I'd hiked Old Rag twice with friends and wanted to try it
alone on a weekday before the leaf peepers clogged the road.
Late October, forecast said patchy fog, light wind, low 40s
Fahrenheit. I parked at Berry Hollow before
sunrise because the day use tickets keep the crowds thinner
from that side and I like the quiet walk in on the Fire Rd.
The lot was mostly empty. Two spaces over sat a Gray
Subaru with out of state plates and a reflective sun shade
tucked up behind the windshield. The Appalachian Mountains sit
heavy and reel around there. Oak and Maple slopes, granite
slabs, switchbacks that punish your calves.
I packed a small kit, gloves, hat, headlamp, a whistle, a
cheap paper map with the Ridge Trail and Saddle Trail loop
sketched in pencil. I signed the trail register with
the time, locked the car, and started up under a dull sky that
should have been getting lighter.
Fog moved in before the first real climb.
It didn't swirl or do anything dramatic, it just reduced
everything to what was in front of my legs.
My trekking poles clicked against rock, but even that
sounded closer than normal, like the air was stuffed with
insulation. A few minutes later I heard my
name. My full name, not shouted, more
like a phone held out on speaker mode.
The tone was flat and thin, and it came from just below the
trail on my left. I stopped, thinking the Subaru
driver had caught up and was playing around, or maybe someone
had pulled a prank. Hello.
I said nothing. Then the same voice again.
Same distance. Are you up there?
Different voice the third time. Same words, same cheap tinny
sound. I stepped off the trail a couple
of yards, found a little alcove behind a boulder and there it
was. A palm sized Bluetooth speaker
wedged under a knit cap. It was looping 2 lines.
My name and are you up there in different voices?
I turned it off and slid it where I'd remember, under a flat
stone. I marked a small X on my paper
map with the time. I didn't love it, but it didn't
feel like an emergency yet. I switched my phone to airplane
mode to save the charge and kept moving, telling myself I'd hand
the speaker to a Ranger on the way out.
The fog got thicker near the first tight rock slots.
If you've done Old Rag, you know those narrow gaps where you pull
with your hands and brace your hips.
I'm not tall, so I go slow and use three points of contact.
Somewhere ahead I heard boot scuffs and the soft rush of
breath you get when somebody's right around the turn ahead of
you. The sound stopped when I rounded
the corner. The trail was empty.
Under a low ledge, another tiny speaker sat on a strip of
adhesive, playing exactly those scuffs and a quick exhale.
I shut that one off too, and dropped a second X on the map.
At that point, my stomach knew what my brain hadn't admitted.
This was set up. Not one weird device lost by a
teenager. A line of little sound bites
planted at blind corners. A2 note whistle cut across the
rocks, it sounded like it came from uphill.
Then half a breath later, the same 2 notes to my right.
Not a person relocating. Two sources, same pattern,
slightly out of sync. It's exactly the sort of thing
you would follow if you were tired and grateful to no other
hikers were near. The fog made the blazes hard to
spot on the granite and my head started to want help.
Any help? I forced myself to slow down.
Blue paint on rock, hand on rock.
No rushing. A few minutes later, I found a
trail arrow on a post turned 90°.
Fresh mud caked around the screws.
The arrow pointed to a faint path that sloped out to a flat
lip where brush thinned the real line.
The tiny flecks of blue on the stone continued straight, but
you had to look for it. I stepped a yard or two down the
fake path to check past the lip. There was only open air, not a
big dramatic Cliff, just a clean drop to broken blocks, a story
below. If you stepped into that in low
light or panicked at the wrong second, it would be bad.
I backed up and put the flat of my hand on the post.
The mud smear had the shape of a palm.
That was the first moment I saw the person through the fog.
Ahead on the proper trail, a flash of orange cut across a gap
between two boulders. Shoulder hood, the back of a
head, then gone. Not a shadow, a person avoiding
being seen. I called out that I could see
them and that I was turning around.
No reply. The two note whistle came again,
farther away this time, like a tug on a string asking me to
keep going. I didn't.
I started counting steps between blazes when I hit a blue paint
mark. I said the number out loud and
touched the rock so I couldn't lie to myself about what I was
following. On a small flat, I took the
pencil and wrote on my map. Arrow turned drop beyond lip.
Orange jacket near outcrop. Another device played faint
radio chatter at the next bend. It was mixed just enough to
sound like park staff using handhelds somewhere ahead.
My brain wanted that to be true so badly that my hand went to
the volume before my eyes found the little grill taped in
shadow. I turned it off and lodged it in
a place I could show later. My shoulders were tight from
trying to make the world match what I wanted.
That's the worst part about fog. It doesn't lie.
It gives you half the truth and lets you do the rest.
I chose not to try to pass the person.
It wasn't brave. I just didn't like the idea of
walking into more blind spots while someone with a plan
controlled where the sounds came from.
In a waist deep slit between rocks, I slid down and wedged my
back against the cold. I stayed still and faced the
slot mouth. My breath sounded like fabric
moving against fabric. 10 minutes is a long time to sit
with your own pulse when you can't see 10 yards.
Somewhere above me, footsteps tapped granite.
They weren't heavy. The person paused at the mouth
of the slot for a second. A sleeve of bright orange came
into view and stopped. No words, no movement.
I could call a shrug or a shift. Just that pause while they
listened. I kept my eyes on the ground so
I wouldn't give away the glare you get when your pupils are
wide. After a couple of long beats,
the steps faded N along the Ridge.
When I climbed out, I didn't continue toward the summit.
I reversed to the last blaze I was sure of, checked my map
against the terrain, and chose the saddle trail toward Bird's
Nest Shelter. I wasn't going to make the loop
I'd planned. I wanted a wide tread and fewer
gymnastics going down. I passed two more little
speakers. One played a quick hay in a
neutral male voice. The other played a single bark
and then a scrape like a trekking pole against a rock.
I shut both off with the tip of my pole and slipped them under
flat stones where they'd be easy to retrieve.
Birds Nest Shelter felt like a real place in a morning that had
gone thin and unreal. The roof was slick with
moisture. The inside smelled like wet wool
and wood. There were benches, a sign board
and the junction sign for the fire Rd.
I picked up a fist sized rock and carried it in my left hand
as I left, not to swing, just to make it clear to whoever was
playing with me that I understood this was a person
problem, not a trail problem. The fire Rd. gave me with and a
line I could trust without reading every paint mark.
The fog thinned as I lost elevation.
The sound of water in the ditches came back.
