“Three Miles Down”:
My boots crunched against the gravel path as I tightened the straps of my backpack, adjusting the weight for what felt like the hundredth time. The air in the North Cascades carried that sharp, clean scent of pine needles and damp earth, mixed with something colder—thin mountain air that hinted at something ancient and untamed. It was late August 2019, and after months of planning, our backpacking trip had finally begun.
It was supposed to be the perfect adventure: three days, two nights, and a twenty-mile loop through Washington’s most rugged and beautiful backcountry. With the snow long melted and summer winding down, we thought we had timed it perfectly. The trio of us—me, Evan, my best friend Nate, and his girlfriend, Marissa—had all done this kind of thing before. Nate and I had logged dozens of trail miles together, and Marissa was a rock climber with better instincts for navigation than anyone I knew. Confident. Capable. Prepared. We weren’t reckless college kids anymore.
We set out under a cloudless sky, our spirits high. The sun filtered through the dense evergreens, casting moving shadows over the forest floor. We took photos as we hiked—peaks like jagged teeth, glacial lakes that glinted like sapphire glass, wildflowers in stubborn bloom. It felt unreal, like we were walking through a painting.
That first night, we camped beside a gurgling creek tucked between two ridges. The water was icy, but it felt good to soak our sore feet. We set up our tents and cooked instant noodles on a portable stove. Firelight danced across our faces as we passed around a tin mug of whiskey, the burn warming us against the creeping chill.
“Tomorrow’s where it gets interesting,” Marissa said, sipping her tea. Her silhouette was outlined by the fire, her breath curling in the night air. “We’re looking at a 2,000-foot climb over three miles.”
Nate chuckled, flicking a twig into the flames. “We’ll crush it. Should hit the pass before noon.”
I smiled, nodding, but something about the way the forest pressed in beyond the firelight made my stomach twist. The darkness here felt different. Heavy. I tried to shake it off—probably just trail fatigue and too much caffeine.
The next morning came sharp and cool. We broke camp early, dew clinging to our boots and the trees dripping from the morning mist. The climb was grueling. Switchback after switchback, we pushed upward through loose rock and steep inclines. The air thinned, every breath a task. By the time we reached the saddle between two peaks, the clouds had already begun to gather—thick, gray curtains crawling across the sky.
“This isn’t good,” I muttered, squinting into the distance as I wiped sweat off my brow.
Marissa checked the map, her brow furrowed. “We’re about an hour behind schedule. We’ve still got six miles downhill to the next site.”
Nate shrugged, ever the optimist. “We’ll beat the storm. Let’s keep moving.”
We began the descent, but the trail twisted tighter and steeper than expected. At one point, it narrowed to a foot-wide strip carved into the side of a cliff, with nothing but open air and a steep fall to our left. The wind picked up, and every gust made me feel like the mountain was breathing. Watching.
Then the rain came.
First a drizzle, then a sheet of freezing water that turned the trail into slick mud. The gravel gave way beneath our boots, the footing treacherous. I called out, voice barely audible over the wind. “Slow down! Watch your step!”
Marissa turned, water pouring off her hood. “We can’t stop here—it’s too dangerous. Keep going!”
That’s when Nate slipped.
He was just ahead of me, stepping around a rock when his foot skidded. He yelped, arms flailing, and in an instant he was on the ground, sliding toward the edge.
“Shit—Nate!” I dropped my poles and lunged, grabbing his wrist just as his legs swung into open air. His pack dragged him downward, but I held on, muscles screaming. Marissa was there in seconds, grabbing his other arm and heaving.
We pulled him back, both of us panting, soaked and shaking.
“I’m okay,” Nate gasped, but his face had gone pale. “Just slipped. I’m fine.”
He wasn’t. His ankle had taken the brunt of the fall, swelling fast beneath his boot. He tried to stand but couldn’t put weight on it without crying out in pain.
Marissa looked around, soaked to the bone, rain plastering her hair to her face. “There’s an old ranger outpost a few miles off the trail. It’s not used often, but it might be our best shot.”
“No cell service,” I said quietly, holding up my phone. “We’re blind.”
“I can walk,” Nate insisted, teeth clenched.
But he couldn’t. Every step was a battle. The trail grew worse—washed out in places, the markers either missing or obscured by fallen branches and moss. The rain didn’t stop. The temperature dropped. We were deep in the backcountry with no GPS, one injured hiker, and the wilderness closing in.
Marissa stopped suddenly and unfolded the map again, hands trembling from the cold. “Something’s wrong. I think we missed a fork back there.”
“What do you mean we missed it?” I snapped, panic creeping into my voice.
“The trails here are poorly marked,” she said. “It’s easy to lose track in this weather. We could be half a mile in the wrong direction.”
Nate slumped against a tree, groaning. “This is so screwed.”
“We keep moving,” Marissa said firmly. “Standing still is a death sentence.”
So we moved. Blind, wet, desperate. Nate leaned on me, gritting his teeth. The forest blurred together—gray trunks, black mud, flashes of our headlamps bouncing off wet leaves. Every sound felt closer than it should have been. Every crack of a branch set my heart racing.
Then we saw it: a light, faint and yellow, blinking through the trees like a dying firefly.
“There!” I pointed, nearly crying.
We stumbled into the clearing. The ranger cabin was real—a squat, wooden structure with a single glowing window. But when we knocked, no one answered. The place was locked tight.
“We can’t stay out here,” Marissa said, and without hesitation, she picked up a rock and smashed the window. The crash of glass startled a flock of birds from the nearby trees.
