Cody

I've thought about Wendell Mullen's great uncle, the boots in the yard, the piece of jacket on the chimney.

1893, 130 years ago.

Whatever is in those woods has been there a long time.

I don't think it's from the homestead.

I think the homestead was built too close to it.

I think Wendell's grandfather figured that out in 1891 or 92 or 93, and he moved his family out, and the family has been respecting that thousand foot boundary ever since.

They know.

They just don't talk about it.

Rural Maine is full of things people don't talk about.

I still hunt grouse with my dad in the fall.

I still drive out to the lakes near Millinocket and fish for bass in the summer.

I haven't stopped going into the Maine woods.

The Maine woods are my whole life, but I don't go past a certain point anymore.

I don't go deep.

I stick to places with roads and camps and other people.

I don't cut timber, and I don't work anywhere near the Golden Road.

I won't even drive on it.

I think about the bone piles sometimes.

The stacked deer bones just outside the flagging.

i think they were markers i think whatever lives in those two hundred acres makes them i think it puts them at the edges of its territory as a warning and i think wendell's family knows that and i think they've seen the bone piles for four generations