I grew up hiking the Smokies with my older brother.
Not experts, but not clueless. We both know how fast light
drops under a hardwood canopy in late October and how sound
carries along water. We've done Cade's Cove enough
times to predict where traffic bunches and where the deer
cross. We were staying outside Townsend
for a long weekend trying to unplug after a rough year and we
decided to do Abrams Falls because it felt familiar and
safe. Safe is a tricky word.
We left our phones behind, mine on the night stand at the cabin,
his in the glove box because we wanted to stop checking messages
every 5 minutes. We had two headlamps, a small
first aid kit, water, and one can of bear spray clipped to my
belt. It was late afternoon when we
pulled into the parking area off Cades Cove Loop Rd.
A volunteer at the signboard smiled like she'd said this 100
times and told us bears had been active near the Creek and that
we should turn around if we were still on the trail at dusk.
She tapped the drowning hazard sign with the tip of her pen,
told us the rocks by the falls get slick, and then asked us to
sign in. We did.
She asked us to sign back out. We said we would.
The trail in was the Smokies. I know, packed leaves over hard
dirt, roots like ribs under foot, hemlock and Laurel
crowding the blind corners. Abrams creak to our right,
sounding bigger than it looks. The air had that cool sweetness
you only get when the maples explode into red and the oaks
are still holding on to the last of the orange.
We passed the usual little foot logs over side streams, stepped
around a few muddy spots and fell into that autopilot pace
brothers get. After years of moving In Sync,
we didn't stop much. We reached the falls in a little
under an hour and they were moving strong spray hungover the
pool. We ate a bar each and drank some
water. There was a sour smell
downstream. Not rod, exactly, more like fish
left in the sun for a couple hours.
I walked 30 feet and found the source.
A trout split clean on one side and untouched on the other, set
on a Flat Rock, like someone had arranged it the way you'd lay
out a tool before you use it. I said it was probably a bear.
My brother said the same. We didn't talk about how the
rock was dry, except for the little damp circle around the
fish. We didn't take pictures.
We didn't have phones. We packed our wrappers and
started. Backlight goes from gold to Gray
to gone fast there on the way out.
The Creek is on your left and the grade feels a touch more
uphill than you remember coming in.
The air cooled enough that I zipped my shell somewhere above
the switchbacks. I noticed the leaves had stopped
crunching as much under our boots.
The ground was only damp in spots on the way in, but now it
felt like everything had picked up a film.
We were still making decent time when the smell came back sour
and animal. I was about to say something
when a uniform stepped out from the rhododendron just ahead.
He looked like a Ranger at first glance.
Jacket brimmed hat, duty belt with a radio, the whole thing.
He had the kind of face you don't register, neither friendly
nor unfriendly, just neutral. He said the Loop Rd. would be
closing soon and the gate crew didn't like it when cars sat
after dark. He offered us a shortcut he said
paralleled the Creek and shaved 20 minutes.
He pointed to a faint path angling off from the main track.
His badge was caked in dried mud, his boots were bone dry.
The trail under our feet wasn't. I wanted to ask a few questions,
like where the shortcut rejoined, but he was already
stepping onto it and saying we should walk single file for
safety. That sounded routine enough that
my brain let it happen. My brother glanced at me and
shrugged, the way he does when he's pretending this is still
our decision. We fell in behind him.
The narrow path kept the creeks sound to our left at first and I
tried to convince myself the damp boots thing was nothing.
The man walked with his hands close to his sides.
He didn't swing his arms much. He moved quiet for his size, and
I don't mean stealthy, I mean light, like he didn't weigh what
he should have. Branches that scraped my jacket
sleeve didn't seem to touch his. When my brother made a joke
about getting a ticket for hiking after dark, the guy
repeated the punch line in the same tone a second later, like
he was practicing it. I have seen enough uniforms to
pick up on little tells. He never asked where we were
parked, never checked our names against the sheet, never
reminded us of any of the specific safety rules I've heard
a dozen times. The radio on his belt never made
a sound, not even static. He called the volunteer, the
woman at the board, like he'd seen her without knowing her.
And the biggest thing? He kept getting ahead of us
without passing. We'd round a bend and he'd be 10
yards farther than he should have been, like the trail
stretched between us without warning.
I told myself it was darker than I realized.
I told myself I was tired. The short cut started to pull
away from the sound of the Creek.
If you know that trail, you know the water is your best landmark.
Lose that and you're moving blind through knots of Laurel
and deadfall that all look the same.
I mentioned it casual, and he said the path would cut back.
Same deadpan delivery as before. He didn't turn his head much
when he talked. His lower body did more of the
steering than his shoulders. His hips twisted a little too
far, his knees bent a little too much at a spot where the path
split into two thin ruts and rejoined 20 feet ahead.
I saw something I still don't like riding down.
As he stepped into the split, his outline seemed to widen.
Then double for half a breath. Like 2 bodies overlapped and
then sealed back into one. You can explain a lot in low
light. Your eyes hunt for contrast and
invent edges. I didn't say anything.
Then my brother swore under his breath and squeezed my arm from
behind. He had seen it too.
We didn't have a plan. We didn't need one spelled out.
We fell into the kind of agreement brothers can do
without words. First familiar landmark, first
point we can aim for with the senses.
We break off and run. I unhook the bear spray and slid
the safety cap off with my thumb.
I watched for any opening back toward the Creek.
The smell was strong again. Not garbage, not rot.
A wet animal smell you get in fish camps when somebody cleans
a catch and leaves the pile under a board.
The path narrowed so much we had to turn sideways.
He halted and pointed through a black gap between two hemlocks.
Said that cut went straight up to the Loop Rd. shoulder from
where he pointed. I heard water off to the left,
not ahead. It didn't line up.
My brother must have heard it too because he moved at the same
time I did. We didn't announce anything.
We just went hard left toward the sound of the Creek.
Brush clawed at our pants. The ground tipped down fast.
It wasn't graceful. We slid, corrected, slid again,
and burst into a little open bench above the bank.
I could hear him moving behind us.
Not a full Sprint, more like steady, fast steps with branches
parting. He didn't shout for us to stop.
He didn't say anything. We hit the water without
counting to three. Because if you give yourself
time, you'll delay. It took my breath right away.
Cold climbed from ankles to shins to knees.
The rocks shifted under the leaf slime.
I put one hand on my brother's pack to keep us tied together.
Something stayed on our side of the bank, pacing us step for
step. I know what an animal sounds
like in brush. Either it crashes because it's
heavy, or it stops when you face it, or it bolts if it's not a
predator. This sound matched our rhythm.
