//------------------------------//
// Trailhead 
// Story: Zinnias 
// by Serinity Southerland 
//------------------------------//

I awakened to the sounds of birds chirping. The morning sun had begun to send a faint glow across the eastern peaks of the mountains around me, rousing the animals in the forest to begin a new day. The air was moist with a slight chill which made it difficult to convince my body to emerge from its warm cocoon. I could feel a faint heat radiating through my sleeping bag, the dying warmth of a campfire that I used to cook dinner and provide heat throughout the night. I groaned and encouraged my muscles to wake up for my long hike through the mountain trails that stretch down the length of the eastern U.S. 

After some shivering and stumbling about my campsite in the pale light of a misty mountain sunrise, I managed to find my tinderbox and relight the fire using some coals that were left in the ashy pit. Within a few minutes the fire grew and crackled as I threw some small bits of kindling to it. It thanked me for its breakfast with a crackling glee and was ready to help heat up mine in kind. I warmed myself and my breakfast of brook trout was made into a soup. I caught the fish the day before and left it to keep hot by the fire overnight in a covered cooking pot. It would serve to fuel my hike today, another 20 miles south into the Appalachian mountains of Southern Virginia. 

“Man, just look at that view.” I said wistfully as I took in the landscape. The place I picked to camp for the night was a small flat near one of the many peaks of the mountain chain. The taller hilltops poked their heads just above the low lying banks of fog that flowed through the valleys like a river, making the mountain tops look a lot more like tiny islands in an archipelago of clouds. A single hawk flew off into the distance, eager to begin it’s hunt for the day and I couldn’t help but wish I could see what it saw as it glided through the air. Mornings like this are what I live for. 

After downing a cup of instant coffee and my pot of fish soup I collected my meager gear, the small cooking pot and mug, my knife and camp ax, and my sleeping bag, and set about putting out the fire and separating the coals. Once I was convinced that the threat of a forest fire was eliminated and I wouldn’t be hunted down by some bear in an olive green hat and pants, I shouldered my rucksack and began making my way down the long mountain ridge. 

It was my third day on this stretch of trail, and I had quite a way left to go before I crossed state lines into North Carolina. My goal was to hike the entire mountain chain over the summer as a personal treat for a stressful, but successful semester. I retrieved a map and looked at the trail I was taking, and the locations on the trail I had marked as my past camping sites. I had started near Montpelier, Vermont which was close to my hometown just a little way east of Lake Champlain. I followed the trail down to where I made camp last night atop Brushy Mountain overlooking Currin Valley to the west and Rye Valley to the east. 

Looking out to the east I saw the sun lifting above the peaks of another mountain top, Little Mountain, as it chased away the sea of white fog in the valley in large, curling wisps. It was a scene like that from a movie, or one of many books written by those old mountain folk and that morning as I stood alone on a lichen covered cliff and marveled; It felt like a scene made for me. 

I hiked my way through the hills for a few hours before taking a break at a small mountain spring to refresh myself and refill my water jugs. The water was crystal clear and cold as ice as it flowed through the limestone rocks and down the mountainside into the river that flows through the valley beneath me. Large hardwood trees still grew in these woods, a reminder of what nature was like before humans had ever set foot into the region and provided plenty of food and shelter to the animals that called these forests home. 

My shoulders ached a bit as I adjusted my bags, and took in my surroundings before spotting a nice little sunlit clearing in the trees. “Might as well take a chance to rest while I can. Don’t wanna overdo it out here, seeing as it’s about a three day walk back out from here.” I checked what time it was on my cell phone. “Yup, about twelve, and no service either. Great. Guess I’ll have to rely on that book I brought along.” I said as I made my way to the clearing. 

I was (and still am) an avid outdoorsman, and I know a thing or two about what’s edible out there, but it was always a bit reassuring to have a way to confirm whether or not a berry or weed is going to kill me if I eat it. I grabbed my book from my rucksack and set about identifying plants and fungi that were edible and growing this time of year in late spring, gathering a veritable buffet of greens, budding plants, roots, and a few early mushrooms as well to munch on along the way. 

I could feel the warm breeze of a new summer blow through the pristine mountain air and I stopped to enjoy the feeling of it caressing my skin and hair when I heard what sounded like a faint voice carried in the wind. I strained a little trying to catch what direction the voices may be coming from but it was too faint to tell clearly. Too faint to even tell what they were saying, but it was clear by the tone and cadence that it wasn't English. The breeze died down and the voices disappeared along with it. 