A woodpecker hammered somewhere off to the side and didn't sound
like anything else. I didn't hear the two note
whistle again at the lot. The Gray Subaru was gone.
There were tire marks on the wet gravel that didn't match mine.
I bent to check under my bumper before I unlocked the car.
A flat, cheap speaker had been taped to a small magnet and
stuck to the frame. It was running a low, nearly
inaudible loop, like it had been turned down to make sure it
didn't draw attention unless you were looking for it.
I pulled it off, killed the power, and put it with the
others in my pack. I didn't wait around to see if
anyone else came back. I drove straight out to the
Thornton Gap entrance station on US 211.
The Ranger on duty took me seriously.
As soon as I set the speakers and my map on the counter.
I had little X Marks and times next to each one.
I described the turned arrow, the fresh mud on the screws, and
the bright orange jacket. I told him exactly where the
fake path dropped off. He radioed maintenance and law
enforcement. Another Ranger photographed the
devices and asked if I'd moved anything besides turning them
off. I gave a straight description in
my contact info. It wasn't dramatic.
The most useful thing I did all day was write down times. 2
weeks later I got an e-mail they'd had staff on before dawn
during similar conditions and contacted a man near Berry
Hollow with a day pack full of the same model speakers, a
pocket screwdriver, tape, and an orange range shell rolled up in
a side pocket. He ran a small local channel and
had been staging You won't believe what I heard on old rag
clips by planting sounds and nudging people toward fake
lines. They didn't list everything they
charged him with, but creating a hazardous condition and
tampering with signs were in the message.
The crew reset the arrow and touched up a marginal blaze near
the slab where I'd nearly followed that faint line to the
lip. I went back the following
Saturday with two friends because leaving it there in my
head felt unfinished. Clear day, blue sky views open
in every direction. We took our time through the
slots and I pointed out the places where the sounds had
been. Without the fog, it was obvious
where the real line went. The slab showed scuffs in a way
that made sense. A lot of people were out and
every voice sounded like a voice, not a recording.
We got a quick glance at the shoulder of Hawksbill through
the gap and ate a bar on a dry rock.
On the drive home I folded my map along new creases and looked
at my notes. The little XS sat closer to that
drop than I wanted to admit. If I had been more tired or less
cautious, it would have taken 1 bad step to make a stupid story
into a fatal 1. The part that sticks with me is
how ordinary the tools were. Cheap electronics, a turned
arrow, a jacket bright enough to be seen and still hidden by
timing. No ghost, no mystery, just
someone who understood how people move when they think help
is just around the bend. I won't solo old rag and fog
again. If I hear my name in that flat,
tinny way out there, I'll turn around, mark the spot, and
report it. This isn't a warning about
wilderness creatures or anything like that.
It's about the gap between what you want to be true and what the
blue paint on the rock actually says.
In the Appalachian Mountains, you can do almost everything
right and still get pulled toward a bad line if you're not
paying attention. The fix is boring.
Slow down, verify, and tell someone who can do something
about it. The park fixed the post, The guy
is facing charges. I'm fine.
That's the whole story. If you ever kayak camp on
Fontana Lake in June, hear me out.
I grew up in western North Carolina.
I know the pull and drop of Fontana Dam, the dull green
coves, the way the air hangs heavy at night.
My cousin and I had a routine for bug season.
Paddle after sunset with headlamps off so the gnats
didn't swarm our faces, land on a narrow strip of shore, sleep a
few hours and slide back out before sunrise.
We kept it simple. Two small tents, 2 sit inside
boats, no campfire, no music. This wasn't a stunt.
It was just a quiet night in the Appalachian Mountains opposite
the Lakeshore trail, where you can see the dark line of forest
and the pale band of old road cuts when the moon is high.
We didn't see anything strung across that Cove when we landed.
If there had been, our bows would have tapped it.
We came in on a three quarter moon.
The water was glassy and the heat held on your skin like a
wet shirt. We drifted the last 200 yards
with blades resting on the decks and let the hulls slide onto a
pocket of gravel. There was room for both boats in
two tents and not much more, just a stump at the back edge
and a tangle of Laurel and rhododendron behind it.
We hauled the kayaks above the wet line, pitched quick, ate
from bags and talked in low voices about pushing off.
At 4:30, the nearest lights were far West, toward Fontana Marina.
In the distance we heard an outboard idle.
Settle idle again. Night fishing, we figured.
On the gravel near the stump, I noticed a piece of monofilament
and a fresh fish scale. I shrugged.
Lots of anglers use these pockets.
Around midnight, I stepped down to the lake to rinse a mug.
The Cove was a shadow cut into darker shadows.
The moon laid a path over the open water and stopped at our
pocket like a dull knife edge. That was when I saw it.
A narrow, bright cable stretched across the mouth of our Cove,
just above the surface, tight from the stump by our tents to a
snag on the opposite bank. It wasn't there when we landed.
I know, because we guided our bows straight through that
opening. In the shallow ripples at the
edge. I could hear it hum, not like a
sound in the air, but like a faint vibration against water.
I followed it with my eyes and my stomach went cold as I
counted where my chest would hit if I tried to paddle out under
it. I crouched by the stump and
found a tarp covered box tucked into brush.
Under it were wire spools, swivels, clips, a bottle of fish
scent oil, and a board with measured Marks and black
sharpie. Our sandal prints in the damp
gravel had been stepped over by wide soled boots.
Whoever set that line came in after we pitched, moved around
the very spot where I was kneeling, and worked quiet
enough that we never heard them over the tree frogs, out past
the mouth. The outboard we'd heard earlier
had gone silent. No engine note, no running
lights, just the soft dip of something keeping position, then
coasting. A narrow beam swept once across
the Cove from the direction of the main channel.
Quick probing and gone. Not a headlamp flicker, more
like a handheld flashlight used with discipline.
I eased back from the water and told my cousin without raising
my voice. He looked past me and saw the
cable too. We didn't argue about it.
We both reached for our multi tools, planning to cut it quick
and slide out before whoever said it could drift back.
I touched the cable and felt it bite against the blade before I
pressed down. That was when a Pebble snapped
past my ear and ticked off the rock behind me.
It wasn't a blind throw, it was aimed to pass close and worn.
I froze with the blade half open.
Out at the mouth there was a small metallic ping followed by
a soft scrape. A second line came up from the
water, lower than the first, just inches above the surface,
drawn tight and tied off to the opposite bank.
In the moonlight it barely showed, but when a small wavelet
ran through the gap it flashed and then vanished.