When we slipped, it paused. When we stepped, it stepped.
The water pressed at my knees hard enough that my calves shook
halfway across. My brother stumbled and went
down on one knee as I yanked him up.
A hand touched his shoulder from behind.
Skin that felt like riverstone in shade.
Fingers too long, cold enough to burn.
He jerked forward and we both scrambled the last few steps
until the gravel shelf rose under our boots and we were on
the far side. I turned because I couldn't stop
myself. The figure crouched on the bank.
We just left, not pretending to be a Ranger anymore.
The hat was gone, or maybe it had never been real, and the
jacket hung wrong, like it was a size off in three directions.
It leaned forward too far, past the point most people could hold
without compensating. It didn't step into the water.
It tilted its head, as if measuring distance, and then
lowered itself back into a squat.
A beam of light cut through the trees at our backs and found our
faces. Hey, a woman's voice said.
Not a whisper, not a stage call, just a clear voice with the edge
people get when they're worried. It was the volunteer from the
sign board. She was breathing hard and
holding a flashlight in a way that said she'd been walking for
a while, not jogging. She asked if we were the two
brothers from the Abrams sign in.
We said yes. She asked where we came from
because the main trail was 20 yards to our right, not where we
just busted out. I said we'd followed a Ranger on
a shortcut. She didn't look toward the other
bank. She kept the light on us and
told us to move toward her path. She didn't turn her back on the
Creek until we were on the trail.
We walked out together with the beam staying low and steady,
lighting roots and rocks. She didn't ask a lot of
questions on the move, just kept our pace brisk and checked our
footing at the foot logs at the lot.
A real Ranger was waiting by his truck.
He had a reflective vest and an actual radio that chirped with a
live channel. He took one look at us and said
we could sit on the bumper. He got our names and asked us to
run through everything. Once we told him about the
volunteer at the start, the fish on the rock, the muddy badge,
the dry boots, the single file instruction, the path that
pulled away from the Creek, the moment when the shape doubled,
the crossing, and the hand. I expected a raised eyebrow or a
smile meant to calm. He didn't do anything like that.
He just nodded, wrote, and then looked at the volunteer and
thanked her for coming up the trail.
When we didn't sign out, he said no one on duty matched the
description we gave. He said there had been odd
reports over the years around that stretch, mostly chalked up
to folks getting turned around at dusk.
He didn't feed us a story. He didn't try to fill the
silence. He asked us to come back at 9
the next morning so he could show us something.
We checked the sheet and saw our name still underlined in the in
column. I signed us out with a shaky
hand. We slept badly at the cabin.
Every sound outside red like movement in the leaves.
That self-inflicted fear. I'm not proud of it, but it's
the truth. We went back to the trailhead as
asked. The Ranger met us by the lot and
walked us a short way down to a muddy stretch where the main
trail narrows and a seep crosses it.
He crouched and pointed at a set of prints.
The first few looked like boot soles, but you could see where
the tread lacked detail, as if someone had pressed a smooth
template into the mud. Then the shapes widened and lost
the heel to toe profile. A dozen steps later, the
impressions were bare, long, no arch, toes that didn't look
right. They trailed toward the Creek
and stopped at the waterline. He didn't say much about it.
He didn't have to. We filed the incident report
inside the truck and thanked both of them.
The volunteer told us she went out because she got an off
feeling when she tallied the sheet after dusk.
She said people forget to sign out all the time and it's
usually nothing. But our car was still there and
she knew the light drops fast in that hollow.
We asked about the gates. She said the gate guard had
radioed around midnight that something walked the road
shoulder on and off for hours, never stepping into the open
meadows, just keeping to the edge.
The guard couldn't get a plate or a figure, just movement.
They chalked it up to a stray black bear or a person without
sense. We cut the trip short by a day
and drove home quiet. On the way out of Townsend, my
brother said the word first, Skinwalker.
He said it like a test to see if I'd argue.
I didn't. I know that word means a lot of
different things, depending on who you ask and where you heard
it. I only know what we saw and what
we felt. A uniform that was a costume.
Footwork that didn't match bone and tendon.
A voice that ran a half second behind dry boots on a damp
trail. A hand that didn't feel human.
Tracks that started like boots and ended as something bare
before vanishing at water. I don't care if this reads like
superstition to you. It's not a campfire bit I'm
writing it down because I need it out of my head in the exact
order it happened and because someone else will start that
hike late in October and tell themselves they can beat the
dark. We don't hike after three in the
Smokies. Now we both carry headlamps with
fresh batteries in our own can of spray.
We sign in and out like it matters because it does.
When people ask what happened, we say we had a scare and leave
it at that unless they press. If they press, I tell them a man
who wasn't a Ranger tried to walk us off the trail.
If they still push for a name, I say the word we both agreed on
in the car and watch their face. Most people laugh or change the
subject. That's fine with me.
We're home, we're alive, the rest can stay where it belongs.
On the far bank, crouched at the line where the water starts.
I'm not a first time hiker and I don't scare easily.
I'm careful. I bring a paper map, headlamp
and a real first aid kit. I know how fast I move over
rock. That morning we picked Old Rag
in Shenandoah because the Ridge views are famous and if you
start at sunrise you can beat the crowd and still get home
before dark. Early November leaves mostly
down. Forecast said sunny but cold.
It felt simple. There were four of us, me, my
friend Jared, who always carries the kit, his girlfriend Tessa,
who sets a steady pace, and our buddy Luke, who's had a bad
ankle since a soccer injury. The plan was the usual Loop
Ridge trail, up the rock scramble, tag the summit, come
down Saddle Trail and out Weekly hollow fire road to the lot on
Nathers Road, 9 or 10 miles. We strapped microspikes to our
packs just in case the shaded slabs had ice.
Jared had a can of bear spray. We told ourselves it was
overkill. We hit the trail at first.
Light blue blazes on greystone, a thin frost on leaves, our
breath drifting when we stopped talking.
We were moving well when I noticed a guy ahead of us, a
Gray hoodie under a brimmed hat. He never looked back.
He climbed with his hands in his front pocket, like he didn't
need them for balance. We made the usual friendly call
about slick rock. Just a heads up.
He didn't acknowledge it. We shrugged.
Some people want quiet. Here's the first thing that
didn't make sense. We stopped for a minute at a
viewpoint, let 2 college kids pass, and fell back in.
No one came up behind us. Then we rounded a switch back
and the Gray hoodie was ahead again.
Same distance. I scanned the slope.
No spur, no shortcut after leaf drop.
You can see a long way through the trees.
If he'd passed, we would have seen him.
We kept finding him like that, always ahead, never passing.