“Huh…must be the mountains speaking to me.” Something my grandfather used to say. He would tell me stories about how the mountains would talk to you through the wind if you listened hard enough. A little bit of "Mountain Magic" as it were. I shrugged it off and took a bite of a particularly savory mushroom, threw the rest in a baggie, ready to continue my trek. I was ahead of schedule, but that didn't mean I could just stop and lose myself in my memories with more than half of my hike for the day still left to complete. 

The blue tinted mountain range served as a perfect getaway from my other life. Modernity demanded I interact with the throngs of people that passed through the streets namelessly everyday, and the gentle sounds of mother earth helped soothe the weariness of civilization from my soul. It had been nearly ten years since I moved away from my childhood home and into a burg for work and college. I could remember how excited I was when I received a letter from the University with my name on it offering me admission to their halls. It was my intent to study forestry in one of my state’s many institutions of higher learning, and I picked one in the city, hoping that I’d enjoy the change of pace that came along with it. I quickly came to the realization that I hated that concrete jungle. 

No stars dotted the night sky on a moonless night save for an errant satellite. There was too much light pollution to see the real stars, so pretending that the blinking artificial ones were real would have to do. The city smelled too, as what little breezes blew through it smelled of asphalt and sometimes sour milk. Sure there were things there that I would have never been able to partake in back in my rural hometown, like all of the stores and shopping centers, food courts of any cuisine under the sun, and night life at various clubs. But I missed knowing the people who ran the little corner store back home, or my cousin who loved to stop by on the weekends to visit and share some of her newfound passion for baking breads. 

The people in the city were always too preoccupied in their own lives to care even for common courtesy and barely talked to each other outside of work or their small social circles. When I first moved into my new apartment, I had made it a point to bake brownies for my neighbors as a gesture of good faith, like I remember my mother doing when we first moved into our new house outside of the town I grew up in. It was just a couple of miles away from where we lived before and we still knew everyone around us, but it was a tradition for southerners. My neighbors at the apartment? Not so much. They turned my chocolate confections down or asked me if they were spiked which spoke of distrust. It made me feel terribly lonely.

Not to mention school. I picked this college because it was highly rated amongst its peers and its graduates were some of the tops in their fields. I should have known better than to expect that the forestry department here was more of a traditional and antiquated vestige of what it used to be before the city grew taller than the trees in the park. And that park was the last bit of woods for miles around, which made “going out for field studies” more of a disappointment than anything, especially since my class had less than ten attending members and there were rumors that we may be the last graduating class before the program is removed. Nature was supposed to be wild and free, full of trees and grasses and flowers and animals…not a park where the only thing that grows is dissatisfaction and concrete.

I sighed, taking in another breath of sweet spring and soaking in the midday sun. Out here, there weren’t any worries. I could just build a fire and whittle or write or swim in the river or do whatever it was I wanted. No deadlines, no research papers, no strangers wanting to sell me garbage on the street corners. Just peace and qui-

"..." I could hear whispering again. This time, the wind had calmed down, and I could clearly make out two voices having a conversation but it was oddly muted. Like hearing two people having a hushed argument through the walls at my apartment but only about thirty feet or so from where I stood, behind a particularly large oak tree. 

“Hello?” I called out ahead of me, but received no response in return other than a continued sound of an oddly hushed conversation. "Maybe they're foreign travelers. I don't know what language that is though." I thought to myself as I approached the sound warily. This stretch of trail had been notorious in the past for murderers and kidnappers and that unwelcome thought crossed my mind. I didn’t like the idea of my hike being cut short by a stabbing, or worse, so I made sure to give the tree plenty of space. 

The whispers suddenly vanished as I rounded the tree beside the path and I looked towards the spot I could have swore they were coming from. I shook my head and stopped to stare at the ground around the tree expectantly as if the dirt or broken acorn shells would tell me where the people hiding there had gone. The nuts sat silent though, and the tree was no more helpful either as it stood there in resolute defiance of my confusion. 

“Maybe I didn’t sleep as well as I thought I did…I guess?” That didn’t seem right to me, as I always slept best under a star filled sky but it was either that, I was still over-stressed from my escape from the city, or I was starting to go crazy. I didn’t like that latter thought much. I tried to shake the idea of early onset dementia from my head and continued my hike, but the voices I kept hearing left me a little shaken and paranoid. 

There were all manner of ghost tales, kidnappings, and disappearances throughout the national forest of the United States and they all came to bear in my mind as I stumped along my path. The paranoid thoughts of falling into some forgotten cave or being whisked away by aliens, or Bigfoot...maybe even civil war soldier spirits or some weird redneck druggie sapped all the enjoyment I'd had from me and left me feeling anxious.