Now there were two lines across the only clean water exit, one
at throat height for a paddler and 1 low enough to catch a bow
and flip a boat. We backed away as slowly as we
could, knees loose, keeping our heads below the stump line so we
weren't silhouettes. I don't scare easy on that lake,
but I know when I'm being handled.
The box, the fresh tracks over ours, the timed sweep, the
warning Pebble, none of it was random.
This wasn't a prank, it was a gate.
I pictured blasting out at 4:30 with headlamps off like we
planned and hitting metal across my chest before I ever saw it.
I pictured A flipped boat, a mouthful of hooks on leaders,
someone drifting close at oar speed and not saying a word.
We didn't debate any longer. We needed another exit behind
our tents. The ground rose in a short back
Ridge. I remembered a shallow slow on
the paddle in just a shadow of water tucked behind a point.
It wasn't much, but if we could get both boats up and over, we
could hand paddle that muddy finger and slip around the point
out of sight from the Cove mouth.
We stripped weight fast, dry bags to our backs, food bags
slung, water bladders clipped. We kept the tent staked to avoid
fabric noise. We turned the boats stern first
and started the carry, one of us lifting the stern while the
other pulled the bow line 10 yards at a time.
Every scrape sounded like an alarm, plastic on bark, hull on
deadfall. The Ridge was only 60 or 80
yards, but it was tight and rooty.
We stopped each time we made a bad noise and waited, breathing
slow through our noses. Once the same narrow beam swept
the pocket we just left. It cut across the stump, blinked
out, then was still. Another Pebble came in weak and
low and landed nowhere near us. It wasn't meant to hit, it was
meant to let us know. A set of hands was still out
there and not far at the Crest. We slid the boats down the
leaves until mud swallowed our ankles.
The Slough was shallow enough that the paddles were more
trouble than help. We climbed in, lay flat and
moved by hands at the gunnels, pulling along dead limbs and
root balls, letting the holes drift when they wanted to.
Once a hook on a loose leader snagged a deck cord and I felt
the pinch through my palm. I flicked it free, kept it in my
fingers without closing my fist, and let it fall back where it
had come from. The only sounds were quiet
water, the breathing we couldn't stop, and something bumping the
far side of the point where our original pocket opened.
A dull touch, not a crash. We hugged mud and shadow until
the Slough widened, then we angled around the point at a
line that kept brush between US and the Cove mouth.
When the main water opened, we crossed to the Lakeshore trail
side, keeping low, taking short strokes and breaking our cadence
Whenever we felt exposed. We found a blow down with a
trunk big enough to hide both boats, slid the kayaks under it,
flipped them to dull the color, coiled leashes, and scuffed the
ground with our heels to break the line of fresh prints.
We didn't use bright lights. We clicked our headlamps to the
lowest setting and found the faint path that parallels the
water that becomes the Lakeshore trail proper if you follow the
blazes and old road cuts. We turned E toward the dam and
moved at the kind of pace you use when you need distance but
can't risk clatter if you've never walked that stretch at
night. It's honest dirt roots, the
occasional old cut where you can feel the grade under your shoes.
We counted bends and broken signs.
We kept conversation to quick numbers and the names of
features we recognized. Nothing extra.
Somewhere behind us, the lake stayed quiet.
No engine turned over, no voices called out.
That was almost worse. We made the road spur near first
light and stepped out onto the access near Fontana Dam.
While the eastern sky went pale, a man with a pickup was loading
rods. He watched us for a second, the
clothes, the mud, the way we kept looking behind us, and then
said he could take us the short drive to the visitor center.
At the Fontana Dam Visitor Center, we told the Ranger the
whole thing where we landed. The first line, the second line,
the box, the Pebble, the beam, the Portage, the stash.
He didn't roll his eyes. He picked up a phone.
In less than an hour, a boat was launching from near the Marina,
with a park Ranger at the bow and two officers from the North
Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission beside him.
Someone from TVA police would meet them at the Cove because
it's their water too. We rode with another Ranger to
an overlook to point out the pocket from above.
I kept thinking about that lower line you'd never see until it
found your bow. Later that morning they called
us back into the office to go through what they pulled under
the tarp at our landing. Wire spools, clips, swivels, a
bottle of anise, heavy scent oil, a marked board for measured
drops in the brush. 2 fresh steaks.
A bundle of leaders with barbed hooks tied at set intervals in a
shrub thicket. A John boat tucked tight with an
electric trolling motor inside. Life jackets and a dry box.
No registration stickers. On the whole, they bagged every
piece. They photographed our pocket.
They measured the line height at the mouth and wrote it down.
One week later, a wildlife officer called. 2 local men were
cited for illegal devices and obstruction.
The short version? They were rigging lines across a
navigable Cove to control it at night while they tended baited
gear. The plan was simple.
Keep nighttime paddlers from crossing their water by
installing a barrier that would stop or flip a boat in the dark.
Our timing was the mistake they didn't plan for.
We came in early, then saw them finish the gate.
They didn't want to fight, they wanted control.
A Pebble near an ear can say plenty.
We got our kayaks back a few days after that.
Both hulls had new scars from the carry and a sticker from
evidence that I left on as a reminder.
We drove back to the blow down in daylight with a Ranger
escort, slid the boats out and took them home.
I added a folding saw to my dry bag that night and a short coil
of cord I can throw over any suspect line so I can pull it
without standing in front of it. I report every strange rig I see
now, even if it's just a loop of cord in the wrong place.
I don't assume a quiet Cove is safe because no sound is coming
out of it. If you read this and think it's
just fishing drama, I hope you're right.
I also hope you never feel a cable hum under your hand in the
dark. This was the scariest night I've
had on the water, and nothing about it involved a ghost.
It was two men, wire stretched at chest height and the kind of
patience that keeps a beam tight and short.
If you paddle at night on Fontana or any mountain lake,
scan the mouth of every pocket in moonlight and don't drift
blind where you can't see both banks.
The Appalachian Mountains hold a lot of stories.
This one ends clean because we backed out and talked to the
right people in daylight. Keep your head down, keep your
gear simple, and if you sense the shape of a gate across the
water, trust it and go around. I've backpacked a lot of the
central Appalachian Mountains and I'm not new to being alone
out there. Dolly Sods has always felt like
a cheat code for Big Sky Open heath, blueberry flats and
scattered pockets of red spruce where you can tuck a tent out of
the wind and still see half the stars in West Virginia.
Early September showed two nights of clear weather on the
forecast, so I planned a simple loop.
