Nature, it turns out, is soothing as fuck. In the past two years, I’ve discovered that being outdoors is an extremely healing balm to my troubled soul. It makes me feel whole and grounded and centered and all that shit, which causes me no end of irritation. Everything else I’ve tried being—a Navy brat, a city kid, a Marine, an addict—and it turns out I’m one of those ‘hiking is my therapy’ assholes? The sanctimonious outdoorsy types wereright?
Thanks, I hate it. It’s almost as bad as how much better getting enough sleep, eating properly, and exercising regularly make me feel.
But the fact remains that hiking is therapeutic as hell, and all the white people who talk about going into the woods to find themselves are right. The last time I went to rehab—the one that’s stuck, so far—the place was on the edge of a forest, in the rolling hills, in the middle of nowhere. On a former dairy farm. There were even horses and shit.
I rode a horseonce. My blood did not sing of any vaquero ancestry or the freedom of the wide plains under open skies—whatever it is people are supposed to feel when they get on horseback. I mostly felt like my ass hurt.
I walk in the creek for a while, since it’s easy and there are fewer spiderwebs, then check the GPS when I climb onto the other bank. I’ve been trekking cross-country for some of yesterday and all of this morning, since the Hickory Notch Homestead isn’t on any trails, but as long as I head downhill I’ll hit Split Oak Road, so it’s not too dangerous. Also, I brought the GPS this time because I got shouted at last time. I don’t need Gideon to use his Oldest Brother voice on me again.
Anyway, I’ve got about a quarter mile to the road, and then it’s an easy half mile to Hollow Ridge Trail, which intersects the old logging road that runs right by Wildwood. Like I said, I’ll be home by noon.
I’m walkingalong the side of Split Oak Road, minding my own business and wondering what I can scrounge together for lunch in my kitchen, when the first car I’ve seen all day drives past.
It slams to a stop about fifty feet in front of me, pauses, and reverses. I check for oncoming traffic in a panic because you can’t justback up in the middle of a road, Jesus Christ, but then the car stops again and the driver’s-side window rolls down.
It’s Josie, my friend who helped me look for cameras at the Lost Mountain Motor Lodge, and she looks like she might have a heart attack. My mouth goes dry and my chest constricts because I suddenly have the awful, sickly feeling that I fucked up and I’m about to find out how.
“Javi?” she shouts. “Are you okay?”
I glance down at myself. I’m not bleeding or anything.
“I’m fine,” I shout back, but she’s already pulling over to the shoulder, leaving her car half-on and half-off the road and thenleaving the keys in the ignition. Who does that? “Did something happen?” And was it my fault?
“Javi,” she says, jogging across the empty asphalt. “Holy shit. What happened? Are you all right?”
Oh,fuck. I know exactly how I fucked up.
I got home Thursday with every intention of using my free weekend to get ahead on homework and clean my house. But then I woke up Friday with a better idea: a two-night solo backpacking trip to check out an abandoned homestead that’s not too far from the cabins in Wildwood. I found a local legend about a particularly weird cryptid that’s supposed to live in a cave nearby, and when was I ever going to get a better chance to check the place out?
I may have, technically, forgotten to tell anyone where I was going.
“I’m fine,” I tell her.
“Do you know what year it is? Who’s the president?”
“I don’t have a head injury. I went for a hike,” I tell her, though I can already tell it’s not nearly enough explanation.
Josie takes a deep breath and pushes the heels of her hands into her eyes, then rubs them and drags her hands down her face.
“You idiot,” she says, not unkindly. “Everyoneis looking for you.”
“What if Ijust drove back to my place without talking to anyone here?” I ask Josie when we pull into Wildwood’s tiny parking area. Really, it’s a glorified dead-end that’s partly gravel and mostly dirt, and she’s blocking in three cars, including mine.
“Javi,” she says, very seriously, and puts a hand on my shoulder. “If I let you do that,Iwould get yelled at, and I don’t love you enough to face that firing squad.”
I bounce my head off the headrest of her car and mutter “Fuck, fuck, fuck,” in time with it. It’s pretty much the only thing I’ve said since I got into her car thirty minutes ago.
“Will you go warm them up?”
“I will not,” she says, cheerfully.
“Will you go tell them not to shout?”
“Do you think that would work?”
Unbelievably, I’ve actually done something similar before: last summer, on a whim, I decided to go check out the partial eclipse from Bloodroot Meadow because I’d heard it made the sheer rock wall on one side of it look like a face. I didn’t think to tell anyone where I was going or that I’d be gone, and when I came back, no one was happy with me.
I think I was gone longer this time. Thursday afternoon to Sunday morning is what, three days? Though—oh, god, do they know where I was Thursday morning? Did Madeline tell them? Did anyone talk to Castillo?
