Chapter 18
Tuesday breathed in the scents of the forest, relieved to be free of the helmet. Chilly air, a distant creek, dead leaves breaking down into soil, the specific green-dark smell of hemlock — and underneath all of it, the mountain itself. Old and venerable.
Her wolf rose in her psyche and just breathed. This wasn’t woods near the city. This was forest. Far from civilization.
There were only two cars in the lot besides Knife’s bike. A Monday in late winter, which meant they’d have the trail largely to themselves, and Tuesday exhaled.
Knife was already shouldering his pack, and she noted he’d opened the bike compartment with hers inside.
She put it on, fastened the front strap, and smiled at him. “Thanks for thinking of this. I love the feel of this place already.”
“This is my favorite trail,” he told her. “But I won’t spoil it for you. Want you to experience it as we go.”
They hiked a good ways before she could hear the water she’d scented in the distance from the parking lot, and Tuesday let herself fall into the rhythm of boots on dirt with morning light coming through the canopy in long, cold slants.
She heard him breathing behind her, steady and unhurried, and felt her own breathing match it without deciding to. She blamed the submissive part of her brain for it, and told herself it had nothing to do with him specifically.
Her inner wolf, however, smirked at her and settled deeper into the pace, following his lead.
The trail started easy, meandering through a cathedral of hemlock and hardwood until they came around a bend, and she stopped.
The huge hemlock stood at the edge of a rock shelter, its trunk wider than her arm span.
Wider than both their arm spans combined.
The bark was deeply furrowed and dark with moisture, the roots gripping the rock and dirt with the strength of a being who’d been here for centuries and would likely be here for many more.
The rock shelter curved behind, moss covering all the nooks and crannies.
She stepped close and looked up. Put her hand on it to say a quiet hello, and to just feel it.
“Do you know how old it is?” she asked.
“Around five hundred years, according to the experts.”
“Yeah, it feels that old, doesn’t it?”
“It does. I mean, it was two hundred years old when the Cherokee were still living in this gorge,” Knife said, from just behind her shoulder.
“It’s seen both people and animals use the shelter for centuries,” she noted. “It feels sentient. Not quite entlike, but… an ent without legs and feet.”
“I love that you think so, too. Also, that you shared that with me. Thank you.”
She turned to face him, and then stepped back because the moment was suddenly too serious. Unsure of how to handle it, she shrugged and said, “We’re both wolves. We pick up on stuff I don’t think most humans can sense. Not something I’d share with a human.”
“Do you often hike with humans?” he asked.
“No. Other pack members, sometimes. That’s pretty much it.”
She looked back to the tree for a long moment. Her wolf was looking at it too — something young and feral acknowledging something older and different, a silent sentry full of wisdom Tuesday couldn’t begin to fathom.
And she tried not to notice the wedge she’d put between her and Knife by reminding him she’s part of the pack.
They moved on, and Blue Hole Falls stopped her next — the waterfall dropping nine feet into a pool so clear she could see every stone on the bottom, the water a deep, improbable green.
“That color is… it looks like an oversaturated photo,” she said.
“It does,” he agreed.
The water sounds grew louder until the trail took a left turn near the confluence of two creeks, joining together to make a larger one.
“Big Fiery Gizzard Creek and Little Fiery Gizzard Creek,” he told her.
“What is it called once they join?”
He smiled. “Big Fiery Gizzard Creek.”
“Do I hear a waterfall?”
“Black Canyon Cascades. Not far.”
The cascades were almost violent, the water narrowing in a rock canyon and roaring through it. The walls were stained dark, and the air was ten degrees colder from the wind and mist. The power of nature.
She looked up at the sliver of sky above them. “I feel like the earth is keeping a secret down here.”
He looked up too. “Mother Nature more than earth, but whatever we call it, she’s keeping all kinds of secrets.”
Not much farther, they came to several tall rock features, and at first, she thought they were chimneys from an old house, the wooden structure gone, but she quickly realized they weren’t manmade — they were much too wide, too tall, and not at all uniform.
“What on earth?” she asked.
“The chimneys,” he told her. “Rock that didn’t erode, but all the soil around them did. The geology here traces back to the Pennsylvanian age. Three hundred million years, give or take. Everything you're standing on was once a river delta.”
She frowned. “But we’re on a damned tall mountain.”