Park at Bare Rocks off Forest Rd. 75.
Take Bare Rocks, trail down to Raven Ridge, cut over toward
Dobbin grade, circle back. I texted a buddy my plan and
told him I'd drop a pin from camp each evening.
Nothing hero level. I packed light left after lunch
and told myself I'd go slow and treat it like a star tour.
The first afternoon was a postcard.
A steady breeze, long views, easy tread if you haven't been
out there. The trails run through knee high
shrubs and grass with Little Rock slabs that click under your
boots. I passed a couple with trekking
umbrellas on their way out and then didn't see anyone else.
I reached Raven Ridge with plenty of daylight, found a spot
behind a waist high clump of spruce, and set my tent maybe
100 feet off the trail so I wouldn't be obvious.
I hung my food, filtered a leader from a slow seep, ate,
and lay back to watch the Sky Go purple.
When the moon came up, the ground lit enough that I didn't
need my headlamp for anything. It was quiet enough to hear
distant water, which I took to be Red Creek.
I sent my Camped at Raven Ridge text while I still had a bar,
then put my phone on airplane mode to save juice.
I was just dozing when a thin green dot slid along the grass
outside my vestibule, like someone tracing a line with a
pen. It climbed my tent wall, held
for two seconds on the fabric, then clicked off.
No drift, no pulse. Not a lightning bug, I told
myself. Somebody out there was just
messing around with a cheap pointer.
I waited. Maybe a minute later it came
again from a slightly different angle.
It skimmed the ground, touched the tip of my trekking pole
where it supported the fly, and held there as if someone was
trying to gauge distance. I can't explain why, but that
part bothered me more than the fact there was a light.
It felt like a measurement. I slid my hand up and killed my
headlamp, even though it wasn't on habit.
I unzipped the door a few inches and eased out on my belly,
leaving the zipper mostly shut so the tent kept its shape.
The moon gave me all the light I needed.
I crawled into the blueberry so slowly I could hear the stems
brush my sleeves. 20 breaths, stop, listen.
The air smelled like dry grass and resin from the spruce.
I heard one quiet scuff on the tread where people normally
walk. An actual heel sound, not a
deer. Then a tiny red glow flared once
at knee height across the trail and disappeared.
Not high enough to be a cigarette in someone's mouth
unless they were crouched. It looked more like a little
indicator light cupped in a hand and then covered.
The green dot wandered back into view and crept along the ground
near my tent like it was outlining the footprint.
I waited for a sound that matched it and got a noise I
still hear in my head. A soft little chuff of air and a
flat whap into the brush inches from my knee.
Not a gunshot, No crack, no recoil echo.
Having messed with pellet rifles as a kid, the sound made sense.
Compressed air and a smack into foliage.
I didn't move. Another soft whistle came from
the right, answered a moment later from the left.
Not bird chatter, it had a human cadence, like someone checking
in with someone else. Decision time.
I pulled my phone out and with my hand under my jacket to block
the glow, fired off a pin drop to my buddy and typed.
Moving away from camp now. If no text by dawn, call it in.
Then I put the phone back in airplane mode, slid my pack
under the lowest part of the spruce screen, and pulled out a
bottle, my map, an emergency bivvy, and a windbreaker.
I wasn't taking the trail. Whoever was out there knew the
tread, and the green line was showing up where I would
naturally walk. I started moving diagonally down
slope toward the faintest trickle of water I could hear.
The idea was simple. Water makes noise, and it's
easier to hide under spruce than in a heath flat.
I kept the moon on my left cheekbone so I didn't drift too
far off my line and counted breaths to make sure I wasn't
masking anything with my own noise.
Every 20 or 30 I stopped, listened, and then moved again.
No more pellets, but twice I heard that same low whistle
farther away each time. The green dot didn't follow me
into the tight branches. Too much stuff to hit.
The drainage strengthened into a narrow run with cold water over
fist sized stones. I followed it downhill by feel
and sound until it spilled into a wider channel Red Creek, or at
least one of its branches. The bank on my side was shallow
gravel and the water split into multiple ankle deep flows with
slick rocks. I tested with my trekking pole
went slow and crossed without turning on my light.
My shoes filled with cold water. I didn't care.
Getting distance mattered more. On the far side, I found boot
prints and a faint corridor that bled into what looked like a
feeder section toward Dobbin grade.
If you've been on that stretch, you know parts of it are
basically a bog with ruts in the moonlight.
You can read the ground enough to avoid the worst of it, but
you're going to sink a little. I kept to the edges where the
shrubs thinned, used old planks where they existed, and tried
not to leave easy to read tracks in soft spots.
I saw no more green dots and heard no more whistles.
Either the people behind me didn't want to fight the
thickets in the water, or I plain lost them.
I won't pretend I wasn't shaking.
It came in waves. Once I realized I'd probably
made it out of their little zone, I hit a weathered signpost
in the open that told me I was actually on Dobbin grade.
That felt like winning a prize. From there I angled north and
east, counting steps and letting the ground tilt tell me I was
headed toward the road. The sky on that side got paler
enough that the silhouettes of the spruce were easy to make
out. I stepped onto Forest Rd. 75
around first light, shoulders tight, ready to flag down the
first car like a lost hitchhiker.
The road was empty, but I had bars again.
I called 911 from the shoulder with both hands visible and told
them exactly what happened. The trails, my camp location,
the green dots, the soft pellet hits, the whistles, and the fact
that I had left my pack stashed under a low limbed tree near
Raven Ridge. A deputy from Tucker County and
a Forest Service law enforcement officer met me at the Bare Rocks
lot. Both were calm and professional,
which kept me from coming apart. They had me walk them back in
during full daylight, staying on the main tread.
My tent sight looked like nothing happened.
The pack was still under the spruce where I'd shoved it, but
there were two short strips of orange survey tape tied to it,
one on the hall loop, 1 on a shoulder strap with a date and a
number written in marker that made my stomach flip.
I hadn't seen those in the night.
The officer started scanning around in a low pocket maybe 20
yards off the trail. He pointed out an empty pellet
tin with oil residue still strong enough to smell, a cheap
night vision monocular with a scuffed housing, and an empty
trail camera shell zip tied to a trunk at knee height.
The SD card slot was empty. The camera had been set to watch
the tread. I don't know if you've ever seen
anger roll off a person without them raising their voice, but
the officer had that look. He told me, without sharing too
much, that there had been a few reports of packs and food bags
disappearing when people left camp or fell asleep.
