It’s the familiar prickle at the back of my neck, the one that says I’ve moved from being alone to being observed. It feels almost like being added to a list. Part of my brain wants to spin around and demand to see a clipboard.
I stop walking and let my gaze sweep the trees. Trunks rise around me in ranks, straight and tall, their bark dark with meltwater and streaks of lichen. The underbrush is still thin this early in the season. There’s plenty of open sightline between the trunks, which makes the sense of being watched even more unnerving. I can see everything. I should be able to identify what’s causing this.
A jay squawks from somewhere above me and takes off in a flash of blue. A squirrel rustles through the branches. The wind slides through the upper canopy with a sound like distant waves.
Then, between two cedars up the slope, something moves.
I almost miss it. If my eyes had been focused a bit more to the left, I would have chalked the motion up to wind. Instead, they land directly on it.
A figure stands partly hidden behind one of the trunks. It’s very tall. That’s the first thing my brain manages to process with any clarity. Far taller than any hiker I’ve ever met. Broad through the shoulders. The impression of a massive chest. Fur, maybe, or very heavy clothing, a dark reddish-brown that blends with the bark. The edges blur as if my eyes can’t quite hold the whole shape at once, but none of that really registers because of the eyes.
They’re the only part of him that snaps into perfect focus.
They’re set deep beneath a heavy brow, bright and aware. They’re not the reflective glare of an animal caught in a flashlight beam. They’re warm and intense, lit from within by a color that makes me think of sap and amber and late sunlight on whiskey.
For a moment, there’s no forest, no trail, no microclimate station, no concussion, no plausible deniability. There’s onlythat gaze, calm and steady, fixed on me with a kind of quiet concentration.
I should be terrified.
A rational part of my brain whispers that this is it, the moment I should feel every instinct scream at me to run. Instead, I feel strangely settled. My pulse jumps, but not in panic. My body recognizes some other reaction entirely, one that makes my stomach swoop and my chest feel too tight.
We stand this way for one long, suspended second. I don’t move. He doesn’t move. I can’t say how I know the figure is a “he,” but I’m absolutely certain.
My boot shifts on a patch of wet moss. My balance tilts.
The instant I look down to steady myself, eye contact breaks. My foot slips sideways. I catch myself with a hand on a nearby sapling, breath punching out of me in an inelegant grunt. My head gives a brief warning throb, like it’s reminding me that concussions still exist and I shouldn’t be making sudden movements.
I straighten as quickly as I dare and look back toward the trees.
The figure’s gone.
The space between the cedars is empty. No towering shape. No flash of fur. No gleam of amber eyes. Only ordinary forest shadow layered between the trunks, all perfectly mundane.
I stand here, heart beating too fast, trying to decide whether I imagined the whole thing. It could have been a trick of the light. It could have been a hiker in dark clothing who moved away while I looked down. It could have been anything.
Except there are no human tracks on the trail ahead of me. There are no boot prints, no scuffs from trekking poles, no leftover scent of deodorant or synthetic laundry detergent, nothing that suggests another person has passed this way allday. The only prints belong to me and a scattering of deer, elk, and smaller animals.
I’m alone.
Except I’m not.
I know, with a certainty that makes my nerves tingle, that I’m not.
“That really looked like Bigfoot,” I say under my breath.
As soon as I speak them, like I’ve stepped into someone else’s conspiracy documentary, I slam my mouth shut, just a little ashamed of myself. At the same time, they feel honest in a way that makes my skin prickle.
I don’t know how long I stand here, staring at that empty space, replaying the image of those eyes over and over. Eventually, the wind picks up, and the chill reminds me that standing in one place isn’t going to collect data or answers.
I force myself to keep walking, but from that moment on, every creak and shift in the forest feels charged. The memory of his gaze stays with me all the way to the microclimate station and back, lingering at the edges of my thoughts like a song I can’t stop humming.
By the time I return to the station, I’ve stopped trying to stuff the experience into the box labeled “coincidence” and have upgraded it to “incident that requires at least a partial existential crisis.”
So when I finally step back inside, set down my pack, and wash the dust from my hands, I decide to stop pretending.
Not pretending that creatures of myth and legend exist—I’m not quite ready for that leap—but pretending I’m not losing my grip on what realityfeelslike.
If something is out there, it’s time to admit it. Even if only to myself.
