Lost In the Hoh

Anya, lost in the forest for the second time in her life, could not think straight.  Every logical thought was dispersed into a fog of emotion and panic.  The evergreen forests of the Pacific Northwest were foreign to her, and her Carolinian core was begging for deciduous flora.  Late November, and such tiny places in the canopy to see the sky.

      “Where is North?” she asked her broken compass.

      The compass did not respond, luckily.  She was sound enough to know that if it spoke back to her she shouldn’t listen to it anyway.  Three days with no real calories; a few hours with no fresh water.  She was not yet starving or dehydrated, but the mystery of how long she would remain lost was enough to make her desperate for food and drink.

      She was not running, or even moving around too much.  For the past 36 hours or so, once she realized that she had lost her way, she had remained in place, wandering from her campsite only to explore for food and keep herself occupied.  Anya had fasted before, several times, so knew the routine of withdrawals, but when it’s not intentional a lack of food can be uncomfortable, then disturbing, then frustrating.  She was already past frustration.

      The Olympic Peninsula is famous for its rainfall.  Anya was somewhere in the Hoh Rainforest, sitting at the base of a Sitka Spruce.  She watched a string of ants crawl up the tree’s trunk and stared at a patch of Wolf Lichen, marveling at its structure and color, while she tried to imagine the topo map that she'd reviewed before setting out.  Around her, hidden behind the pine and fir and cedar were peaks as high as five Blue Ridge mountains stacked atop each other.  It was baffling that the earth could heave up such monsters, as if, during the early days of geology, it were trying to grab the moon and pull it back to the oceans.

     Her campsite was at the base of a beautiful, naked tree.  It was a madrone, alone, in  forest of fir.  Due to the coming winter it had shed most of its bark, revealing a smooth, dark brown surface that comforted her.  It was small enough that she could wrap her arms around it and it felt like a friend.  The larger trees, while attractive, had become looming, rough, and threatening as her predicament became more obvious.

     As Anya went to sleep that night, feasting on slightly fermented salmonberries that she had found clinging to branches on a nearby slope, she thought about her life, the future part if it.  In her stained old sleeping bag, in her tiny old tent, her brain played tricks on her throughout the night, alternately waking her with false hope of rescue and lulling her with visions of her utopian dreams.  She saw herself in the Prairie, or back in Appalachia, or snuggled up with a handsome man in the Willamette Valley with goats outside.  Then her eyes opened with the false sound of footsteps.  Then she dreamed of summers in garden beds and winters with books and springs at farmers markets and autumns on tractors.  

     She rose with the sun the following morning, both inspired and tired.  She imagined footsteps again as she unzipped her tent.  Emerging into the predawn, she found fresh inspiration in the moss.  If moss and lichen can survive out here for generations, I can too, she thought.

     Then the imagined footsteps became real and two men rustled through the ferns behind her, looking as surprised as her to find themselves with company.