Nothing violent, nothing big enough to grab headlines, just a
drip of theft that's easy to chalk up to bears or
forgetfulness. The orange tape fit a pattern.
Mark a pack or a camp in the night.
Come back at dawn when the hiker is off at water or busy.
I gave a full statement at the cars times, names of trails,
directions traveled, a rough timeline from the first green
dot to the moment I stepped onto the road.
They photographed my pack with the tape still on it, snipped
the tape for evidence after, and handed the pack back.
I rode the adrenaline crash all the way home and then stared at
the ceiling that night until 2:00 in the morning.
About a month later I got an e-mail from the Forest Service
officer. He kept it short but clear.
They had served warrants on a small group tied to the area,
recovered multiple packs and stoves in a garage, and picked
up a handful of SD cards that matched empty cases they'd found
near popular Backcountry corridors.
My stove and cook kit came back to me with mud stains that would
never wash out. The tent had a couple of tiny
burn marks I hadn't noticed in the half light.
I replaced it. The case went to federal
officers because it's property crime on federal land.
I didn't ask for extra details. I didn't need them.
What I changed after that is simple.
I keep the essentials on my person, even in camp.
If I walk to water, my headlamp, map, phone, and a layer are on
me, not in the pack. I sleep deeper under spruce
instead of on the edge of the flats.
I added a little keychain alarm to my kit.
If I leave the tent, I tuck a bright bandana under the fly so
I can see at a glance if someone's been in there.
And I pay attention to weird small stuff, steady lights where
they shouldn't be, quiet signals that sound human, the feeling
that someone knows where people naturally step at night.
I'll still go back to Dolly Sods.
It's too beautiful to give up, and most folks out there are the
kind of people who will hand you a water filter if yours fails.
But to whoever stood out on Raven Ridge that night and swept
a green line along my tent, who marked my pack with orange tags
like it had an appointment, who shot pellets into the brush to
see if I'd panic, I saw enough of your routine to keep me from
ever wanting to talk to you. I hope the knock on your door
was loud, your gear was all tagged as evidence, and your
little night runs are over. I'm writing this because Old Rag
looks friendly on postcards. The pictures never show how the
mountain feels at 4:00 in the morning when the first real
frost has stitched the leaves together and your breath hangs
like a small flag in your headlamp.
Late October, 33°F at the Berry Hollow gate.
Light wind in the hollows, clear forecast.
I'm 29, I run trails and I had talked my sister, 24 nursing
student, into beating the weekend crowd for a sunrise from
the summit. We packed simple 2 headlamps
with one spare, thin beanies, puffy jackets, gloves, a small
first aid kit, one whistle on a cord, a paper map.
Cell service is hit or miss on Old Rag.
Dead low, patchy on the Ridge. We were fine with that.
We signed the register, clicked on our lights and started up the
pavement toward Weekly Hollow at 4:15 AM.
The first half mile was ordinary in that pre dawn way.
I like crunch of frost. A culvert great ringing under
careful feet, the sound of our steps bouncing off the empty
parking lot behind us. I set a steady pace to stay warm
without sweating through the layers.
When the pavement slipped into gravel, a light swung through
the trees behind us. A woman from the lot, solo knit
cap, reflective belt. The kind of prepared you
recognize right away. She called.
Hold up. The voice was easy and tired at
the edges, the way people sound when they're walking and
talking. At once we stepped aside.
She thanked us, fell in with our pace, and we did the usual
trailhead conversation. Where we were from, if we'd been
up here in the dark before, whether the Bird's Nest day use
shelter still had the little bench by the spur.
She said she was aiming for sunrise, too.
The tone was normal, flat but friendly.
Frost burned white on the ditch line.
Our lights flared every bit of quartz like a crushed bottle.
We curved left around a shallow bend where the gravel meets the
first stretch of dirt. She tugged at her pack strap and
said she'd catch up. We nodded and moved on. 10 yards
ahead, the same voice, same timing, same little scratch on
the H said hold up behind us. We turned.
The woman was standing in our light, looking down at her
strap, lips pressed together. She had not spoken.
My sister stopped. The woman gave a small laugh and
said the wind moves sound around in that section of the hollow.
She meant it in a reassuring way, and maybe it would have
worked if the phrase hadn't landed exactly like a recording.
We walked on together. We came to the next brushy turn
and heard it again. The same phrase from ahead, this
time set just out of sight. No footsteps, no other light.
I didn't say anything and neither did my sister because
what are you supposed to say that early in the morning when
words act like they have their own rules?
Weekly Hollow Fire Rd. is a long easy approach until it isn't.
Frost thickened in the shaded dips and the grade tilted up.
We cut onto the saddle trail and the tread changed from gravel to
granite steps and slabby ledges that force your breathing into a
pattern. I used my runner brain to chunk
it out. 30 steps, pause. 5 breaths, 30 steps in the right
hand thickets, Laurel and scrub oak.
Something moved with us. I don't mean we heard a deer
crashing around, I mean whatever it was matched our starts and
stops like it was listening to our count.
We'd take 30 stop and it would stop.
We'd go and it would go. Tucked in close enough that the
brush moved at the same cadence as our knees.
No light, no stumbling. Every so often we heard it cough
once, dry from chest height. It happened after my sister said
she needed to swap to thicker gloves.
After she said it, the same sentence came out of the brush
in her rhythm, clipped in the same places like a practice
line. My sister looked at me hard, and
the message got across without words.
The sunrise was no longer the goal.
Cold rock makes hands stop working fast if you panic, and
we were seeing the slabs coming. I told the woman we were turning
around. She didn't argue, she just
nodded and walked with us, fast, like she had always planned to
go down. Descending in the dark on those
leaves is a careful dance. Normally.
That morning it felt like a race we hadn't signed up for.
A figure moved ahead of us on the descent, always one bend
down trail, never in our beams long enough to make a face.
What I did see looked wrong in a way human bodies shouldn't look
wrong. Shoulders too square, arms
hanging a little low, elbow sitting where they would scrape
if you brushed into rock. It moved without the slips we
were fighting. It never scuffed a slab.
It never put weight in the noisy spots.
The woman behind me got quiet, too quiet for someone that
talkative, but I was OK with quiet if it meant more air for
running. We hit a section of cribbed
trail where a wash had cut through and started to pick our
way along the edge. The air felt colder down here,
which annoyed me because cold air drains downhill and it meant
we would only feel slower. I kept counting.
We came to the spur sign for birds nest.
My sister flicked her headlamp to high to read it, and that's
when a uniform stepped into the edge of light.