We'd call out when we hit a slick patch, just being decent.
He didn't turn his head. The hood sat too high on his
neck, like the fabric couldn't lie flat.
I told myself it was a bulky hat under there, or a weird haircut.
We kept moving. On the upper scramble, I heard
Luke suck in a breath. He'd planted on a damp shelf and
rolled his ankle. No pop, no collapse, just pain.
We got him seated and wrapped it with an elastic bandage.
He stood, tested it and said he could go on if we dialed our
pace. We switched him to two poles.
Tessa and I carried a little extra from his pack so he could
keep weight off it. We made the summit quickly, cold
and bright ice and shady cracks. The wind cut through layers in a
way the forecast hadn't warned about.
The sun felt like it wasn't doing much.
We didn't linger to protect Luke's ankle.
We chose the gentler descent down the Saddle Trail and out on
Weekly Hollow Fire Rd. It's wide gravel after the
single track and the grade is friendlier.
We'd still have daylight, but not much.
On the way down we passed a sign for one of the birds nest
shelters. The post had long, even
scratches in it. Not random, not a tangle spaced
in a way that caught my eye. I didn't like how high they
started. We kept moving because none of
us wanted to stand still in that wind. 100 yards later we came to
a stretch where coarse white tailed deer hair lay in a line
across the trail. Not clumped like a kill site,
not in a scatter. A line.
We looked for tracks. Nothing that told a normal
story. We stepped over it, quiet. 10
minutes after that we came around a curve and saw a brimmed
hat hanging from a branch at shoulder height.
Wide crown brim a little warped. The crown looked altered, seams
cut and re sewn. Jared reached out and tugged the
brim just enough to see the stitching, then let it go.
None of us had seen anyone behind us.
No one had passed. The single track ended and we
spilled onto the fire Rd. It felt good at first.
Room to walk side by side, gravel under our boots, ditches
and culverts doing their job. Every few 100 feet we got into a
rhythm. Luke set the speed.
I kept my eyes down the road and on the ditches at one of the
culverts. I saw movement low to the
ground. Not a fox, not a person walking.
It moved on elbows and knees and then pushed up into a stand in
one smooth motion that didn't look like a normal stand.
It stepped back into shadow. I couldn't see a face.
I did see the outline of a hood. Tessa said, very low, that
there's a word in Appalachian stories for things that move
wrong and copy people. I didn't want to talk about
that. I wanted to get to the lot.
We kept to the center of the road.
Luke stayed between me and Jared.
Tessa walked the right side, but still inside the two tire
tracks. We agreed not to step to the
edges. The air off the culverts was
colder than the road, and that felt like a detail worth
respecting. We didn't hear footsteps, but at
the next bend, the Gray hoodie was behind US, 20 feet back,
like he'd been walking our pace the whole time without sound.
Hat back on, he held his head at a slight tilt that made the brim
look uneven. We tried a normal tone.
You good back there? He didn't answer.
He closed to 10 feet. I can carry him, he said,
nodding at Luke. The sentence had the words you
would expect, but it didn't land like a person offering help.
It sounded like he'd practiced the line and didn't know where
to put the feeling. Jared said We're OK, thank you,
calm. He stepped left, so the four of
us formed a wedge with Luke inside.
I matched him on the right. Pulls out.
We didn't break stride. Permit, the man said and lifted
A laminated card. I've had passes on my dashboard
for trail heads. This wasn't that.
It looked like a clear sheet with dirt rubbed into it.
No print. He held it at a weird height, so
the hood bunched and the neck looked wrong underneath, like
something was taking up space under the fabric in a way that
didn't match a normal skull. We kept our formation.
We didn't run, we didn't stop. The man drifted toward the
ditch, then was gone from our Direct Line of sight, then came
back into view at the next culvert crossing, like he'd
travelled inside the drainage. Each time the road crossed
water, he was there again, aligned with the mouth of the
pipe, not breathing hard, not sweating in that cold.
I tried to reason it out. Maybe he was cutting through the
brush and we just couldn't see the footpaths.
Maybe he was messing with us to get a reaction.
Either way, the safest place was the center of the gravel where
you can see everything. We agreed on a plan without much
talking. If he pushed in on us, we'd put
Jared's bear spray out as a wide fan across his path except the
blowback, and cut cross slope through the brush to regain the
road beyond whatever obstacle forced the choke point.
Better burning eyes than getting stuck next to a culvert mouth
with a stranger too close to us. A quarter mile later we rounded
a bend and hit a problem. A mess of fresh stormfall
crossed the road. Not a single tree, more like a
tangle, slid down from upslope and stopped right where the road
narrowed between banks. Bark shards and fresh cambium
showed pale where the branches had scraped rock.
Beyond that tangle on the open Rd. stood the man in the Gray
hoodie and brimmed hat. He didn't move.
The hoodie hung weird across his shoulders, like there was more
frame under there than the fabric was cut for.
We checked the wind. It wasn't in our favor.
It swirled in the corridor and would push the spray back at us.
We accepted it. Counting down helped me commit
to the move. Three, Jared said.
Two, I said. One, Tessa said.
Jared raised the can and laid a broad orange fog across the gap.
We went left into the brush as a tight cluster.
I took the front through waist high branches.
The thorns didn't need dramatics, they just scraped.
Luke leaned on both of us and kept his feet moving.
The spray blew back into our faces.
It burned. Eyes, nose, throat.
I couldn't see well. We didn't stop, We aimed for a
shallow angle to meet the road again 50 yards beyond the
tangle. I kept my left shoulder to the
sound of the little stream that cut under the road because I
didn't want us wandering into the drainage and giving up our
angle. I heard coughing behind me and
realized it was all of us. We hit the gravel like a team
breaking through a line and didn't look back.
We held a pace where we could still give quick cues, Rock,
puddle, ditch, but no one wanted to talk about anything else.
The lot came into view through leafless trunks.
It felt like a real thing we could reach.
I saw the metal kiosk in a white truck near it.
The truck door opened as we came out of the trees.
A park Ranger stepped down. He didn't do the TV show thing
where he cracks a joke or lectures you.
He asked if anyone was hurt, then asked what happened in
short questions. Where, when, What exactly did
the person say? What did the card look like?
Which culverts? We kept it to facts.
We didn't add anything to make it sound bigger.
We gave him the times as best we could.
The hat on the branch, the hairline across the trail, the
block on the road, the spray, our route through the brush.
He wrote it down and nodded. He said we weren't the first to
talk about a copycat hiker out there after the leaves drop.
He didn't use any spooky words. He said he'd hike that section
in daylight the next day and check for downed trees and sign
damage. He gave us an incident number
and told us to watch Luke's ankle.
