I smile and inhale deeply. The whole station smells like damp wood, stale coffee, and the faint ghost of last summer’s campfire smoke clinging to my clothes.
I’ve missed this so much it hurts a little.
I reach for my phone on the crate I use as a bedside table. The screen glares at me: 4:58 a.m. The network symbol winks weakly in the corner, like it’s not entirely convinced it exists.
My thumb hovers over Milo’s name.
My brother told me to text when I got here yesterday. I meant to. Truly. But I was too busy unlocking doors, checking water lines, fighting with the generator, making sure no raccoon had turned the station into a winter Airbnb. By the time I realized I hadn’t texted, I passed out face-first on top of my sleeping bag.
I grimace and hit Call.
It rings. Once, twice, three times. Then his voicemail kicks in with his usual greeting—casual, half laughing, like he recorded it while walking.
“Hey, you’ve reached Milo?—”
Guilt pricks. Of course he’s not awake. It’s nearly 8:00 a.m. on the East Coast, but he was out late photographing city lights the night before. Time zones are my eternal enemy.
The beep sounds.
“Hey,” I say, my voice still rough with sleep. “Sorry, I, uh… forgot you were likely out half the night on a shoot, and also forgot to tell you I didn’t die on the drive. I made it to the station yesterday. Everything’s intact. No burst pipes, no raccoon squatters, and my coffee survived, which you know is the real crisis point.”
I glance at the small window. The sky outside is just beginning to pale, a soft gray-blue that makes the silhouettes of trees look almost black.
“It’s good to be back,” I admit quietly. “I didn’t realize how much I missed it until I stepped out of the car and… yeah.Anyway. I’ll send you some photos when the light’s better. Call me when you’re awake. Love you, kid.”
I hang up and stare at the phone for a second, feeling that now-familiar mix of warmth and awkwardness. It’s still new, this thing where we both saylove youon purpose instead of by accident.
A jay squawks again outside, louder this time. The forest is waking up. And if I sit here another minute, I’ll start narrating it in my head and never stop.
I haul myself off the cot and shuffle to the tiny kitchenette. My socks slide a little on the scuffed wooden floor. Someone—probably me, last season—taped a note above the counter:
REMEMBER TO LABEL SAMPLES. “Dirt in Jar” IS NOT HELPFUL, PAST ELIAS.
“Wow, rude,” I tell my own handwriting and start rummaging for the coffee tin.
A few minutes later, the kettle rattles quietly on the little propane stove. I lean my hip against the counter and watch my breath fog while the water heats, listening to the world outside grow noisier. Drips become trickles. A woodpecker starts testing a trunk somewhere beyond the station.
When the kettle whistles, it’s almost a relief. The sound’s concrete, and familiar.
I pour the water and wait for the grounds to bloom, steam curling upward in lazy spirals that smell like burnt hope.
“Camping is getting harder on my spine,” I tell the mug. “But at least you’re still loyal.”
By the time the coffee is strong enough to reanimate the dead, my skin is prickling—that subtle awareness that I’m not alone, even though I absolutely am. It’s the same feeling I gotlast season more than once: a sense of being observed, not by predators, not by anything hostile… just somethingthere.
I chalked it up to nerves then. To being out in the woods alone for extended periods of time. To too much caffeine.
I chalk it up to the same now.
Outside, the mist is still clinging low when I open the door and step onto the small wooden porch. The cold air slaps my cheeks awake in one go. I suck in a lungful of it—sharp, clean, threaded with the scent of wet earth and thawed needles.
Fog lies over the ground in soft, uneven ribbons, weaving between ferns and the low shrubs edging the clearing. The trees rise around the field station like quiet giants, their trunks dark with meltwater, moss glowing almost neon where it creeps up the bark.
I close my eyes and let the soundscape soak in—dripping, creaking, a distant raven delivering what sounds suspiciously like judgment.
“Yeah, yeah,” I murmur. “I hear you. The ungrateful city ape has returned.”
Gravel crunches. Voices carry faintly through the still air.
