In the dim of mountain morning, surrounded by lofty pines clinging to shreds of fog with their most finger-like branches, Emmett said aloud, to the mountains, to the trees, to the fog, and to any animals hiding therein, “I’m a long way from Multioak.” Keeping his two feet on parallel trajectories, Emmett followed the narrow, hard-packed trail in whichever direction it took him, mostly upward. It was hard for Emmett to believe that the trailhead parking lot was a mere twenty-minute hike in the opposite direction. His world had been reduced – although it felt more like an expansion than a reduction – to his body, this trail, and his enormous pack stuffed with items meant to assist him in circumstances both likely and unlikely.

               As an example of a likely circumstance for which Emmett was prepared, he had many extra socks in case his feet got wet more than once during his three-day excursion.

               As an example of an unlikely circumstance for which Emmett was prepared, he had a can of bear mace in case of a hostile confrontation with a bear.

               As an example of a very unlikely circumstance for which Emmett was prepared, he had a back-up book in case the clear forecast was incorrect and inclement weather kept him confined to his tent for so long that he finished the extremely long primary book he’d also packed.

As an example of a nearly impossible circumstance for which Emmett was prepared, he had a field guide to cryptid identification that he had printed off of the internet and laminated in case he encountered any wildlife of unproven existence.

               The pack was bulky, its weight a considerable encumbrance. Its straps dug into Emmett’s shoulders. If he leaned too far to his left or right, the pack strained to topple him. Despite the cool, high-altitude air, Emmett’s shirt was sodden with sweat where his pack pressed it against his back.

But Emmett was not an accomplished outdoorsman. He was certainly no expert. His back-country camping experience was moderate at best, and also more than ten years in the past. And he had also never before camped solo. The camping trips of his twenties and early thirties were always group events, Emmett and a handful of his friends. As a man on his own and in his early forties, over-packing seemed like an error – if it even was an error – preferable to under-packing, which was definitely an error.

And Emmett had nothing to prove to anyone but himself. There was no one else whose pace he needed to match. He could rest whenever he wanted to, just take the pack off and have a nice sit-down, eat a granola bar – of which he had packed a huge quantity – and take a sip of water from his filter bottle. Look at some tree-tops. Look at some birds in the tree-tops. Look at some peaks between the tree-tops. And when his neck got tired, he could look at lower parts of the trees. Trunks of trees, even tree roots. Or things that weren’t trees at all, such as the trail through the trees, or a stream, if he happened to be near one, or squirrels, which, yes, were often in trees, but, like the mountain peaks glimpsed between the trees’ tops, were not themselves trees. During one of these rest breaks, Emmett saw an elk, huge and furry, moving through the forest. During another of these rest breaks, Emmett saw a moose, also huge and also furry, moving through the forest. During yet another of these rest breaks, Emmett saw mule deer moving through the forest, and they were neither as huge nor as furry as the elk or the moose, but there were two of them.

After more than three hours of hiking interspersed with regular rest breaks, Emmett came upon another hiker sitting on a large, flat rock just off the trail. The hiker’s boots rested beside him on the rock. His thick, gray socks were draped over the boots. Both socks displayed dark stains. The hiker’s bare feet dangled a few inches from the layer of soft pine needles covering the ground, his pants were rolled up around his shins, and he bled freely from the backs of both ankles. He held a plastic water bottle in one hand. The hiker’s fresh haircut emphasized his head’s narrowness. His face evinced a wish for changes in his circumstances, preferably immediate.

“Nice day!” said Emmett, hoping to breeze past the ailing hiker.

“New boots,” said the other hiker. “Should have broken them in first, but they just came in the mail yesterday and I was excited to try them out. They rubbed right through the skin, though. What a mess.”

“Ah, yeah,” said Emmett, pausing to briefly commiserate. “Gotta break ‘em in first.”

“I knew that,” said the other hiker. “But they felt so comfortable when I tried them on that I thought I could get away with it. Guess I had to learn the hard way.”

“Well, good luck to you,” said Emmett.

“Before you go,” said the other hiker. “Do you have any bandages? I can’t make it back down the trail like this. I can’t put my boots back on with no bandages or it’ll just get worse. And I can’t go barefoot.”

“You didn’t bring any bandages?” asked Emmett. He looked around for the other hiker’s pack. Maybe it had fallen flat behind the rock?

