from
the Creek using an old fire ring.
We did everything by the book. It still went sideways.
The trail runs close to the water for long stretches.
You hear the steady flow over the ledges and see spray hanging
near the drop offs. The air gets colder as you gain.
We kept a steady pace and talked about food and home stuff.
A man passed us on his way down sometime after lunch.
He looks 60 or so, wearing a bright orange hat and a canvas
jacket with a stick in his hand. He said he was heading back to
his truck before it got cold. The way he said it was nothing
special, normal trail, small talk and we stepped aside to let
him by. That detail matters later.
We turned short of Horton Spring to make sure we could cook with
light. Our camp followed the posted
rules. More than 200 feet from the
Creek. Old rock ring, shovel and water
handy. No trash on the ground.
Dinner was basic ramen, tuna, tea.
I had a can of bear spray clipped on my belt because
habits and we kept the fire low. Leaves had piled up on the Duff
around us and the ground was damp from mist drifting off the
water. You could feel the temperature
drop with the sun. It wasn't dramatic.
It was fall doing what fall does.
Dark came fast. We sat by the coals talking
about whether to go look at stars from the main trail when
footsteps came up from the direction of the water and
stopped at the edge of the firelight.
A man's voice said, Mind if I warm my hands?
My brain said it was the orange hat guy from earlier.
The problem was the details. The cap brim looked stiff, the
kind of new that still has a Sheen.
His boots didn't have the wet look everyone got near the Creek
that day. No damp shine, no silt, no stuck
leaf. He stayed right outside the
clear circle of light where faces go flat.
No normal move closer to the heat, no shuffle, no rubbing
hands together. Yeah, sure, I said, standing
more out of manners than anything.
We're about to douse it. He didn't move.
He said the exact same sentence again, same cadence, like a
recording. Mind if I warm my hands?
That's where the feeling turned. It wasn't a jump scare.
It was a simple fact, not lining up with a simple situation.
My friend stood too. He gave me a look like, let's
not make this a thing, but let's not be dumb either.
We went into task mode. Pack the stove, Stow the pot,
coil the food line. I kept the spray can in my hand.
With the safety still on, my friend angled his headlamp
toward the ground so we didn't blind ourselves up close.
The ring told its own story. Our tracks from the afternoon
were clear in the leaf dust and damp soil.
There should have been fresh scuffs where he was standing.
I didn't see any. We're going to grab more water
to drown this, I said, pointing at the pot as if that explained
everything. He didn't answer.
He just stood there at the same distance, like the light from
the coals was a line he wouldn't cross.
That's when he said my first name, then my friend's first
name. He said them like he was reading
them off a wristband. We hadn't offered names at the
lot. We hadn't introduced ourselves
on trail. The only place we wrote them was
the sign in sheet, and that was at the kiosk by the cars, not
out here in the dark. We killed the fire the way the
sign said to drown, stir, drown until it was mud.
Steam rose for a second and faded.
The night didn't change. The sound of the Creek stayed
the same as it had been all day. Nothing dramatic happened.
We picked up our packs and I said we'll get more water.
Like we weren't already done. We back toward the Creek with
our headlamps down. He held his ground just outside
the circle. We chose a shallow crossing with
wide, flat stones we'd scouted earlier.
Algae made them slick, so we moved slow.
The water was cold and clear around our ankles.
It had the usual sound you get at that depth.
Steady, low, halfway across. I looked back.
Something stepped off the bank where our ring had been and
moved into the water behind us. No splash.
The surface changed around it, but the normal sound you expect
from a foot in water didn't happen.
It was like the Creek adjusted, but the noise didn't catch up.
People say not to say this word here.
My friend said low and even, eyes on the far bank.
They say a skinwalker can show up like a copy.
We reach the other side, climb the slick dirt and cut upstream
fast with the water between US and the camp.
The Creek narrows before a small fall and the banks squeeze you
into a ledge. It's the kind of spot hikers
remember because it's pretty and because you have to pay
attention to your feet. That squeeze turned into a
funnel. We ended up on a wet shelf with
the fall in front of us and a short wall to our backs.
We could move along it, but it forced us close to the water.
Our headlamps hit a hat brim in the stream.
The shape under it didn't match how a person moves in ankle deep
water. It didn't wade in a steady line.
It closed the gap in two or three hard clipped jumps, like
it was yanked closer between still shots.
I snapped the safety off the bear spray and fanned a wide arc
low across the waterline and up at chest height.
The mist hung in front of us and drifted.
There was a harsh intake, the kind of sound you hear when
someone inhales the wrong stuff, followed by a cough, then a
laugh that matched a joke I told earlier by the coals.
Same rhythm, same length, same little breath at the end but off
by a beat, like someone who had heard it once and was playing it
back from memory. That was the brake we needed.
We didn't argue with it. We didn't test it.
We moved hands and knees along the ledge, up the crumbly dirt
to the trail, and then we ran. We didn't say a word.
We hit the log you have to step over, then the small footbridge
and then the gravel path. That means the lot is close.
The lights by the kiosk showed through the trees.
A couple was loading a black pickup.
They saw two people come out of the dark hard and straight and
kept their hands visible. The guy asked you good, We said
please call HeLa County and gave our location in a short
description. Adult male voice, orange hat,
wrong details. They stayed with us, no
questions, no speeches, just a truck and two people who knew
when not to make it complicated. A deputy rolled up a few minutes
later. He took our statement the way
someone takes a statement a lot. Names, plates, what we saw, what
we did. He looked at the spray can like
he'd seen it before, asked if we'd been drinking no, and
shined a light down the road toward the trail for a minute
before telling us to go into town.
He said he'd patrol the area. We checked into a motel with bad
carpet and slept like people who'd been running.
In the morning. My phone rang.
It was the deputy. He said a solo hiker matching
the orange hat description had signed out at a different
trailhead near Christopher Creek around 5:00 in the afternoon.
He had a time stamped grocery receipt in Payson not long after
that. That man, the one we said hello
to on the way up, had been in town by dark.
He wasn't standing at our ring asking the same sentence twice.
He couldn't have been. We went back to the lot in full
daylight to pull our plates off the voluntary sheet and make
sure we hadn't left anything dumb at the ring.
The old rocks were still there, wet and dark from where we
drown, stir, drown. There were our scuffs and heel
marks. There were the slide downs from
where we'd left in a hurry. There weren't fresh prints in
the place where he'd stood. I mounted the empty spray can in
a little shadow box by my front door.
It isn't a trophy. It's a reminder.
We still hike Horton Creek, but only in crowds, in daylight,
with snacks at the car and no fire.
If someone stands at the edge of your light and uses the exact
same sentence with the exact same tone, don't invite it
closer. Don't try to fix the parts that
don't add up. Make the water your barrier.
Keep your eyes open for the spots where the trail pinches.
You know where the falls are. Know where the bridges are.
If you feel like you're being tested on simple things,
distance, names, the look of a hat, assume the test is real.
People will tell you the word for it.
I'm telling you the procedure. Read the rules.
Use old rings. Drown your coals until they turn
to mud. Keep your spray where you can
reach it. If your brain says a detail is
wrong, listen to it. Leave clean, leave fast.
Leave your pride behind. Horton Creek is pretty and the
trail is kind. That doesn't matter.
The knight doesn't owe you anything, and not every voice
asking for your fire is attached to a person who walked there the
usual way.