Like he had been waiting for that exact click.
Brimmed hat, badge, jacket marked with red clay.
Like he'd been standing in one spot where water leaks across
the tread. He held his hands low and still,
not like he was ready to calm anyone, more like he didn't need
to move. He said the summit approach was
closed because of rock fall and that we should take a side path
around a flagged section. The tone was calm and flat,
rehearsed in a way that usually settles people down.
He pointed with two fingers down a faint line that looked more
like runoff than a trail. I breathed once, got the lamp up
to the badge, and the first thing my brain latched onto
wasn't the Arrowhead shape or the color.
It was the letters. They were backward, mirrored.
I don't have a better word. The whole thing looked like it
had been printed from a screen capture.
Without flipping it back. I said we'd prefer to stay on
blazes. My voice tried to land casual
and failed. He turned, which is too generous
a word. His shoulders changed direction
and the rest of him complied. And then he started walking our
exact speed on the true trail, as if the whole suggestion had
been a test we'd passed. My sister squeezed my sleeve.
The solo woman had stepped to the side, just past the edge of
our lamps, to let him through. I looked back to make sure she
was still with us and saw her shape move downhill between two
saplings. Quick, clean, silent, the way
dry leaves simply do not allow. I didn't see her again.
We didn't talk. We didn't have anything useful
to say. We jogged to stay warm and to
outrun whatever our brains were trying to invent.
The uniform in front of us kept going, not getting closer, not
getting farther, just there, perfectly at the boundary where
light fails and the trail memory in your feet starts to work.
When I tried to say something smart, something like we're
making good time, which I had said at the car without
thinking, the line came back out of him in my voice.
Not loud, not booming, just precise enough that it sat in my
mouth like I had swallowed it. That was the point where fear
gets boring in a way only the body learns.
Heart rate up, hands numb in a predictable way, legs shaking
because downhill on frost feels like brackets on your knees.
No drama left, only the job of getting to the car.
The last curve at Berry Hollow hits quicker than you expect,
and the asphalt looks darker than the dirt and headlamp light
we rounded out of the trees into the lot where a father and his
adult son were lacing boots on a tailgate.
The uniform stopped exactly at the edge where the trail meets
the lot. He turned again in that not turn
way and walked back into the brush.
I swung my lamp toward the trunks.
There wasn't anything to see, just two first arrival hikers
blinking at us and asking if we were OK.
We were not, but my sister took the hand warmer they offered and
sat down hard on the bumper like her legs had run out of
instructions. Rockfall closure?
The older guy asked. He had seen our faces and was
trying to fold the morning into something sensible.
I shook my head and said there were no signs posted at the gate
and we hadn't passed any Ranger trucks.
He looked toward the gate and nodded.
There's nothing up, he said. We were just over there.
The lot smelled like cold dust and antifreeze.
Normal smells. I stood there with my hands
tucked in my sleeves and look down at my right glove, where
the seam along the index finger had split in a clean Crescent,
like something sharp had pulled a single thread too hard.
I hadn't fallen. I hadn't brushed it on rock.
The cord of my sister's whistle looped from my jacket pocket,
tucked through the pocket fabric from the inside.
She had worn it around her neck when we started.
She had touched it when that cough came from the brush and
said she felt better having it close now.
The cord ran through a spot that had no gap for it to pass
through, like it had decided to be there.
And I cannot explain that without lying to you.
We drove out with the heat pegged and went straight to
Swift Run Gap. I don't like walking into a
station looking like we need attention.
But there are times for pride and times for paper.
A Ranger took our description, wrote the time, the route, the
details about the mirrored letters, the hat band sitting
low over the ear. That didn't look like any
campaign hat I've ever seen on staff.
He gave us a case number and said he would check with
maintenance and protection about any closures.
He came back after calling and told us flatly there had been no
rockfall reported and nothing scheduled for that morning.
He didn't tell us we were crazy. He didn't lean on ghost stories.
He said there had been a handful of reports in October.
People hearing common trail phrases come from ahead or
behind with nobody matched to them.
A voice mimic pattern is what he called it.
And that sticking to the blazed root and leaving was exactly
what they want people to do when something feels wrong.
He slid the paper with the case number across the counter and
told us to get warm. My sister stopped by urgent care
because her forearm hurt in a way that didn't match running.
The nurse who checked us in measured 1/2 circle bruise that
fit my sister's own bite spacing.
She must have clamped down on her arm when we started down
without realizing it. The note read self-inflicted
compression during exertion, which is the kind of phrase that
makes things sound boring. I was fine with boring.
We called the father and son from the lot later and thanked
them for staying with us long enough for our hands to steady.
They confirmed again there had been no closure sign at the gate
when they arrived. That is the sum of what can be
confirmed without arguing about belief.
A case number, an urgent care note. 2 hikers who saw us arrive
shaken and cold, and who saw nothing posted.
The rest is something I can describe and you can ignore, but
the description won't change. To make it easier, if you know
Old Rag, you can map exactly where all this lives.
The pavement up from the Berry Hollow kiosk.
The first culvert ring under your feet.
The spot where gravel gives to dirt and frost feels deeper in
your ankles. The saddle trail steps that push
your breath into a number you count without meaning to.
The spur sign for birds nest. The cribbing where a Washington
tries to eat the trail every rain.
None of that is exotic. The only part that doesn't fit
is the set of details that should have been human and
weren't. A phrase said when lips didn't
move. A body pacing us that never hit
a loud patch. Letters on a badge that made
sense only if you were reading them in a mirror.
A shape stepping off trail uphill and vanishing in dry
leaves in a way that leaves do not allow.
And a voice coming back to me in my exact rhythm, asking for
nothing except for us to follow. People will put a name on it in
that part of Virginia. The word some people use is
skinwalker, and saying it out loud makes certain ears perk up
in a way I don't want. You don't have to believe in the
word for this to be useful. What matters is simple.
We turned around when the morning went sideways.
We stayed on blazes even when a uniform told us to do otherwise.
And we told someone whose job it is to keep track of these
things. It's an ordinary set of steps
anyone can take. If you hike Old Rag before
sunrise because you want a quiet summit, skip the quiet.
Go later. If a voice uses the exact timing
of someone you're with and asks for something that sounds
harmless, don't argue with it and don't bargain.
Stay on the marked path. If authority steps out of the
dark and points you into brush that only looks like a trail,
look for the boring details. The right hat, the right badge,
the right direction of lettering.