We got in the car. My eyes still burned from the
spray. We didn't pass many words on the
drive. We went home, iced Luke's ankle
and counted the small winds. No one fell.
We stayed together. We didn't let a stranger split
our formation. The next day, the Ranger sent a
message through the parks kiosk system.
I read it twice. They found deep scratch marks on
a saddle trail sign about 8 feet up, too high for the usual
wildlife in that park, and a brimmed hat in the brush with
seams cut and sewn again to make the crown wider.
They cleared the log jam. He thanked us for reporting and
closed with the case number. Luke's ankle blew up that night
but settled in a week and 1/2. He jokes now that he's retired
from rock scrambles. We still hike because that's who
we are, but we changed a few things.
No shoulder season endings. We plan for the sun dropping
behind ridges faster than the clock says.
We don't step near culverts if someone is shadowing us.
And we won't go back to Old Rag. Not because the mountain is
cursed or anything, because something out there wanted to be
close to us and we didn't give it that chance.
If you hike there in November and a man in a Gray hoodie with
a brimmed hat shows up ahead of you without ever passing by,
don't be polite about space. Keep your people in the middle
of the road. Keep moving.
And to the copycat hiker from Old Rag who offered to carry my
friend on Weekly Hollow Fire Rd. let's not meet.
I guide a few trips every summer in the Boundary Waters, and I've
done enough cold shoulder runs in October to know where the
light runs out first. This wasn't a rookie thing.
My buddy Matt and I planned a tidy loop with one long last
push across Knife Lake. 2 short carries, then out at the public
landing at the end of the Gun Flint trail.
We left our phones locked in the truck on purpose.
We kept it simple. Paper map, compass, 2 headlamps,
1 ultra light pack and a Kevlar canoe with everything strapped
down. Nights had already dipped below
freezing that week. By mid afternoon the water was
flat and dark. The kind of flat that makes you
think you've been given a free mile if you paddle here in late
October. Remember this part?
Free miles always collect interest.
We cut a long knife from West to east, bow pointed toward the
South arm. I kept my cadence steady and low
to save the shoulders. I've had good water turn on me
fast. We passed Thunder Point without
the usual stop. We told ourselves we were
skipping the overlook because of time, but the truth is we both
wanted the landing more than the view.
The air had that clean, dry bite that makes you swallow more
often. You keep an eye on your feet in
that kind of cold. Wet socks can end a day.
About two hours from the carry, we coasted past a campsite that
didn't fit 10 feet up a Birch. Someone had lashed a straight
pole to the trunk. Hung from it were scraps of fur,
a length of cord and a row of bottle caps punched through and
wired like crude bells. The caps were matte, so not new.
The fur wasn't deer hair, it looked like something from a
trap line, but too neat, too high, and too far from any
obvious trail. I marked the spot with a pencil
dash on the map border. Nobody said much.
The day was quiet enough that every paddle lift came with a
small drip of water back into the lake, and we didn't want to
add more noise than we needed. We hit the first carry with time
to spare. Locals call it a lift over more
than a Portage. Matt took the canoe.
I took the pack. It's a narrow ribbon of dirt and
roots. We made maybe 20 steps when we
heard movement that matched us on both sides of the path. 2
lines. Like something pacing in
parallel through brush, not crashing.
Placed when we stopped. It stopped when we started it
waited a beat and then continued like it was checking our rhythm
before agreeing to it. That pattern tells you more than
tracks ever do at a bend. A Birch had a wide strip of bark
peeled back fresh enough to show pale flesh underneath. 4 deep
divots pressed into it as if someone had driven fingertips
straight through the first layer.
The spacing was off for a hand I'd call normal.
I pressed one finger in next to a divot.
It was narrower and went deeper than mine by a lot, and I'm not
small. We didn't trade theories there
on the trail. We finished the carry without
speaking and slid into Otter Track clean.
Something moved with us on that lake.
It stayed near the shoreline and kept pace without splashing.
You can hear a splash from a long way out when it's that.
Still, there was none. At every point of land we
rounded, we saw it again ahead, as if it had cut across a path
we couldn't see. You tell yourself it's a runner
on a game trail Oregon, a wolf skirting you for curiosity and
not a threat. But a runner doesn't show up
ahead when the point you just rounded is solid rock and
deadfall. And a wolf's gate has a look to
it that you can name right away if you've spent time out here.
This wasn't that. We aimed for the second carry,
the monument Portage. Big stone markers stand up there
in summer, and you can always count on boot prints in October.
It feels like a hallway nobody's using.
We pushed up the steep pull from the Otter trackside, my breath
getting hard and white. The pace on both sides kept with
us again, left and right, quiet but heavy enough to move.
Berry canes, not small animals. At the top, there was a drop
toward the swamp side, and that's when a voice called out
from the last campsite, the one closest to the landing.
Hey, you 2 headed across? I could use a ride before dark.
That sentence by itself is ordinary.
It's exactly what people ask here all summer.
We edged the canoe toward the landing because habit is strong.
The figure stood back from the water about 10 paces when my
headlamp line brushed the face. The features looked arranged,
more than grown. The eyes sat a little too far
apart, like a taxidermy job done from memory.
The teeth were square and even, almost like uniform pieces, and
not in a cosmetic way, more like blocks.
The smile was there and then it wasn't.
No fade, just gone, as if removed.
The cheeks didn't move with it when it was there.
That's what made my throat close.
Matt didn't raise his voice, he just said one word under his
breath, a word I don't use for stories because I spend nights
out here and I don't bring that thing into my tent with my
mouth. He said it anyway.
Skinwalker. The change in the figure was
instant. The still posture changed to
alert without any motion in between.
You know how a person shifts weight before they move?
This had no precursor. It was facing us then, the head
tilted in a way that looked like a question on paper but felt
like a test. I back paddled once, twice.
We turn the bow without taking our eyes off it and set a
diagonal that would put us on the open water of swamp with the
narrow run toward the public landing beyond.
Open water is the only place you can build a gap on something
that knows every route and rock. That was the whole plan.
If you stay tucked along shore, you're giving up the only thing
a canoe has on a runner. It figured our line right away.
On the Ridge that runs along the north bank, it moved fast enough
to gain on us. It had a human outline on the
Sprint, but when it dropped to all fours, the gate changed to
longer, cleaner arcs, too smooth for a person on hands and feet.
I kept the cadence steady. A small north wind came on,
nothing major, but enough to throw a short chop across the
surface. In a canoe, that's a nuisance,
but on a shoreline Ridge, that chop means slick rock and slower
footing. I focused on the angle of our
bow to the channel. Matt watched the Ridge.