“Oh, before it was a river delta, it was an ocean floor. After, it was buried under sediment, then uplifted. Tectonic stuff.”
The biggest rose sixty feet out of the earth and looked deliberate. Architectural. Tuesday left the trail to walk around the base of the largest one and pressed her palm flat against the rock, feeling the cold of it, the texture. Was she imagining the deep, deep roots?
“Have you ever climbed them?” she asked.
He grinned. “No, but I’ve considered it.”
She was tempted to give it a try, but something told her he had a lot of trail still to show her, so she didn’t.
Not quite a mile later, he left the main trail, and she followed without questioning him since he clearly knew the way. Plus, she was pretty sure she could hear another waterfall off in that direction.
And sure enough, the sounds grew louder until they stood looking down at a beautiful waterfall.
“Sycamore Falls,” he said. “Always seems worth the side trip.”
“Absolutely. If this is a side trip, I can’t wait to see the destination.” She grinned at him. “But I’m enjoying the journey. I can see why this is your favorite trail.”
She breathed in and parsed the scents. Moss and minerals, crayfish, a myriad of tree species and other plants. A raptor of some kind. Some squirrels. Maybe an otter, though she didn’t see one. Also, a large buck had recently peed nearby.
He waited patiently while she took it all in, and she appreciated that.
They descended the rough path back to the main trail, sinking into the gorge as they trekked past white blazes on trees, the sounds of the creek soothing beside them.
Until it wasn’t there anymore.
She stopped walking, and Knife stopped behind her.
“It’s gone,” she said.
“Yeah.”
She turned to look at him. “The creek is gone. It didn’t branch off somewhere. It just… disappeared!”
He smiled. “Karst. There’s a cave system under it, and the water drops into it and runs underground for about a quarter mile before it surfaces again. Depending on the water table, sometimes it disappears and reappears in different places.”
She stood still and listened to the silence where the water had been, and her wolf was as flabbergasted as the human. Water didn’t just vanish. And yet.
“That’s mind-boggling,” she said. “Something I’ve never encountered before.”
“First time I saw it, I thought I’d taken a wrong turn.” He pointed to a blaze not far from them, to the right of the trail. “But we’re good.”
They walked on, and sure enough, about a quarter mile later, the sound came back — water murmuring under the rocks at first, then surfacing to rush over and around the rocks once again, just there again as if it’d never left.
Tuesday exhaled. “Okay. Good. It’s like all is right with the world again. Creeks don’t just vanish.”
Knife made a sound that was almost a laugh.
They rounded a turn and she smelled the unmistakable musk of a skunk. Not the spray, the actual animal, and she zeroed in on a laurel thicket forty yards to the side of the trail.
She opened her mouth to say something, and Knife started walking heavier. Making noise.
He moved in front of her, when they’d either walked side-by-side on the wide sections of the trail, or she’d mostly led since the disappearing creek.
And he walked differently. More like a human, stepping on leaves and gravel instead of dirt and rock.
The skunk scent faded as the creature likely waddled away from them, and shortly thereafter, he went from walking like a clumsy human to the two-legged wolf she knew him to be, and an undefinable warmth blossomed in her chest.
He hadn’t stopped to announce it, hadn’t made it a production, hadn’t needed to demonstrate that he’d smelled it first. He’d just handled it in the easiest way possible. Make noise before an encounter happened.
His quiet practicality appealed to her in a way she didn’t want to consider too deeply, so she pointed out the variety of trees — poplars, beech, birch, maple, dogwood, holly, laurel.
And he told her he’d show her a bigleaf magnolia when they came to it.
They talked of the world they walked through, scrambling up and down ravines, over loose rocks that required concentration, through a little fern basin with the promised bigleaf magnolia, and on narrow ledges high above the water at times, until they arrived at a section of trail that truly boggled the mind.
Boulders the size of houses, tumbled and stacked at angles that should have been impossible, with CCC-built stone stairs threading through the gaps.
Tuesday contemplated the best way to the top, and felt her wolf's inner ears prick forward with excitement.
The four of them, two humans carrying two wolves inside them, attacked this section of the trail.
They went up fast, ignoring the uncertain footing and trusting their instincts, committing to each step fully, weight forward, no hesitation, because hesitation was when loose rocks became a problem. When the surface underfoot shifted, they were already somewhere else.