“No, I didn’t bring anything except my water bottle,” said the other hiker. “And a chocolate bar in my pocket, which I already ate. I like to travel light.”

Emmett didn’t want to lecture this stranger who appeared to be almost as old as him, but he couldn’t wholly keep a scolding tone from his voice as he said, “Traveling light sounds good, and it feels good for a while, but now look at you. You’re unprepared. What if I hadn’t come along?”

“Someone else would have come along,” said the other hiker. “This is a popular trail.”

“What if there was a storm?” asked Emmett. “What if they closed the trail for…for some other reason?”

“Look, you’re right,” said the other hiker. “I should have brought more stuff. I especially should have brought bandages since I knew I was trying out new boots. I should have, but I didn’t. Do you have bandages I can borrow or not?”

Emmett had tons of bandages, of course. He had enough bandages to mummify himself. He even had bandages designed for this other hiker’s exact type of injuries. In the end, he could not leave this man to suffer on this rock, waiting for someone else to come along, someone who would almost certainly not be as equipped to assist him as Emmett was. And sparing a few bandages for the other hiker would not put Emmett in any danger of running out of bandages for himself. If he somehow became wounded enough to require more than his remaining bandages, then he would be wounded beyond the power of bandages to save him. He hated to reward the other hiker’s negligence, but refusing to help him would be cruel. Maybe the other hiker didn’t deserve Emmett’s bandages, but it wasn’t Emmett’s job to teach lessons to strangers. So Emmett shared his bandages with the other hiker.

With his wounds patched up and his bloodied socks and boots back on his feet, the other hiker stood and hobbled a few steps up and down the trail, wincing. “Well, it doesn’t feel good, but I think I can make it back to my truck, at least, especially since it’s mostly downhill.”

“Yeah,” said Emmett. “Just remember to prepare better next time.”

“Do you have anything I could eat?” asked the other hiker. “I’ve been out here way longer than I expected because of this whole thing with my feet. I haven’t had anything except that chocolate bar, and that was hours ago.”

If Emmett had gotten his pack back on before the other hiker issued this additional request, he would have denied him, but since he was still kneeling next to the pack on the ground so he could reorganize his medical supplies, and since he had more granola bars than any human could conceivably eat over the planned duration of his trip, he took one out and tossed it to the other hiker.

“Huh,” said the other hiker. “Vanilla almond. You got any other flavors?”

“No, sorry,” said Emmett. This was a flagrant lie. He had many other flavors, several of which he himself did not like. And vanilla almond was a flavor he did like. He stood and suppressed a groan as he slung his pack onto his back.

“Well, thanks anyway,” said the other hiker, and he limped off down the trail.

Emmett did not watch him go. Instead, he continued on, finding small comfort in the lessening of his burden by, what, a few ounces? Although, his pack did not feel lighter.

 

A short while later, as the sun illuminated a thin layer of cloud from behind while ascending toward its midday height, the trail beneath Emmett’s feet grew more challenging as it developed into a series of switchbacks leading up the side of a steep rise. His pack resisted this change, pulling him always down and back, and Emmett fought the urge to plop down for a breather at every bend. He allowed himself only brief, standing pauses to look upward, gauging the distance to where the path would level off along the top of the ridge, affording him, he assumed, many lovely places to sit down and enjoy expansive views. But the top was never as close as he hoped.

When he was just over halfway up the rise, Emmett saw another hiker coming up behind him from below. This hiker was moving much faster than Emmett, probably assisted by the smaller pack on his back, and he closed the distance between them in an embarrassingly short period of time. Hearing footsteps crunching at his heels, Emmett stepped off the path to allow the other hiker to pass. But rather than continuing on, the other hiker took a few steps beyond Emmett, and then turned to chat. In addition to moving faster than Emmett, he was also less out of breath and less sweaty. He had thick calves and a thick neck. He wore a broad-brimmed sun hat over his red hair. A tube snaked over his shoulder, the end of which hovered near his lips so he could suck water out of a plastic pouch concealed in his pack without breaking stride.

“Nice day!” said the other hiker.

“Sure is,” said Emmett, secretly pleased at this excuse to stop for a few moments.

“That’s quite a pack you got there,” said the other hiker.

“Ah, yeah, I’m staying out for a couple nights,” said Emmett.

