Jesse

I could hear the difference between rain dripping off cedar boughs and rain hitting the metal roof.

I could tell when the wind shifted direction by the way the sound of the river changed in the valley below.

I'm telling you this because I need you to understand that when I say I heard something that didn't belong, I'm not guessing.

I knew those sounds.

I knew that forest.

And what I heard in August did not belong there.

The first thing that happened wasn't something I heard.

It was something I smelled.

This was the second week of August.

I'd been at the station for about ten weeks.

The weather had been dry for almost three weeks, which was unusual for the west side, but not unheard of in late summer.

The forest was quieter without the rain.

Sounds carried further.

I could hear the river from the ridge, which I couldn't when it was raining.

I was on my evening check, sitting at the console logging repeater readings, when I smelled something through the open window.

It was sweet and rotten, the way a deer carcass smells about three days after it goes down in warm weather.

heavy and organic and cloying it came in a wave strong for about ten seconds then gone i went outside and looked around the station clearing was about fifty yards in diameter ringed by subalpine fir and mountain hemlock the evening light was golden and the sky was clear

I couldn't see anything dead in the clearing or at the treeline.

I walked the perimeter.

Nothing.