Wes Coffey

It was a homemade wooden platform, nailed high up in a big white oak.

Papa built it when I was about fourteen.

He built it solid.

There's no way it blew down in three years.

But the tree was there, and the stand was gone.

And when I looked at the trunk, I could see the nail holes.

Somebody had pulled it down.

I figured neighbors, or trespassers.

I didn't love it, but it didn't shake me.

I sat at the base of the tree that morning instead, leaned against the trunk, and I didn't see anything.

Not a squirrel.

Not a bird.

I mean that.

I was out from 6 in the morning until 10, and I did not see or hear a single living thing.

Walking back to the cabin, I noticed the first of the markings.

I want to tell you about these carefully, because they're important.

There was a red oak right along the path, big tree, probably 40 inches across.

And on the side of the trunk facing the path, about chest high, somebody had carved a shape into the bark.

it wasn't words it wasn't initials it was a shape three vertical lines with a horizontal line across the top of them and beneath the horizontal line there was a small circle the whole thing was maybe six inches tall the cuts were deep maybe a quarter inch into the wood and they were clean fresh enough that the wood inside the cuts was still pale

I stood there looking at that tree for a long time.