We had one thing to throw. The food bag hung from a
carabiner in the pack so we could pull it fast at camp.
I unhooked it and tossed it high towards shore to make noise and
smell. It arced out and thumped into
brush. The runner stopped so sharply it
looked yanked. It bent forward at the waist and
held there too long, like a hinge.
It lifted its head and went through the motion of smelling
the air, but in that cold you can see breath from anything
that pulls a lungful in. There was nothing.
No frost cloud, no chest rise, just the still shape of a head
raised to test a scent it didn't take in.
We kept moving. I counted strokes in my head and
filed that detail in a private place.
I didn't want to open again. The landing came on as a dark
patch of gravel, backed by timber and an old stump.
A battered aluminum skiff sat there, chained up with a length
of rusted link. We rode the last little break
and ground the bow up just enough to get Matt out first.
We both dragged the canoe past the first lip of shore and then
a light swung across us and held steady.
Not blinding, just firm. You boys OK?
The voice came from an older man in a canvas coat standing on the
slope above, one hand holding a flashlight near his shoulder,
the way people hold a phone. I didn't answer the question.
The only thing that came out was, can you give us a ride up
the road? He studied our faces and didn't
push. He hooked the canoe to a light
trailer with the kind of practiced hand that tells you
he's done this 100 times. You can warm up at my place, he
said. It's close.
From the landing, the little Rd. snakes back toward the end of
the gunflint. His lodge sat behind a line of
scrub and rock. It had one of those office signs
that looks like it's seen every season 10 times.
He didn't ask for a card. He didn't make small talk.
He brought us inside, turned on lights and locked the front
door. He put a kettle on and pulled
down to mugs while we sat without taking off our coats.
He glanced once at the window and then at our faces again.
I'll run you into town in the morning, he said, And that was
that. We didn't argue.
I don't think either of us could have explained what happened in
a way that would make sense at night.
If you think this part is just fear in the dark, hold that
thought and hear the rest. At first light.
He drove us back to the spot where we ditched the bag and cut
for the open reach. We walked in a straight line,
all three of us quiet eyes where we put our feet.
Just beyond the point where we threw the food bag, we found
tracks in damp leaf litter and shallow mud.
At first they read human in shape, but the stride length
changed midline. 3 long, 1 short, like the leg length
itself had shifted during the run. 10 feet up a Birch, a fresh
break hung like a bent arm, and on the pale face of the tear
were tooth marks, flat, even too regular for a deer, too high for
a person without a ladder. The old man exhaled through his
nose, the kind of sound someone makes when they see something
they expected but didn't want to see again.
He didn't say a story. He didn't offer a name.
We walked back without talking. He drove us to our truck and we
paid him in cash for the trailer hall even though he tried to
wave it off. We left the state the same day.
I've come back since to guide in summer because this place is
part of my life. But I won't plan another late
October finish on knife and I won't line up a landing after
twilight. When a thing shows you how fast
it can move across ground you thought you understood, you
change how you move through that place.
Before you write this off as nerves and shadows, think about
the small stuff. Caps wired too high on a Birch
to be a joke by kids. Finger deep scores and fresh
bark with spacing that doesn't match a normal hand.
A voice at the last campsite asking for a ride without
stepping forward like people do when they want help.
A smile that doesn't pull the cheeks.
A head raised to smell without the simple proof of breath in
Air cold enough to make steam from your own mouth.
None of those details need magic.
They just need you to accept that not everything out there is
a tourist or a wolf. Here's the part people remember
wrong. We didn't win because we were
brave. We didn't win because we had a
plan that would beat anything. We got out because a short wind
put chop on the water and because open water let a canoe
do what it's built to do. That's it.
That's the advice buried in this.
If you ever find yourself on knife late in the year and
someone asks for a ride from the last campsite, don't drift
close. Don't test the smile.
Set your angle for open water. Throw what you can spare if you
need to. Keep your cadence steady.
Get to the gravel. Ask for help from real people
with real breath showing in the cold.
We went back with the lodge owner to pick up the things we
dropped. The food bag was gone.
The small fish carcass we'd seen earlier on a rock by the 1st
carry stayed in my head more than it should have.
It's how a person set something down when they plan to come back
for it. On the drive out, the old man
watched the tree line more than the road.
I don't think he was nervous. I think he was measuring
distance, the way we were between what we knew yesterday
and what we knew now. I keep the map from that week in
a drawer. There's a pencil dash at a
campsite on knife where a pole sits too high on a Birch with
fur and caps hanging off it. If you're the type who wants to
go see for yourself, I can't stop you.
But know this rules that sound like folklore kept us alive.
Don't linger on late season water to admire of you.
Don't pause on a carry because something wants you to.
Don't take a ride request at last light from a face that
looks like it borrowed its pieces.
And above all, don't count on shore to save you.
Shore has trails you can't see. The lake, even cold and black
and rough, gives you one thing a runner can't use.
We left Minnesota that afternoon.
I still guide, but when the calendar tips toward real cold,
I write different routes. I don't say the name out loud
anymore when I talk about this night.
You can call it campfire drama or a warning dressed up as a
story. I don't need to convince you, I
only need you to remember one line.
If you ever paddle out there late in the year, make for the
open water and don't look back until your bow is grinding
gravel under a real light held by a real hand.
That's the only part of this that matters.
I'm a visiting climber from Ohio.
My partner that day, Tyler, grew up in Kentucky and spends most
weekends in Red River Gorge. We'd climbed all afternoon at
Left Flank and Bruise Brothers. Burned hands on sandstone and
packed up feeling pretty good about ourselves.
It was a weekday in late October, the parking lots half
empty, the air cool enough. The chalk actually did
something. Tyler suggested we chase a
sunset from a small arch he'd seen years ago, somewhere off
Tunnel Ridge Rd. not the famous spans.
Something quieter, he said, a short detour off a social trail
where you could see the Sky Go orange over the trees and be
back to the car before headlamps mattered.
I had a half coil of rope in my pack and a working lamp.
Tyler kept a few nuts and small cams racked to his harness out
of habit and carried a water bottle that knocked against his
thigh when he walked. We had no map and didn't pull up
any track on a phone. The plan, as he described it,
was simple. Park off Forest Service Road 39,
follow a thin path toward the Stargap Country.
Stay on high ground and let the ridgelines point the way.
I trusted him, and I trusted the terrain I'd learned to read.
That combination almost put us over a Cliff.
We stepped off the gravel around 5:00 in the evening.