“So am I,” said the other hiker. The comparison between the size of his pack and the size of Emmett’s was implied.

Emmett felt attacked, or at least criticized. “I just want to be prepared,” he said. “I’m just getting back into camping after a long time away from it.”

“No shame in that,” said the other hiker in a way that made it sound like he would personally be filled with shame to be found lugging a pack the size of Emmett’s. “Of course,” he continued, “you want to make sure you’re packing efficiently.”

“Of course,” said Emmett, trying not to think about his backup book for inclement weather pleasure reading, the granola bars in flavors he did not like, the spare inflatable travel pillow in case one of his teeth accidentally punctured the first one while he slept, the box of rubber bands for no particular purpose that he could think of but which seemed potentially useful in an abstract sense, and a couple – well, a few – other things. “But you don’t want to have to rely on other people to give you what you need once you’re out here.”

The other hiker frowned. “You don’t think I’m properly prepared? Just because my pack isn’t big enough to…to…” He seemed to be searching for a cutting punchline and failing to find one.

“No, no,” said Emmett, mercifully letting the other hiker off the hook. “I just mean, like, there was another hiker I passed earlier who had no pack at all, just a bottle of water, and I had to give him bandages.”

The other hiker snorted. “I saw him on the way up. He said he was ‘traveling light.’”

“Very light,” said Emmett. “Too light.”

“I’m nothing like that,” said the other hiker. “I have everything I need.”

“I’m sure you do,” said Emmett.

“And, I don’t know, but maybe you have everything you need,” said the other hiker. “Maybe you need more than I do. I don’t know you. I don’t know what you need. Maybe you need all that.”

This was a move back into insulting territory, Emmett felt, but he decided to defuse and move on. “Maybe so,” he said.

“Well, I should keep moving,” said the other hiker. “This is already much, much longer than I usually stop, when I even do stop, which is rare.”

“Yep,” said Emmett. He was eager to be rid of the other hiker.

“Oh, but hey,” said the other hiker. “Just one thing, actually. Do you have any bug spray somewhere in that giant bag? Surely you do.”

“Yes,” said Emmett. He actually had three kinds of bug spray because he felt like you never know if a bug spray is going to work or not until you try it in the place where you need it. Like, a bug spray effective back home in Multioak might not be effective out here in the mountains. And having a bug spray that didn’t work would be as bad as having no bug spray at all.

“Can I borrow a couple squirts?” asked the other hiker. “I forgot mine and the mosquitos have been eating me up.”

Emmett regarded the other hiker in silence for a few seconds. “I thought you said you have everything you need,” he said. “Right there in your smaller pack.”

“First of all,” said the other hiker, his blood rising, “my pack is not just smaller than yours. It’s much smaller. Second of all, my bug spray would easily fit in my pack right now. I didn’t leave it at home because my pack wasn’t big enough to hold it. I didn’t leave it at home because I couldn’t take the extra weight. I just forgot it. So this is in no way a repudiation of my approach to packing or a vindication of your way of packing.”

“But you don’t have any bug spray,” said Emmett. “And I do.”

“Are you going to let me borrow some or not?”

“Sure,” said Emmett. “Happy to share. Happy to be of assistance to those in need.”

 

When Emmett at least reached the top of the ridge, he felt too exhausted to appreciate the views. He needed to remove his pack, sit down, and recuperate. He stumbled ten yards off the trail, made no effort to suppress a groan as he unslung his pack, and eased himself to the ground. The trees were sparser up here, and there were Aspens mixed in with the pines, their leaves beginning to take on their famous autumn-golden hue.

Emmett used his pack as a back rest and stretched his feet outward. In a few minutes, he would be recovered enough to appreciate the panoramic beauty beyond the toes of his boots. For now, he would guzzle water and focus on the gradual slowing of his pulse.  

Emmett was not yet fully restored when he heard the labored breathing and heavy step of a hiker drawing closer on the trail behind him. Twisting where he sat to look over his shoulder, Emmett saw a woman plodding along with her back bent beneath a pack nearly as large as his own. Heartened at the sight of a kindred spirit, and heartened even further by the fact that the woman appeared to be at least fifteen years younger than him, which he took to mean that large packs were not necessarily an indication of advancing age, Emmett stood to greet her with a friendly wave. “Nice day!” he called.