If anyone thinks it's wrong, leave there.
Isn't a story at the top worth whatever is willing to walk just
outside your light all the way down to the edge of the lot and
stop there? Like a rule is holding it back.
We got out because we kept it boring.
That's my warning. Keep it boring.
Don't give it the turn it wants, and don't be there at 4:15 AM
thinking you'll beat the crowd. The Mountain isn't the crowd
you're beating. I was on leave from wildland
fire when my cousin called and said he had a free night and a
full tank. We picked short off mountain
because it's close enough to reach after lunch and wild
enough to feel like a different world once you top out.
Mid November. Cold and clear on the forecast.
28 to 34°F overnight. Rim gusts 15 to 20 mph.
We weren't chasing some big objective.
We wanted to see the Leonids over Linville Gorge, test bivy
sacks in real cold and make sure our radios still talked through
that cut up terrain. We packed simple bivy quilts,
foam pads, alcohol stove, 2 FRS handsets set to a shared channel
with a privacy code 1 personal locator beacon clipped to my
shoulder strap. No heavy optics.
No plan to hero out up Wolf Pit Rd., Park at the lot, grunt up
the Wolf Pit trail, sleep. Once the wind LED us, that was
the whole idea. The climb out of Lake James is
plain in the daylight. Eroded clay switchbacks, short
rock steps that make you use a hand here and there, runs of pea
gravel that roll under your heels and keep you honest.
You feel the air change as you gain the Ridge.
The gorge opens at your side, but the trail keeps you in the
brush until the last pitch. In the upper 3rd, just below a
small rock ledge, I saw prints on a sandy bench that made me
stop. They looked like a barefoot long
arched, narrow at the heel, splayed at the front.
The spacing was wrong for a normal walk, 4 maybe 5 feet
between strikes, dead straight, no wobble.
I looked for the next step across the leaves, and there
wasn't one. The line of prints picked up
again several yards ahead in another patch of sand, then went
missing across Duff, then came back where the trail gathered
grit. It wasn't the first weird sign
I've seen on a fire road or trail, but it was the first time
I'd seen something that seemed to pick its steps only where the
ground would take an impression like it practiced.
My cousin squatted over one of the strikes and thumbed the
edge. Edges are soft, not old.
We scanned around for snapped twigs, disturbed litter,
anything that showed weight, nothing.
We topped out with the sun still above the Ridge and stepped
across the old Fire Rd. cut that runs the burn.
The plateau up there looks like a rough haircut.
Charred trunks, Laurel, scrub oak and ankle grass in the
pockets that the wind can't scour.
The Mountains to Sea trail threads the flats toward the
chimneys and Table Rock, and the rim beyond it drops hard into
Linville Gorge. The wind shoved us sideways at
the open spots, then cut out in the Lee like someone closed a
door down in the gorge. The day quiet held no jets, no
traffic, just the dry surface of leaves rubbing in the little
ticks of dead twigs under deer, somewhere you couldn't see.
We plan to camp 100 to 150 yards off the rim on durable ground,
just like the book. Heat, water, eat, stash food,
lights out early. We passed 2 hunters heading
north, both mid 40s, quiet local vowels.
They had hammocks hung in mind a little closer to the rim between
2 black trunks. One of them said he'd seen a
tall something cross the fire Rd. on a different trip.
Chalked it up to fading light and shadows.
Coyotes will light up once it's dark, the other warned.
They love it down in there. Dusk came fast.
Once the sun hit the far Ridge, we scraped a small safe spot for
the stove, lit it and listen to the hiss fight the wind.
The heat of a hot meal at 30° is its own kind of piece.
We ate, zipped layers and tucked food away.
Right then the first coyote group cut loose far below.
Not dramatic, just a ragged Yip and yodel that rose and sank
like a wave against the river sound.
The wind was steady out of the West, should have been carrying
everything across the plateau and away from us.
That's why when a sweet rotten odor slid past our faces from
the upwind side, it got my attention.
It came like antifreeze in a warm garage mixed with roadkill.
Not a whiff a band. It lined our tongues and went
away. A minute later it returned
heavier, as if it had moved, and decided to stand closer.
We keyed up the FRS for a quick check with the hunters.
The closer one answered in a tight voice.
He said something tall was between their hammocks, quiet
like it breathed through its teeth.
The other told him to stop screwing around, and then the
transmission cut. The channel went hot again with
two quick clicks. That was the code we'd agreed on
at camp. No speech, just two taps.
If you wanted us to come now, we killed the stove, dumped the
small fuel cup to cold, cinched belts, tightened gloves.
I clipped the PLB to the outside of my shoulder strap and told my
cousin I'd arm it if either of us got hurt or lost mobility.
We didn't talk about staying or going, we went The fire Rd. cut
is easy to move when you're calm.
Wide strips of rock and dirt with run out on both sides.
Sparse brush to the rim. We kept our headlamps at
shoulder level instead of brow so the beam wouldn't bounce with
our steps. It took less than 5 minutes to
reach their spot. There were two trees wrapped
with webbing and straps, a ground sheet and the cold hole
of a used fire pan. 1 hammock hung low and intact.
The other looked like someone had sawed the belly out with
bone. The fabric wasn't torn in one
clean line. It was frayed like teeth had
worried each thread. A food bag lay on the ground,
but the usual mess you get with raccoons wasn't there.
No wrappers drifted, no scatter. Just a bag zipped with a clean
puncture in one corner. We swept the area in wide arcs
with our lamps, and I caught it at the edge of light.
Not a blur, not eyes in a Bush, a shape crouched on a flat Gray,
white and narrow, limbs tucked under like a mantis and the
knees wrong, pointed forward where they shouldn't.
The head looked narrow from the side, and there was no bulging
neck or heavy chest. Just flat, lean planes that
didn't carry fat like a deer. It didn't breathe hard.
It didn't shift weight like it had to balance, it just changed
position and landed a few feet away without a sound I could tie
to feet. At its own feet sat a deer skull
that wasn't clean yet. Tissue still hung from an orbit,
wet and stringy. The tooth marks on the skullcap
looked fresh and straight down, no sideways peel you get when
coyotes worry bone. I brought the beam up into its
face and it recoiled from the light into the wind shadow
behind a burned trunk and held there in a way that told me it
knew the wind better than I did. We didn't try to shout it off.
We didn't charge. My cousin held both trekking
poles together like a short staff point forward.
I kept the light high. When the beam crossed it again,
it glided across a slab in two long steps and was gone behind
another black stump. We took that gap and started a
bounding retreat, one of us walking back while the other
stayed facing out with the light.
