Mason

We drove away with the ranger trucks behind us for a while, until we hit the main road in traffic and the world that doesn't care what happens under moss and rain.

For weeks afterward, I woke up at night and thought I heard that whistle.

Two notes.

A pause.

Two notes again.

Sometimes I would be lying in my bed, safe, and I'd still feel my hand clamp around an imaginary tent zipper, my body bracing for fingers on fabric.

Mason tried to laugh it off at first, in that forced way people do when they're trying to claim control.

He told friends we got turned around and had a weird encounter.

He didn't say tried to kill.

He didn't say herded.

He didn't say fake ranger station.

But sometimes, when it was just the two of us, he'd look at me with that hollow expression and say he was enjoying it.

And I would know exactly what he meant.

We never went back to those woods, not for closure, not to prove something, not to reclaim anything.

There are people who like the idea of facing fear head on, turning it into a story you conquered.

I'm not that person anymore.

maybe i never was i learned in a wet stretch of washington forest that doesn't care about your plans that some places can hold someone who has made the wilderness into a weapon and you won't know until you're already inside their reach we vowed it out loud the day we got home sitting in silence with our packs still damp in the corner of the room shoes muddy hands still shaking

Never again.

Not those trails.

Not that loop.