I’ve passed this marker a hundred times or more already, and not once have I turned right to see where this ridge path loop leads.
What do you want, Birdy? I ask myself.
I genuinely don’t know. That’s the whole problem. I’m twenty-eight already, and I don’t know what I want from life. Every time I try to picture it, I get a fuzzy blur of nothing. No clear direction. All I have is a vague sense that I’m supposed to have figured it out by now.
3.6 miles is going to take me, what, about two hours? Maybe three if there are steep inclines. That’s just enough time to walk this loop and be home before dark.
I turn right and step onto the trail. I’ve lived here since I was twenty-three. It’s time I finally saw more of these mountains. Hell, it’s the reason I moved here in the first place. Because I craved somewhere remote and wild, with a tight-knit community. I always felt out of place in the town I grew up in. Sure, there was a community there too, but it was all cliques and gossip and keeping up appearances. At least in Timber Peak Valley, there is that friendly town atmosphere where people look out for one another.
The first stretch of the trail winds uphill through tall pines, and I force myself to actually look at things for once instead of just moving through them on autopilot. A squirrel freezes on a log when I walk past, and a woodpecker goes absolutely feral on a dead tree somewhere above my head. I breathe in the mountain air and smile.
My shoulders immediately drop about three inches. I didn’t even realize I was holding them up like that. Next, I notice how my jaw is clamped shut, and I force it to relax as well.
The trail steepens after the first bend, and I welcome the burn in my calves. There’s something satisfying about physical effort that has nothing to do with printing out shipping labels or packing dahlia tubers. My brain, for once, goes quiet, but it doesn’t feel wrong. I mentally welcome the break in my obsessive thinking and just walk.
I’ve been walking for well over an hour and a half when I pull out my phone to check the time. My battery sits at fifty-eight percent, and it’s past four o’clock. Huh. I’m still going up. Shouldn’t I have been looping back down the mountain already?
Then it dawns on me that I haven’t seen a trail marker in what seems like ages. Shit. Did I miss one because I was too busy gazing up at the clouds and the birds in the trees? Now what?
The smart thing to do would be to turn around and retrace my steps, but I can’t even remember if I took a left or a right at the last fork in the road. I should try nonetheless.
I decide to take a small path leading east. This is fine. People go slightly off trail all the time, right? This is not a big deal at all. I’m not going to get lost in the mountains and become a local news headline for a day or two.
It doesn’t take long before the path stops at a sign stating that this is private property. Behind it is a high fence.
Great. So I veered off trail and wandered onto someone’s land. I peer into the distance. There’s a cabin with a smoking chimney on this land, so maybe whoever lives here might be able to guide me back to the official trail.
I’m about to try to find a fence gate when I hear a low sound that makes the hairs on my arms stand up. I look to the side, and my heart stops beating. Sweat pops out all over my body, and an involuntary shriek leaves my throat.
There’s a bear about forty feet away. Huge and black, his coat gleaming, his nose snuffling at the base of a rotting log. It hasn’t noticed me yet. I read somewhere that black bears mostlygo about their business and that they’d rather avoid you than confront you. I need to get out of here as soon as possible, so I take one very careful step backward.
The bear’s head comes up, and we look at each other.
There’s no thought, no plan, no brave last stand. My body just moves. I run along the fence line. I’m crashing through the undergrowth while branches whip at my face. The sound behind me is enormous and close.
My foot catches a root. All the air gets knocked clean from my chest as I hit the ground hard. I roll onto my back, and the bear isright there. I’m not ready to die.
“Please,” I whimper, as if a black bear knows human language.
Tears roll down my cheeks.
Then a deep, completely unafraid voice echoes through the air.
“Back! Off!”
I open my eyes to see the bear’s butt disappearing into the woods. Heavy footsteps crunch through the undergrowth toward me.
I’m still flat on my back, staring up at a strip of sky through the pine canopy, my heart hammering hard as a shadow falls over me.
Before I can move or blink, a huge man scoops me up in his arms.
And runs.
Chapter Two
Jude
I don’t expect anything from my days anymore. That’s the whole point of being up here on this mountain. I’ve done more than enough for the world during my years as a military disaster relief coordinator. Fifteen years of showing up wherever everything had gone wrong, wherever people had lost everything, wherever the ground was still shaking or the water hadn’t receded yet. I built shelters. Coordinated supply drops. Held things together in places where nothing wanted to hold together. And I’m proud of that. I am.