The motel room didn’t have a clock, but it must have been around six AM. It was one of those strange late summer mornings when the sun rises so early that time stops meaning much at all. I sat up slowly, feeling my body come to life against all its protests. I turned to my left to see Chris, sleeping soundly on the other twin bed with his face pressed into the pillow, his long arms and legs dangling off the sides. He barely moved, as though he could be dead.

I decided at that point, to go for a walk. I was awake anyway and what else was I going to do with myself for the next few hours before Chris woke up and we left. I never liked to be still for too long, if my body was idle, my brain would wander too far away, and I’d be left with too many things to think about. I went to the bathroom to splash water on my face then pulled on yesterdays clothes. I didn’t care about making too much noise – Chris had slept through most of Tornado season when we lived in Arizona a few years back. I slid the door shut, leaving the keys with my brother who turned and let out a strange guttural groan.

It didn’t seem that anyone else was staying in the motel. There was an eerie quietness in the August air, not a breeze or a person. Already the sky was beaming bright blue, clear as anything. It was going to be hot today, like a day on Amity Island just before the shark arrived. The motel was located along a quiet stretch of road on the edge of the protected area around the Bluestone River. It was early so I couldn’t have expected much but the area was strangely devoid as if I was the only person in the universe for just a second. I smelled cigarette smoke and came to my senses to realise that the motel was in fact staffed.

“Up early?” The bearded clerk at the check-in desk cooed at me as I walked past his open reception booth. He put the cigarette out in an ancient-looking ashtray as he looked up from a box filled with pamphlets - somewhat of a deadly combination I observed. At check-in the night before, a woman had helped us. Something about the angles of this mans face matched hers. Similar freckles across the nose, honey-brown eyes and almost Roman nose. Was it a family business then, at this motel? I loved to relish in the details back then, it broke up the monotony of day after day. Taking in every inch and mulling over it into infinity. I remember this mans face so clearly and yet I could not recall the name of the motel. Maybe that was just it. The Motel.

“Figured I’d make the most of the morning, any trails around here?” I asked.

“Yeah, if you head over the road there’s a marked one that follows the old rail line. Runs for a few miles up to Whistler lake.” The clerk leaned under the desk to grab a map which he handed to me. My thumb brushed his hand.

“Jesus, you got Raynaud’s or something kid? Your hands are freezing.”

“Oh, yeah. I can get a little anaemic.”

“Well don’t go on a trail without a little something to keep you going, we’ve had a few bear sightings recently, wouldn’t want you passing out and something coming along.” He turned behind him to another box, presumably filled with vending machine refills and handed me a pack of beef jerky.

“Thank you…uh, I can give you change –

“No worries, honestly. Least I can do for you, have a good walk.”

I thanked the clerk again and headed out the door, crossing the road quickly and passing picnic tables that lead to a well-trodden track into thick pine forest. It always struck me how you’d meet good people almost anywhere. Some tiny motel in the middle of fuck-knows west Virginia and this guy just gives me free food because he thought my hands were too cold. If he’d known the truth, he’d be a little less trusting I suppose. I look much younger than I am, even under my own unique burdens but a polite, tired-looking seventeen-year-old with an apparent lust for the outdoors could be remarkably disarming it seemed. As I trudged slowly into the woods, I turned to look back down the trail at the motel, now dripping in golden early morning sun.

It was so perfectly framed, like a romance-era painting with the gloss still drying. If I reached out to it, I might even smudge the paint. When a car drove past, the first id seen that morning, I wasn’t sure how long I’d been staring. Maybe hours, maybe years. I turned and headed further up the trail, smelling the air and thinking about where we’d be driving later today.

“If you could go anywhere in the whole united states, where would it be?” Chris had asked me not two weeks ago as we sat at our tiny dinner table in the apartment in Salt Lake City. Utah wasn’t good for us; we’d known that for a while. Cities weren’t good for us. It was harder to find what we needed, harder to blend in, harder to find the community that we needed to make us seem more normal. There was nobody else like us either, or while we didn’t like to spend too much time amongst others it was good to know at least some people you could trust. Our father had told us that years ago, that you don’t want to be the one sitting in the castle at the edge of town, waiting for the peasants to come to you with pitchforks and flaming torches. No, the way to do it was to embed yourself, to become a fixture in the community, to be known. So that if anyone asked questions, nobody could say you were a little strange. At least, no stranger than anyone else.