Several more hours passed on until the sun began to sink behind the mountains in the distance. Deciding it not to be wise to hike in the dark, especially considering the earlier events of the day, I stopped by a rocky outcropping that created partial cover off the edge of the trail and set up camp there. Soon after pulling out a flint and steel, I had a warm fire and a bag full of wild edibles to keep me company which helped me relax and feel more at ease.

I sat by the crackling pit, chewing away at red-bud flowers and some small morel mushrooms I had collected previously while I boiled sassafras roots for a root beer like drink and watched the sun recede from view and relinquish the day to a blanket of stars in the night sky. The crickets took to singing and chirping while they could before the cool night air settled in and chased them back into their underground homes. Once again, the world was at peace. 

I placed my sleeping bag near the fire and prepared for bed, taking a moment to relieve the call of nature a little way from the camp. I was thankful for the set of warm hiking gear I had brought along as the cooler night air nipped at my skin. “Kinda glad I decided to make this a spring thing. I'd be freezing my ass off out here right now if I came during winter break.” I shivered at the thought as I cleaned up and started making my way back to my camp. 

I'd almost made it back to the warm glow of my camp before I was frightened nearly out of my skin by what sounded like a shout or scream from over the edge of the nearby trail. I froze and listened, thankful that I’d just emptied my bladder, and waited to see if it happened again, noting it came from below the cliffs just past the well worn path. I stood still for what felt like at least ten minutes before deciding that whatever it was had moved on when I noticed something strange to my right.

Floating, about 3 feet above the ground and just a few yards from me, was what could only be described as a…mirage? It almost looked like rippling water, though it levitated in midair and the waves traveled vertically instead of laterally from a central point, reminding me of a portal from some movie or game I once played. I blinked and rubbed my eyes, thinking them just tired before looking again at a now normal, non-ripply air in the forest. 

“C’mon, get a hold of yourself.” I said, still unsure of what I saw, and now a bit more sure that I was starting to lose my marbles. “I…think I'd better get back to camp and make sure I didn’t eat one of the bad mushrooms from my book.” I mumbled to myself. I knew that couldn’t have been right though. I’d eaten plenty of morels before and they were not hallucinogenic or poisonous, and very easy to identify. I confirmed that my fungi weren't the kind that make one taste sounds before I slipping into my sleeping bag early to rest, hoping some sleep would chase away the weirdness that I’d been experiencing. 

I settled into my cocoon, worming around a little to clear a particularly offensive pebble from under my shoulder. The campfire crackled gleefully, seemingly enjoying the show while I struggled, but it wasn't the only noise I could hear. The crickets were still serenading each other as they performed their nightly routines. The breeze picked up slightly, causing the newly grown leaves to rustle as though slowly shivering at the air's chilly touch. Even the nighttime predators were announcing themselves, as a great horned owl hooted somewhere in the distance. The woods, even at night, were alive and carrying on as though nothing strange was happening which helped set my mind at ease. A noisy forest is a peaceful one. 

I was on the edge of sleep when that peace was shattered by what sounded like a cannon and a party horn mixed together fired off right by my head. I nearly tore out of my sleeping bag, tripping over it and myself as I tried to escape whatever ghostly soldier was haunting the trail with a cannon on his birthday. My heart raced in my chest as I stared out into the woods that were only vaguely lit by the orange flicker of campfire light and the pale glow of a waning moon.  

Nothing. Not so much as a hint of the ghostly apparition of the several century old poltergeist who I knew was out there, somewhere, snickering at me from behind a rock or tree. I tried desperately to calm my nerves as I shook more so from fear than the cold night breeze when I saw another ripple in the air above the camp. My body suddenly began to rumble from a deep guttural growl from the largest bear-lion-elephant hybrid I’d ever heard that came from the rippling waves overhead. My mind had had enough, and my body immediately took it upon itself to engage in a full sprint in any direction but here. 

The roar issued again as I sprinted and gasped for the chilled air that burned my lungs. I turned around hoping to see what was after me, but my eyes still refused to reveal whatever unknown predator was now barreling towards me. I heard, and felt, the heavy footfalls of something I couldn't see and what sounded like several sets of hooves charging in my direction, and I was sure that some ghostly revenant had unleashed a hell-beast upon me in the woods of Southern Virginia to whisk me away to a swift doom. Instead, what whisked away was the ground beneath my feet. 

In my fear driven dash, I had forgotten where I was and the cliffs sought to remind me in the most unforgiving of ways. Time slowed to a crawl as I looked down, feeling almost like the coyote from the old cartoons as gravity seemed to give me a moment to register what a grim fate the three-hundred foot fall into a rocky mountainside would provide. I screamed like a frightened schoolgirl as the realization hit me, that I was falling to my death, and just as quickly as my mind raced in my head, so did the rippling ground below race to meet my body.