Then swap. You do that in brush so nothing
closes the distance without being seen.
It wasn't the sound of pursuit that put pressure on us, it was
the smell. Every time we moved, the sweet
rot pushed across our faces from the wrong direction and then
thinned again as if it were testing how close it could stand
before our light landed on it. When we paused to listen, the
odor would bloom and then recede and branches up.
Wind would move once and hold. We kept our line on the cut and
called on the radio for the hunters.
No answer. Then two quick clicks.
Again in silence. We followed the direction of the
clicks 30 yards past a snag that looked like a dead hand from 1
angle and normal from the next, and found disturbed frost
crystals across a smooth rock where something heavy had been
dragged, and then nothing where the rock flattened.
It's a bad feeling to watch sign end on flat stone, even when
you've seen it before with elk or bear.
You know the weight is nearby. You don't know where it chose to
stand. We made the call to fall back to
the Wolf Pit descent. That was the plan we set at
dinner. If something goes sideways, get
to the trail. The trail goes down to the lot.
You don't freelance up there at night.
We moved. The plateau barely gives a sound
when you hit the right line. Rock, then a patch of grass,
then rock again. My cousin set pace.
I kept rearguard headlamps still up in my hand to keep the beam
steady. Every time we broke a brush
line, I checked uphill because that's where anything patient
would watch from. Twice I caught the form standing
at a distance that made details thin, and both times it changed
position with no slither, no scrape, and took up a new line
just outside our light. It kept higher ground without
losing it. It never slipped on the P gravel
that rolled under our boots on the spine above the switchbacks.
We heard tires on gravel below and saw a slow light work up
Wolf Pit Rd. The smell thinned in the same
moment, like we'd walked through a line we couldn't see.
I didn't take that as a victory. I took it as room to get down
without turning an ankle. We hit the upper switchbacks and
stayed tight to the uphill bank pulls out to keep balance.
The pitch forces you to trust the loose rock and it's easy to
get lazy and slide. We didn't.
We saw the lot between rhododendron leaves like a piece
of TV screen and the truck's nose pointing uphill and a man
in the cab with a cap on and the heater probably blasting his
shins. When we hit the last turn, the
smell was gone. The wind down low felt normal.
One hunter sat slumped at the signboard, hands tucked in his
armpits. He looked up like someone kicked
his boot, blinked and focused. He was shaken, but he made
sense. The driver waved us into the cab
and told us the heater was already set high.
We put the hunter in front and climbed in the bed for a minute,
just to feel the heat pour from the vents.
The driver said he liked to check the road when the cold set
in because visitors sometimes forgot a jacket and came down in
T-shirts. It wasn't a story.
It was his evening. 20-30 minutes later, the second Hunter
limped into the lot with his hands stiff and fingertips skin
pale and waxy. Not frostbite, not yet, but
frostnip that would blister if he was dumb about it.
He kept saying he saw a face in a dead snag stand taller each
time he looked away. He said it without drama, like
he'd run out of the kind of energy that gives words weight.
We wrapped him in a spare jacket and worked his fingers back warm
and gave him water and salt. We didn't wait for dawn in the
lot. We drove out to Nebo and
borrowed a lobby phone to call the Grandfather Ranger District.
We told the truth. Possible injured party, unusual
behavior from an unknown animal, shredded camp gear.
Everyone accounted for. Now they told us to hold and
meet a Ranger at first light at the trailhead.
That's what we did. The Ranger who met us didn't
smile or tell a joke to break tension.
He asked for order of events and had us walk back in daylight at
the spot where the hammocks hung.
He bagged the shredded fabric and the deer skull.
He took notes on where we had stood and where it had crouched.
Based on our lamp angles and where our footprints still
showed in dust. He didn't act surprised.
He acted like someone who's logged a lot of miles on bad
ground and seen people make all kinds of mistakes when they got
scared. We broke our own camp clean.
We walked out again while the day was still new and the gorge
looked like nothing had happened to it ever.
The proof is thin if you weren't there, but it's the kind of thin
that can be checked. The district log shows the call
about a possible injured hiker near Short Off Mountain in the
window we gave. My PLB has a diagnostic record
that shows it was armed at that time but not triggered.
The ranger's property sheet lists one shredded hammock and 1
deer skull collected. A biologist who looked at the
skull later told a friend of a friend that the sheer marks on
the cap were odd. Straight bite pressure instead
of side pull. My cousin had a little voice
recorder he uses for camp notes. In between 2 mic clicks there's
12 seconds of dead air with a wet chewing sound under the
wind. The hunters both recovered.
One had rope burn where a suspension line snapped across
his wrist. Neither wanted to tell the story
to more than a handful of people.
I don't blame them. If you've never been on that
plateau, it might read like a campfire thing where details get
sanded smooth by retelling. But the ground there teaches you
rules. Wind moves in lanes.
Scent rides those lanes. Animals learn the lanes.
What we met knew where the Lee pockets were and how to hold
them. It moved to surfaces that didn't
take prints and then stepped down to sand when it had to.
It didn't need to breathe hard to work around us.
It didn't play. It didn't bark or growl or show
off. It stayed just outside the
circle of our light and tried to break our line so one of us
would be alone for a moment too long.
We didn't give it that. Call it what makes sense to you.
People around there use an old word for a thing that stays lean
and hunts the hungry months. I've heard it all my life and
never said it out loud when I was on a Ridge in the dark, and
I won't start now, except to admit the obvious.
That night made the word feel like a plain label.
A Wendigo isn't a costume with a story attached, It's what folks
use to point at behavior that doesn't match deer or bear and
leaves you with the feeling that you were weighed and found good
enough to pass. This time we got out because we
had a plan and stuck to it. We didn't run when we wanted to
run. We kept each other in the beam.
A truck came up at the right minute.
That's not magic. That's how luck hides in plain
logistics. Since that night I don't bevy
near the rim up there. If I'm on short off, I'm back
from the edge with rock at my back and a clean run to the
trail. I keep my food tight, my light
in my hand, and my partner inside 10 feet when the
temperature drops and the stars take over.
If you go, treat the fire Rd. like a boundary and pay
attention to what the wind is doing on your skin.
If a sweet rot comes from the wrong side more than once, don't
stand there trying to work out why.
Pack your stove cold, tighten your belt, walk toward gravel
and engines. You can always come back in the
morning to pick up what you dropped.
You can't negotiate with something that only steps where
the ground will remember it.