Daylight had that late fall angle where every shadow looks
deeper than it is. The first stretch was
straightforward. Sandstone plates under foot,
Laurel crowding the edges, A narrow spine dropping fast on
both sides. Tyler called out little
landmarks. He remembered a shallow rock
house on the left, an old split rail graying into the dirt, a
low fin of stone with a notch you could heel hook if you were
bored. He'd been out here 100 times.
He said he knew the first half by heart and could dead reckon
the rest. I didn't argue.
I should have. We found the first wrong thing
20 minutes in on a stump beside the path.
A fresh deer hide was spread smooth flesh side up, like
someone had started a tanning job and vanished.
There was no camp, no fire ring, no carcass nearby, no tarp,
nothing to say this was someone's work in progress.
The hair still had that shine you see before dirt dulls it
down. Neither of us touched it. 10
paces later we came to a wooden post that used to hold a trail
marker. The face had been scraped flat
deep into the grain and re etched with long vertical lines,
each groove clean and straight. No number, no blaze, just
tallies. I felt the skin on my arms react
the way it does before the rest of me catches up.
The Ridge kept rolling. Tyler kept saying it's just past
the next saddle, and then the next saddle fed into another.
Light fell out of the hollows first.
Our eyes adjusted, but distance got shorter with every step.
At 6:10, with the sun just grazing the tops, we hit a
three-way tangle of faint paths in a stand of Laurel.
Tyler stared down each option and pointed E at a low Dome of
rock like he recognized it. I told him we were burning
daylight and that we'd be smarter to turn back.
He nodded. We pivoted.
That's when a voice ahead, just past the leaves, said This way.
We both stopped. The voice was close enough to
hear the breath behind the words, and flat enough that you
couldn't guess an age. An orange safety vest hung
between two trunks like a marker.
Above it, a brimmed hat, no tool in hand, no pack, no radio.
The vest moved a couple of yards and then stopped again where the
path narrowed. Tyler raised his tone.
The way you do when you want whoever's listening to know
you're not timid. Hey, what Fire Rd. does that
connect to? There was a pause that lasted
long enough to register as a choice.
The nearest, the voice said. The vest drifted farther along,
always just out of Clearview, and each time we close the
distance it was waiting a few yards ahead again, as if it had
slipped through the brush without catching a twig.
Dry leaves under our boots made a steady noise.
Whatever wore the vest didn't make the same sounds.
I couldn't tell if I was hearing it at all.
We asked if he was with the Forest Service.
Another beat. I work out here.
No name, no area closure, no follow up question.
The kind of answers people use when they want you to keep
moving. We stayed on the Ridge because
that's the rule that keeps you alive in that terrain.
High and solid trees for breaks, stone for footing.
The vest kept angling us toward a shallow sandstone bowl I
recognized from other parts of the gorge, one of those natural
amphitheaters where leaf litter slides on hard pan to a smooth
lip and then the ground drops away in bands of Cliff.
It's a known trap at dusk because it looks safe until the
last stride, and there's nothing to catch you if you lose it.
I leaned close to Tyler and used a word I grew up with in
Appalachian families, when conversation quieted and someone
drew a shape in the air like a warning skinwalker.
He didn't look at me. He just said louder.
We're baling to the road and angled us left, trying to take
the lead. We couldn't get in front of the
vest. Every time we tried to pass, it
was already where we meant to go, Standing at the next bend OR
on the far side of a slab, vest, center frame, hat brim hiding
the face. It didn't push or wave or yell.
It let our own choices carry us right to the lip of that bowl.
The slope below was the color of rust and marbles.
The line it pointed down looked like a ramp until it wasn't at
the edge. The figure finally turned to
face us. I didn't get a clean look at the
face, just a field of shadow under that brim.
The proportions were wrong in a way I can only explain by
listing them. Arms hanging a little too long
in the vest holes, neck that let the head tilt far past normal
posture that didn't shift with breath the way a tired body
does. The right arm came up and made a
slow motion open, hand dropping like a traffic cop showing you
where to go. No words, no warning about the
Cliff, just that motion. Tyler moved to a car sized
boulder near the rim and did what climbers do when there's a
question. He set a nut in a constriction,
clipped a sling and loaded it with his weight.
Small grains shed off the rock as the sling tightened.
He didn't like it. I didn't either.
He unwound the sling and pulled the nut back.
One smooth yank and coiled the sling in his hand.
We both backed from the drop. The figures head went farther to
the side until the brim touched its shoulder.
It stayed that way for a breath too long.
We decided to skirt the bowl, staying on bare plate where our
shoes had something to bite and where we wouldn't leave a clear
track in the Duff. It's slow moving like that,
stepping edge to edge, testing each patch of sand for ball
bearings. We talked to each other in short
calls, the way you do on a route.
Good left foot higher, two steps more than weeds.
I could hear something down in the leaves, keeping our pace.
It wasn't footfalls. It was a sliding, jointless
sound that never snagged, never snapped a twig.
When we paused, it paused When we hopped a clean gap in the
stone. I expected to see it struggle
with the brush line. Instead, it was already waiting
where the line we take would spit us out.
There's a narrow saddle out there that people who know the
place use as a shortcut when they're off trail.
It leads to a short down climb, 10 feet of stone you can belly
over and drop to a ledge, then a slanted ramp that funnels into a
gully trending toward the road. Tyler found it from memory.
The last 20 yards to the saddle were the longest of my life
because I knew that once we committed to the down climb, we
were out of sight of the rim for a few seconds.
I threw the coil of rope 1st to get it out of my hands.
It hit the ledge and unrolled the orange vest, stepped to the
edge above us and looked down at the rope like it hadn't seen one
used before. That fixed attention felt worse
than anything, like it was learning.
I kept my chest on the stone and slid feet first, shoes scraped,
forearms burned. Tyler moved next to me.
When I got to the ledge I looked up and the figure was there, arm
reaching over the lip, the fingers unbent farther than they
should have, long and straight, like a strip of bark, peeled and
pulled end to end. It held that shape and did
nothing else. I didn't wait.
I crabbed down the ramp and pulled Tyler along.
We both took the turn into the gully at 1/2 run, because there
is a kind of fear you can manage only by turning it into
movement. The gully carried us flat.
Stone slid under our shoes and shot ahead.
I kept to rock whenever I could and avoided the leaves, even if
it made the angle worse. The parallel sound above us
faded and reappeared, like it was moving along the rim.
A few times I looked up and saw the vest a Ridge over, holding
the same distance but never scrambling, never even seeming
to sweat. It didn't jump, it just made
sure it was where it needed to be to keep eyes on us.
When the trickle in the gully turned into a pronounced line of
water, the slope eased, the air changed.