The other hiker stopped and raised her eyes to meet Emmett’s. Her shoulder-length hair clung to her cheeks and neck. Sweat droplets alternately dripped from the tip of her nose and the tip of her chin. “Yes,” she said. “I’m glad it’s not warmer.”

“Me too,” said Emmett. He gestured at his pack on the ground, feeling now proud of its giant size. “Nice to meet someone else on the trail who isn’t afraid to go big.”

“Oh, you mean my pack?” asked the other hiker. “Yeah, well, better exercise this way.”

“Exactly,” said Emmett. “And, more importantly, you have everything you need.”

“Speaking of which,” said the other hiker, “do you have a bottle of water I could borrow? I’m very thirsty. I’m worried I’m getting dehydrated. I mean, I’m sure I am.”

Emmett was puzzled. “You’ve got a pack that big but no water?”

“Yeah,” said the other hiker. “All I’ve got is rocks.”

“Rocks?”

“Yeah,” said the other hiker. “My pack’s full of rocks. For exercise.”

“You came out here to exercise with a giant pack filled with rocks and you didn’t bring any water? Not even an empty filter bottle or a cup and some purification tablets?”

“Exactly, yeah,” said the other hiker. “Nothing except the rocks.”

 Emmett, now disheartened beyond the heartenings spurred by the initial sighting of this other hiker and her large pack, sighed and fetched her a bottle of water, of which, despite carrying a filter bottle and knowing there were ample natural sources of water all along his route, he had several. Some might say “many.”

 

Though Emmett encountered no one else before he arrived at the site where he intended to camp, he spent most of his hiking time – and rest-break time – either brooding or scolding himself for brooding when he should have been savoring the blissful solitude of the wild, when he should have been admiring the way the shadows of clouds glided across the darkly-wooded slopes of distant mountains, when he should have been pondering the intricacies of the ecosystem contained within the banks of a perfectly circular alpine lake, when he should have been appreciating the way the air’s crispness made him feel as if he breathed it into his whole body, not just his lungs.

But really, now, really…why should he be expected to share his preparedness with everyone else? Was he responsible for supplying them just because they were not responsible enough to supply themselves? Was it his job to trudge around relieving them of the consequences of their poor decisions? If he had gotten ready for his hike like they did, would they all, including him, be dead? Probably not. But possibly. Yet, there was no way any of them were having similar thoughts right now. They’d barely shown even minimal gratitude. The bug spray guy had been openly hostile by the time he got around to complaining about the smell of the bug spray Emmett had loaned him. Although Emmett had deliberately loaned him the worst-smelling of the three available bug spray options. The worst smelling and, he hoped, the least effective.

Emmett erected his tent next to a stream flowing through a meadow. It was easy to imagine the meadow filled with flowers as it probably had been a couple of months earlier. In the forest nearby, Emmett found plenty of dry sticks to start a fire within a small circle of stones he plucked dripping cold from the stream. He used his flash cooking system to make a meal of freeze-dried ravioli, which he ate quickly, paranoid that another hiker would appear and ask for a bite. And this imagined hiker would not have packed a utensil, of course, so Emmett would be expected to share one of his spoons or one of his forks. After dinner, he removed all the food from his pack, divided it into two bear bags, and hung those bags from the branches of two separate trees on opposite edges of the meadow.

The sun lowered toward the western mountain peaks’ sharp points, soon in danger, it appeared, of a puncturing. But no, it went behind them, it was never in danger of a puncturing after all.

Later, lying in his spacious tent wearing his camping pajamas within his sleeping bag atop a sleeping pad with his head resting on his inflatable pillow and his backup inflatable pillow inflated and placed near at hand, Emmett trained a reading light – different than the other assorted light sources he’d also brought – on his primary pleasure-reading book and managed to read one and one half pages of the remaining five hundred and nine pages before he became too drowsy to continue. He was a slow reader even in ideal circumstances. He set the book down, turned off the reading light, and fell asleep.

His ensuing dreams were all about strangers plundering his pack. There were no symbolic elements, as far as Emmett could tell. The strangers didn’t even take on obvious symbolic forms, such as vultures or hyenas. They were just people more or less like the people he’d actually encountered on the trail, and they were taking stuff out of his pack, and it was upsetting him. The strangers in the dream were even asking permission, and he kept saying “yes” even though he wanted to say “no.” The one mildly heightened element of the dream was that some of the strangers reached into Emmett’s pack themselves instead of waiting for him to hand them whatever they’d asked for.