The trail began to open and soon it was at a perpendicular intersection with a straight wide path. A faded information sign told me this was a portion of the Jupiter Pass rail-line, the tracks had been torn out in the 1960s. I half expected to walk onto the track and be suddenly knocked back by a passing train, carrying lumber out of state. If I closed my eyes, I could almost hear the rumble and chug of the great machine passing through the trees. Did I dare to stay on the tracks or jump to the side? Opening my eyes, I found only the clear dappled sunlight where the train tracks once stood and not a single engine in sight. Ghosts, I thought, and carried further along the trail, heading in the direction of the lake apparently. I carried on for a while, not knowing how far I had gone or how much time had passed. It must have been close to six when I decided to crack open the jerky. It was leathery and chewing it made me feel like a dog with a raw-hide bone. Something about the bite and the salt and the imagined metallic taste of it was enough to take my mind off the continuous scratching at the back of my head, like something clawing desperately at an iron door. It would come out later though, just not right now. A light breeze blew behind me.

And then I felt it. Something slick and oily in the air. The iron grit of it caught my tongue and I found myself turning to gaze into the pines on my right. It was like the woods were breathing me in. Leaving the path, I pushed through the trees slowly, the quiet crunch of the needles under my shoes barely cutting the air. The birds went quiet, like a canary ceasing its song for a gas leak in a mine.

When I came upon it, I was almost disappointed. I had known it wasn’t human from the scent alone but still, I had hoped for something more exciting. When you become aware of the true strangeness of the world, you never expect the mundane anymore. It was a possum; its head had been caught in a bear trap and it had bled out. It was dead now, its blood and fluid pooling underneath it and soaking into the ground. Flies gathered around it, walked over its eyes. But still, it must have been recent, I leaned down and felt the warmth of it lingering in the air. The scent lingered about my mouth. It was sourer now, almost bitter, hidden behind that familiar metallic tang. I felt my teeth grind slowly as I pondered it.

A shadow passed ahead of me and I looked up. There was a red fox standing a few meters away from me, peering over a felled tree. Our eyes met, sinking my gaze into his. He was beautiful, like a red guardian of the woods with gleaming golden eyes. Two apex predators, frozen at the altar of meat, leading each other in prayer. But this wasn't for me. I stood slowly, relinquishing the possum to the fox. This was his food, mine was elsewhere, back at the motel smoking cigarettes and sorting pamphlets. I bowed slowly and turned back to the trail. The fox barely made a sound as he burrowed into the possum. Unrelenting, unregretful. Just nature taking its natural course.

As I came back to the motel, the clerk had swapped out. A teenage boy stood at the booth now, staring into space as he scrolled through his phone – how did he even get signal out here. The clock behind him read close to eight and I nodded quietly as I passed him. A few more cars had arrived already, packed high with camping and hiking equipment. Outdoors enthusiasts craving that final trek through the wilderness before crashing back into civilisation for the winter months, a kind of socially acceptable masochism that I barely understood. I arrived at the door to our room, noting it had been locked open. I entered, seeing Chris now awake and fully dressed, puzzling over a road map he’d laid across his bed.

“Where’d you get to, weirdo?” he asked. I came to sit next to him on the bed.

“Went for a walk, creep. You want some?” I offered him the jerky.

Chris graciously accepted and we chewed in silence for a few minutes as he continued to stare at the map.

“I think we need to take the 34…or the 32.”

“Why don’t we ask them to check online at the desk?”

“I can read a map, Murphy, we just need to figure out the most efficient route.”

“We could do that with Google.”

“We can do it with a map.” Chris gave me a stern look, before furrowing his brow. “Sorry, I’m hungry.”

“You and me both, but we’ll get there tonight and we can get something right?”

Chris smiled grimly, stroking his hair out of his face and wrapping an arm around my shoulders and squeezing me.

“Yeah, we will Murph, it’s going to be good for us. I can feel it.” Then he grimaced. “This is really bad jerky by the way. Did you pay for this?”

“Guy at reception gave it to me, it sucks hard. Takes the edge off though.”

“Speaking of,” Chris stood and grabbed the room keys from his bedside table and retrieved another set from his back pocket which he threw to me, “I’ll go start checking out and you can pack the car. We’ll get breakfast on the road.” He thumbed through a stack of bills in his wallet.

“Am I allowed to drive today?” I chanced.

“Absolutely fucking not.” Chris wagged a finger at me as I grabbed both our rucksacks, slipped out the door and headed for the parking lot. The day had started finally, the hikers were gathered around their cars, giggling and posing as one of their party took a photo. It felt as though I were watching something momentous, a trip that would change all their lives for better or for worse. They heaved their backpacks on and ran across the road, soon retreating into the trees where I had been earlier. By the time I reached our car, they had disappeared completely from earshot. It all seemed relentlessly human, to venture into this curated wilderness for the slightest chance at adventure.

I popped the trunk of the car and stuffed our luggage inside. Chris came up behind me and clapped a hand on my shoulder.

“All paid up, bud.”

I sat down in the passenger seat and pulled open the glove compartment to retrieve our sunglasses.

“You really think we need those today?” Chris asked, sceptical.

“It’s going to be a scorcher come on.” I passed a pair over to Chris and he pulled out of the parking lot slowly, heading north to our next destination.