You can tell when a road is close, even in the dark.
It breaks the uniformity with a kind of manufactured emptiness.
We followed that. We spilled onto gravel like two
people staggering out of a river.
The last light was thin, just enough to make the crown of the
road show. I'll own this.
I threw up from the way adrenaline dumped out once my
feet hit something that didn't move.
We didn't talk about going back up.
We didn't argue about protocol. We stepped to the middle and
waved arms when we saw headlights lift over a bend.
The truck was an older Chevy with a county plate.
The driver rolled down and took us in without theatrics.
He wore a fleece with a department emblem I recognized.
When he spoke, I heard the former job in his voice.
You boys all right? We said we were.
He said he was a retired firefighter out of Stanton and
asked if we were lost or if someone was messing with us.
We gave him what we could without trying to sound like
idiots. He had a radio mounted under the
dash, keyed it to a local channel, and told someone he'd
picked up two hikers near Tunnel Ridge who were shaken up by a
man in a vest leading them toward a bad drop.
He didn't push for details. He just turned the truck toward
the lot near the Oxier Ridge and double arched trailhead and let
us breathe. A Ranger met us there,
professional, calm, not interested in making us feel
small. He checked for injuries, made
sure neither of us needed medical help, and then asked for
specifics. Time we left the car, landmarks
we passed, where we turned around, what we saw, what we
didn't see. He asked if the person carried
any tools. We said no.
He asked if there was any Insignia on the vest.
No, he asked if we noticed a name tag, a radio mic, even a
painted mark on gloves. There were no gloves.
I told him about the deer hide on the stump and the post with
the long straight grooves. He wrote both down and didn't
make a face. He said he'd go in daylight,
document what he could, and flag anything that needed removal.
We went back to our rental and I didn't sleep much.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw the way the head tilted at
the rim with the brim touching the shoulder, as if the joint
cared more about range than use. Two days later, the Ranger sent
us a report number and noted they'd found a vandalized post
with vertical grooves in the slot we described and a scrape
stump with hide remnants nearby. He said it was logged for
cleanup. That was it.
No lecture, no angle, just the facts you can put on paper.
I didn't expect anything else. What I needed was a plan so I
wouldn't make the same mistakes. We still climb at the Red.
The routes are worth the miles, but we treat dusk like a hard
cut off now and if one of us says turn around, we turn
around. Tyler replaced the sling he
almost left on that boulder I kept, the one he yanked back
twisted from that quick pull, looped on a peg near my gear bag
where I see it every time I rack for a trip.
It's not lucky. It's a reminder that high ground
and your own judgement are better than any guide you can't
vet. If you're a climber or a hiker
and you end up near Tunnel Ridge Rd. on a weekday evening in late
October, pay attention to what the terrain is telling you.
If someone you can't quite see keeps appearing where you're
already going, don't let your pride or your schedule talk you
into following. There are places in that forest
where a simple suggestion will carry you over the wrong edge,
and you won't even know when you committed to it.
We chose our own route. That's the only reason I'm here
to type this. Listen, if you ever hike Lost
Valley in early November, remember 3 simple things.
Stay where you can see 30 yards ahead, Make a sharp noise when
you lose that sight line and keep moving toward people.
Don't waste time asking a stranger to explain how he got
in front of you on A1 lane track.
Don't argue with timing. That's off by half a beat.
I didn't learn those rules from a video or a forum.
I learned them with my dad on the Buffalo National River near
Ponca, AR the morning we went to see the elk and took a short day
hike that should have been nothing.
I was home for a long weekend. I'm 24, my dad's 54.
We've done simple trails together most of my life.
That morning we watched bulls push cows in Boxley Valley at
dawn, breath visible, calves moving tight with their mothers
along the fence line. After the sun cleared the Ridge,
the traffic eased. We drove a few minutes to the
Lost Valley trailhead. The plan was light.
Follow Clark Creek, peek into one side hollow, turn around.
By early afternoon, no phone on, no earbuds, no gadgets.
We had a printed map, 2 waters, layers, snacks, headlamps out of
habit, a whistle clip to Dad's chest strap, and my rescue
inhaler tucked at the very top of my day pack.
We started about 9:30. The fog along the pasture had
thinned. The weather was cool and still.
The first stretch of trail was wide and kind.
Limestone under foot, cedar and hardwoods on both sides, bluff
lines stacking up to our right. Clark Creek stayed to our left,
clear enough to see pale rock on the bottom.
We swapped small talk about a family thing I was dodging and
kept a pace that let us breathe through our noses.
The first wrong thing looks like nothing.
On a damp slab beside the Creek was the clean imprint of a right
boot. The lug pattern was crisp, outer
edge heavier, like the wearer rolled the foot just a little.
It was the kind of print that makes you guess size 11 maybe,
and what store sells those soles?
10 yards later, same rock type, we found it again.
Same pattern, same pressure points, but this time it was a
mirror image. Not a left boot, not a heel
drag. Just the same right boot,
perfectly flipped, like a copy pressed into the rock in
reverse. It sat in my head like a nail.
You step on and decide. Didn't break the skin.
We stepped into a side hollow that caught sunlight.
A little higher up the floor was matted leaves.
In the middle of the clearing, someone had pressed a pile of
wet leaves into an Oval and dragged something with two
parallel lines across it, grooves spaced like tines.
There were thin sticks laid next to it, four in a row.
Then the line broke off. No art, no message.
It looked like someone pressed, held, took away.
We were headed back to the main track when he stepped out of a
cedar thicket on our right. Three body lengths off the
trail. Canvas jacket with the hood up,
cuffs, damp Gray hiking pants without dirt on the knees.
Which is the kind of thing you notice when you're looking for
anything normal to hang your brain on.
He nodded past us toward the meadows and said, You see the
herd? His teeth were clean, squared,
and didn't quite meet when he smiled.
Not a gap, exactly, more like his jaw stopped a touch early.
Dad said yeah, earlier, in the voice he uses with chatty folks
at trailheads. He gave a friendly chin lift and
pointed us down the main track without inviting a conversation.
The man didn't push it. He just watched us go, then
moved to shoes barely loud enough against leaves.
We kept Clark Creek on our left and headed upstream.
The trail had narrowed to check behind me.
I had to turn my shoulders or stop.
Each time I turned, he was farther back than he sounded.
Each time I looked forward again and walked.
His steps came in clusters and then nothing.
Not quiet wrong. Dad knelt to fix a lace.
The man closed the distance until he was where you talk
instead of call. He was speaking to me like we
had been mid conversation and he asked, do you still keep your
inhaler in the top of your pack? I do.