Shortly after dawn, Emmett awoke, crawled out of his sleeping bag, unzipped his tent, and found another hiker seated cross-legged on the ground next to his makeshift fire pit. The damp ashes in the fire pit offered the other hiker no warmth. This hiker, a woman, wore specialized clothing that Emmett recognized as expensive. Her dark, unbound hair hung out from beneath an olive green cap, draped down over the pack she still wore, and, in her seated position, brushed the dew accumulated along the stalks of grasses tramped horizontal. She nodded in response to Emmett’s look of surprise. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“I don’t think you did,” said Emmett. “I didn’t know anyone was out here.” He slipped his feet into his boots, leaving them untied as he stepped out into the coldest air he’d encountered since his arrival in the mountains.

The chill elicited a big enough shiver from him for the other hiker to notice. “Coldest part of the day,” she said.

Emmett turned to stoop through his tent flap, dragging his pack to the entrance and rummaging through it to select one of his jackets.

“So you sprang for the camping pajamas, huh,” said the other hiker.

Emmett settled on the gray fleece-lined jacket and donned it. “Well, yeah, yes,” he said. “Gotta try to get as good of sleep as I can out here. Important to be well-rested.”

Emmett expected the other hiker to say something that could be interpreted as judgment, which is how he knew he would interpret it, but she just unclipped the carabiner holding her filter bottle to her pack and took a sip of water. Her filter bottle was nicer than Emmett’s. “You going farther?” she asked. “Or are you gonna head back now?”

“Farther,” said Emmett. “Another day or so out, then I’ll camp another night, then head back.”

“You won’t be alone,” said the other hiker. “Not entirely. You’ll still cross paths with people on occasion out there.”

“I figured,” said Emmett. “That’s not surprising. Why are you telling me this?”

“They’ll have needs,” said the other hiker. “They’ll have things they want. Desires.”

“All right,” said Emmett. “And…?”

“And I’m just wondering if you’re ready to accommodate them,” said the other hiker.

Emmett narrowed his eyes at her. “Have you been watching me?”

“No,” she said. “But I know who you are. Not your name or anything specific like that, but I know your role, I know your task.”

Anything Emmett would have said would have sounded prickly, so he said nothing.

“And I just think that you’ll be better off if you know it, too,” said the other hiker. “Know it and accept it.”

“I’m here to get some fresh air, enjoy the natural beauty, get some exercise, and have some time with my own thoughts,” said Emmett.

The other hiker nodded in a way that did not indicate agreement. She rose smoothly to her feet. “The sooner you dispel those notions, the happier you’ll be,” she said.

“No one else gets to decide why I’m here,” said Emmett. He actually thought the way he said it sounded kind of cool.

“Before I go,” said the other hiker. “Can I have a rubber band for my hair? I want to put it in a ponytail. The one I was using broke this morning and I don’t have a spare.”

Emmett glared at her. “How do you know I have any rubber bands?”

“Because,” said the other hiker. “I want one.”

 

It took Emmett a long time to get everything packed back into his pack and his pack back onto his back. Morning was further along than he had hoped it would be when he at last set off along the trail leading through the meadow, into the dark woods, and along the rim of a valley filled with enormous boulders rolled down from on high by floods, avalanches, and the like. The clouds overhead were denser than they had been the day before, but they did not drip rain and did not seem likely to. Emmett’s shoulders and lower back were sore from the previous day’s pack-laden exertions, and his body bemoaned more of the same. He, however, ignored these protestations, focused more on scanning the trail ahead, the trail behind, and all branching trails for other hikers. Perhaps if he saw them first, he could hide from them. Lay low until they passed. Although his pack would be difficult to conceal, big as it was. Even if he tried to lay it flat and cover it with foliage, it would probably get spotted, and it probably wouldn’t take long.

Thus, it came as a surprise to Emmett when another hiker, wild-eyed and frantic, burst out of the bushes right beside him. The man’s extra-curly blond beard was streaked with blood from a scratch on his cheek. He wore a stocking cap rolled to cover only the crown of his pointy head. He carried, Emmett immediately noted despite his surprise, nothing. Emmett did not bother to say, “Nice day.” Didn’t seem appropriate.

“Bear mace!” cried the other hiker. “My hiking partner is being attacked by a bear! I need bear mace!”

Bear mace was one of the things of which Emmett had packed only one. “But what if a bear attacks me?” asked Emmett.

“Are you currently being attacked by a bear?” asked the other hiker. “Because my hiking partner is currently being attacked by a bear!”

Emmett gave him the bear mace, and the other hiker turned and charged off into the brush.

 

A short while later, as Emmett shuffled along a rocky path set against a steep incline rising to his left, another hiker fell from above, shouting, sliding, and bouncing his way down to land in a heap at Emmett’s feet. Saying “nice day” to the fallen hiker did not even occur to Emmett. “Are you OK?” he asked.

The other hiker lay on his side, breathing heavily, the straps of his modest pack wrapped around his elbows. He was long-limbed and red-faced. He looked like a big-time snorer. “I think so,” he said. “I didn’t hear anything break. Nothing feels broken. Do I look broken? Do my bones look broken?”

“Not that I can see,” said Emmett.

The other hiker shifted to a sitting position, slipped his arms out of his pack straps, and leaned forward to hug his knees. His pack tipped backward making a tinkling, clickety-clatter sound. “Oh no,” he said. “My mini-lantern. I must have broken it in the fall instead of any bones. My only light source!”

“Lot of daylight left,” said Emmett.

“Not for me,” said the other hiker. “I have a medical condition that requires me to take a three-hour nap every three hours. So my life is divided into alternating three-hour periods of wakefulness and sleep. I can’t make much progress unless I use those night-time periods of wakefulness for hiking!”

“Why were you climbing up there?” asked Emmett.

“I also have another medical condition,” said the other hiker. “Do you have a light I could borrow?”

In the end, he took two.

 

Later, Emmett saw another hiker coming from a long way off. Her jacket was highlighter yellow. Her pants were highlighter green. But Emmett was walking along a narrow, rocky ridge above the tree line. The rocks that made the ridge rocky were not large. There was nowhere to hide. So he sat down to wait for her.

As the other hiker came closer, Emmett realized she was yelling something at him, but the wind was carrying most of it away. He couldn’t make it out. Not quite. It was a two-word phrase, repeated every twenty seconds or so. She came closer. Ice may? Ice hay? Twice pay? Rice pay? Oh.

Oh, that.

“Nice day!” yelled the other hiker.

Emmett waved at her with less than zero enthusiasm.

This quieted her until she got close enough to carry on a real conversation. “Do you think it’s a nice day?” she asked. The right side of her top row of teeth had a missing tooth flanked by two gold teeth. She projected wiry power, like if she flexed her neck tight she could force her short, gray hair to grow inches in seconds. She wore a pack. A normal pack.

“I don’t know,” said Emmett. “I’m not in the best mood.”

“But what does that have to do with the niceness of the day?” asked the other hiker.

“It has to do with how nice I perceive it to be,” said Emmett.

“Then I guess you have to take my word for it,” said the other hiker. “Because my mood is neutral. Truly neutral. And I’m saying the day is nice.”

“Great,” said Emmett.

“Anyway,” said the other hiker. “I need a few things from you.” She ticked them off on her fingers, each of them sporting a bruised nail. “Two pairs of dry socks, three freeze-dried meals, a roll of electrical tape, a good garden trowel, and a butane utility lighter.”

“That’s a lot,” said Emmett.

“Is this going to be an argument?” asked the other hiker. “Because I can make a very compelling case.”

“No,” said Emmett. Her reasons for wanting all those items were of no interest to him. He wanted to hear why she wanted the items even less than he wanted to give her the items she wanted. He knew he would give her the items. He was already taking off his pack to do so. But he would not endure her explanations.

 

 When the other hiker had hiked away with two pairs of Emmett’s socks, three of his freeze-dried meals, a roll of his electrical tape, his garden trowel, one of his butane utility lighters, and three or four other things she’d spotted inside of his pack while watching him dig through it, Emmett lugged his bag a little farther up the trail, then diverted over the uneven footing to the edge of a cliff. It wasn’t a sheer drop, but it was plenty steep, and a frightening amount of vertical distance separated the precipice where Emmett now stood from the gully below filled with tangled brush and scrubby trees.