I hadn't used it, I hadn't said anything about it.
My hand moved by reflex to the zipper.
Dad stood fast enough to put a palm on my shoulder and push me
1/2 step behind him. We're turning back.
Dad said polite final. The man tipped his head toward a
faint thread of trail that hugged the Rockwall.
I'll show you a better loop, he said.
There was 1 narrow track. It was the one we were on.
We both looked toward it. No spur, no side cut.
We looked forward again, and he was ahead of us by a dozen
paces, already standing at a pinch point where the bluff
pressed the trail toward the water.
There was no way past him without brushing shoulders.
I said one word to Dad, low and clear, so there'd be no pretend
I'd said something else. Skinwalker.
I saw the color drained from his face.
He didn't argue folklore or definitions.
He tapped the whistle with a knuckle, like he was checking
that it existed, and then nodded once.
We didn't run. We didn't play tough.
We did the only thing that felt like ours.
Pick ground with sight lines and force anything that wanted to
get close to do it where we could see it.
The Creek bed was open stone in long sections, slick in spots
but honest. We cut over to it.
Cold water hit at the ankles then above the arches.
It kept us from overthinking. Dad lifted his whistle and gave
3 sharp blasts before we rounded a bend.
The man flinched late. Not a startle that lags a
fraction. A full beat.
After the sound died, his head snapped and his shoulders
twitched like he had learned what to do and missed his cue by
a second. He kept trying to land in front
of us. He'd cut straight through cedar
and appear already facing the direction we were moving, not
the direction he'd just come from, like he'd skipped the
pivot. He crouched low at brush he
could have stepped over and then stretched tall under branches
that didn't require it. If you've ever watched someone
rehearse positions in a play, changing height and arm angles
to fit marks, it looked like that.
Except there weren't any marks. We stuck to our three rules.
Sight lines first make sound before a blind turn.
Keep moving. We stopped talking except for
short words. Step left, stop now.
On a midstream slab, the silt showed 2 parallel grooves an
inch long space like antlers might leave if you pressed and
dragged and lifted. No tracks around it.
Dad glanced at me and kept going.
The shallow cascade was where it tightened.
The water dropped in 2 short sheets over pale rock and the
exit pinched hard against the bank.
If you wanted to intercept someone there, you'd pick that
spot. I took the first step up and my
shoe skidded. My knee hit stone.
It wasn't dramatic. It was a dull, stupid pain that
made my eyes water. Installed me for a second I
didn't have. The man was 3 long steps away on
the bank, hands loose at his sides, chin lifted like he had
found the right height for whatever he was trying to be.
Dad didn't yell. He took the stainless bottle off
his strap and threw it at the rock just to the man's right,
hard. The bottle hit the stone and
rang. The sound came back off the
bluff in a flat, metallic way. The man's head snapped toward it
after the ringing was already gone, hands opening with the
reflex, a beat late, not the moment of impact.
The second after. It was like he had taught
himself to flinch and hadn't nailed the timing yet.
The gap was enough. Dad pulled my pack up by the
strap and shoved me across the lip.
We took the exit in two ugly steps and pushed into the open.
We didn't Sprint, sprinting dies in 100 yards.
We picked a steady pace that made my teeth click every time
we lost sight for a second. Dad hit 3 blasts every time I
watched for that late jerk in the man's movements, it came
over and over, the same wrong beat following us like a
drumline that had learned the song off the page and not by
ear. The last bend opened, the trail
widened. The lot was visible past the
trees, a rectangle of gravel with pale sedans and muddy
Subarus. A uniformed seasonal Ranger
stood by a green rig with a clipboard, writing plate numbers
and making notes with a pen that left dark lines you could see
from a few steps away. Her head came up when she saw
us. I must have looked bad.
My knee was bleeding through a thin scrape and my throat had
that cold metallic taste fear leaves behind.
Dad said. Someone's following with the
tone he reserves for emergencies, where information
wins Seconds. Knows things he shouldn't.
The Ranger keyed her radio without looking away from the
trail mouth. She gave a compact description.
Male hooded jacket, Gray pants. Odd behavior approaching hikers.
She asked our names, asked what he said.
We told her about the inhaler. We told her about the mirrored
prints and the grooves pressed into the leaf pile.
Her pen paused at that mid stroke, then kept moving.
Another Ranger rolled up fast from the lower lot and jogged
the trail at an even pace, hand on the strap of his own whistle.
We stood by the rig while the 1st Ranger positioned herself to
see the 1st 50 yards of trail without letting us drift alone.
The 2nd Ranger was gone, longer than I liked and shorter than I
feared. He came back with nothing to
show and said, breathing evenly, that he'd heard talking off
trail. That didn't sound like a
conversation. Words spaced wrong, not
argument, not a call. Short pieces, each given a slot,
like someone practicing lines. Space too far apart.
We drove straight to the sheriff's substation in Ponca.
The deputy at the desk had a lined face and a steady voice.
He took the report like you want a report taken time, place,
details. He put a dot on a wall map by
Lost Valley and asked two more questions that told me he had
read other dots. He didn't try to tell us a
story. He didn't try to sell US1
either. He said during rut we get calls
where somebody hears the elk and then hears something trying to
match people too. Could be a person, could be more
than one, could be someone. Not well, you did the right
things. Open ground noise, keep moving.
That's the end of it. No dramatic chase, no heroic
swing, no final photo. We changed small things.
I moved my inhaler to my jacket pocket and put a spare in the
glove box. I signed up for a self-defense
class when I got back home and kept going until I could do the
basics without thinking. Dad added grip sleeves to our
bottles and a second whistle for the car.
We still hike, we go early, we stay on marked trails, and we
don't go back into that side hollow.
If you're asking yourself what it was, stop.
Pick safer questions. Ask what you'll do when someone
is behind you and knows the detail.
He shouldn't ask how you'll buy a second when your knee hits
rock. Ask how you'll move when the
only track is narrow and the person who was behind you is
somehow ahead, already facing the way you're going out there
in that season. Some things try to copy.
Elk do it, people do it. And sometimes you meet something
that is good at copying posture and worse at copying time.
So if you go to Lost Valley in November and a man with squared
teeth that don't quite meet asks if you saw the herd and then
falls in behind you with footsteps that come in clusters
and then go silent, don't bother with lectures.
Don't trade questions. Get to stone.
Use sound. Keep moving until the tree's
thin and you see plate numbers and green trucks and someone
with a radio who won't laugh at you for doing the boring things
that work. That's how you get back to your
car and drive to Ponca and put a dot on the map and tell it once
so somebody else hears it. That's how we got out and that's
the only part that matters.