Emmett wrestled his pack to the ground, dragged it to the tip of a narrow outcropping, and gave it a shove. It rolled end over end as it tumbled, knocking rocks loose to join it on a reckless rush to the bottom. Marmots burst from hiding and scurried out of its path. Near the end, the pack struck a natural ramp that launched it outward to fall free for the last thirty feet before the browning greenery swallowed it up with a great crashing gulp. Emmett fished his phone out of his pocket and flung it after his pack. It was only then that he remembered that his car keys were in the pack, but if they hadn’t been, he would have thrown them over the cliff too. What would be the point of holding onto them? So he could give them to some other hiker on his or her way to the parking lot and in desperate need of vehicular transportation? Better to just be done with them now.

Better to forge ahead unencumbered by not only the pack, but also by the duty to supplement the provisions of every other hiker he encountered. If they needed anything now, he could give them directions to a very specific cliff from which they were welcome to jump.

Ten minutes later, as Emmett cruised along a downward-sloping trail aimed at a waterfall just beyond another strip of forest, a figure emerged from the trees ahead. This hiker carried nothing except a canister, and the way he held it indicated its emptiness. The most notable thing about the other hiker, however, was the condition of his clothing. His layered shirts, especially, were torn to shreds, barely clinging to his torso, the exposed flesh of which was criss-crossed with bright red scratches.

Emmett managed a reluctant “nice day,” although he already knew what was about to happen. The canister in the other hiker’s hand was, of course, the bear mace Emmett had the day before loaned to that other other hiker, presumably this hiker’s hiking partner.

“Travelin’ light,” said the other hiker.

“I suppose I am,” said Emmett.

“You think I could borrow your shirt?” asked the other hiker. “Or just one, if you’re wearing more than one? Or your jacket?”

“Just take them all,” said Emmett as he began to disrobe. After removing his jacket, shirt, and undershirt and handing them over to the other hiker, he crouched to untie his boot laces. Then he kicked his boots off and unbuckled his belt.

“Whoa, whoa,” said the other hiker. “I don’t need all that. The bear only wrecked my shirts. My hiking partner got this mace to me just in time to keep the bear from ripping me open.”

Emmett didn’t stop disrobing. “Where’s your hiking partner now?”

“He went off to try to find some ointment for my scratches, but I got tired of waiting for him.”

“I don’t have any ointment with me,” said Emmett, now wearing only socks.

“I can see that,” said the other hiker. “I’d better keep moving. Thanks for the shirts and the jacket.” He hadn’t put them on yet.

“You’re welcome to the boots, the pants, the belt, the underwear, all of it,” said Emmett, forming his discarded clothing into a little heap on top of a stump.

But the other hiker was making haste up the trail and away from Emmett. As if pursued by a bear. And what if that were to be spelled “b-a-r-e?” Emmett chuckled to himself.

 

When Emmett arrived empty-handed and nude at the base of the waterfall, he found a scene unsuited to wilderness. Two cots stood side-by-side next to the foaming plunge pool. A man lay on one of the cots with a white sheet pulled up to his neck. His eyes were closed. Between the two cots was a woman in a white coat, a blue surgical mask pulled beneath her chin. She stood over a free-standing metal tray covered in gleaming surgical implements. Off to one side stood a rack of electronic medical devices, mostly varieties of monitors emitting varieties of beeps, all plugged into a gently thrumming generator situated on a nearby patch of dirt.

An empty pack as large as a deflated hot-air balloon had been left wadded up among the roots of a gigantic pine.

The other hiker – the one dressed like a doctor – felt Emmett watching her and looked up. “He needs a kidney,” she said.

“How do you know mine’s a match?” asked Emmett.

The other hiker gave him a stern smile. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

As Emmett lay under a sheet on the second cot and felt the anesthetic the other hiker had injected into his neck take effect, he turned his head and saw, watching the organ transplant preparations from the other side of the plunge pool, wreathed in mist, an animal of, as far as he knew, unproven existence. But what was it? Had there been other unconfirmed sightings? Was this a creature of known legend? Or was he, Emmett, the first to ever witness it?

“I need my pack,” said Emmett, his voice a dwindling whisper.

“No you don’t,” said the other hiker, her mouth now obscured by the surgical mask.

“There’s a cryptid field guide in it,” said Emmett. “With pictures. Laminated.”

“Someone else will find it,” said the other hiker as she patted his hand. “Someone else will put it to good use.”