We climbed in, soaked and shivering. The inside smelled of mildew and old wood. A cot, a table, a few broken chairs. Barely anything else.
I found a first aid kit in a rusted cabinet and wrapped Nate’s ankle as best I could. Marissa checked for a radio—it was there, but dead. No batteries. No lifeline.
“We’ll wait out the night,” she said, her voice hollow. “At first light, we try to find the main trail.”
That night, I didn’t sleep. Every gust of wind against the cabin made me jump. I kept looking toward the window, half-expecting to see a face staring in. I couldn’t shake the feeling that we weren’t as alone as we thought. The woods were too still. Too quiet.
At dawn, we set out again. Nate could barely walk, his weight crushing on us both. Our clothes were still damp. My fingers numb. But we moved, driven by the need to escape the jaws of that mountain.
When the dirt road finally appeared through the trees, I nearly collapsed from relief. A truck rounded the bend—orange stripes, green door, government logo. A ranger.
He was older, with leathery skin and tired eyes. “Name’s Cal,” he said, helping us into the cab. “You three look like hell.”
He gave us water and warmth and words we hadn’t heard in what felt like days: “You’re safe now.”
Hours later, sitting in the ranger station wrapped in a thermal blanket, I stared at the map on the wall. We had wandered nearly five miles off the main loop.
Nate muttered from his wheelchair, “Not doing that again.”
Marissa gave a weak laugh. “Sure, Nate. Let’s see how you feel next year.”
But I didn’t laugh. I just stared out the window, watching the trees sway under gray skies. The mountains didn’t care about us. They never did. And I knew now, with absolute clarity, that the wilderness doesn't kill out of malice.
It kills by indifference.
I love the mountains.
The way the air gets sharper the higher you climb, biting at your lungs like it’s testing if you really belong there. The silence—thick, heavy, ancient—punctuated only by the wind rustling through the evergreens or the distant caw of a raven. The trees don’t just surround you; they embrace you, crowding close like old friends who don’t need to speak to be understood. There’s something comforting about being swallowed by wilderness. It's where I feel most alive, where the noise of the world fades away and I can finally breathe.
Last fall, I packed up for a solo trip to my favorite spot—a little-known campsite nestled beside a creek, deep within the folds of the forest. No cell service. No roads. No other people for miles. Just me, my gear, and the wild. I’d been there a few times before, enough to think of it as mine. My hideaway. My reset button.
But this time, the mountains didn’t feel welcoming. They felt... wrong. Not in a dramatic, movie-trailer kind of way. More like a bad taste in your mouth that you can’t quite place. A prickle on the back of your neck you try to brush off. I still think about that trip more than I want to. About what I found. And about what might’ve found me.
The hike in was uneventful, if a bit messy. The trail was slick with mud from a week of rain, and each step was a squelching struggle to stay upright. My pack was heavy, but the rhythm of the walk lulled me into a kind of calm. Leaves dripped lazily onto my shoulders from the canopy above. The scent of wet pine and decaying wood filled my nose. A hawk cried somewhere overhead, echoing against the cliffs.
I reached the clearing just as the sky began bleeding orange and gold. The low sun caught the creek just right, turning it into a ribbon of light threading through the trees. I should’ve felt relief. Should’ve smiled. Instead, my stomach tightened.
The campsite was a mess.
Trash was strewn everywhere—crushed beer cans, some of them riddled with bullet holes, were scattered around like someone had been using them for target practice. A few broken arrows jutted from the side of a rotting stump, splinters radiating out from the impact points. Over by a cluster of moss-covered rocks was a heap of animal bones—small, brittle-looking, gnawed clean. Maybe rabbits. Maybe not. I didn’t want to look too closely.
Then there was the trash bag. Black, soaked through, and torn open like something—or someone—had gone rifling through it in a hurry. Clothes were half-buried in the dirt, paper fluttered weakly in the breeze, damp and smeared. I crouched down, heart pounding against my ribs. This wasn’t some hiker who forgot to clean up. This wasn’t even just vandalism. It looked lived-in. Like someone had squatted here for a while... and left in a rush.
My throat tightened. I slowly turned in a circle, scanning the trees. The creek still babbled, oblivious. But everything else was too still. Too silent. Even the birds seemed to be holding their breath.
"Who does this?" I muttered, half to myself, half to the forest. I nudged a can with my boot, watched it roll and settle against a tree root. I should’ve packed up and left right then. But something made me stay. Curiosity. Stubbornness. The false sense of safety that daylight provides.
I picked through the mess with the tip of a stick, careful not to touch anything directly. That’s when I saw it—a small, swollen notebook, its edges curled from water damage. It was half-buried beneath a damp hoodie. I pulled it out and flipped it over. The name “John” was scrawled in black marker across the front, the ink bleeding into the cardboard cover.
I opened it.
The handwriting inside was frantic, like someone scribbling thoughts as fast as they came, with no time to slow down. The first page stopped me cold.
“I’m free. They won’t find me here.”
My mouth went dry. My fingers tensed on the edges of the notebook. Each page told a little more of a story I didn’t want to know. John—whoever he was—had escaped from somewhere. A prison, maybe. He wrote about it like it was a rebirth. “I belong here more than any of them,” one entry read. Another described hunting with a homemade bow, avoiding ranger patrols, boiling creek water to avoid getting sick.
One entry chilled me:
“Almost stepped on a copperhead today. Heart stopped. Gotta be careful.”
Another one:
“Met kids at the north ridge. Helped them light a fire. They seemed scared of me. If they talk, I’m done.”
As the pages went on, the tone shifted—growing darker, more paranoid. He began referring to "them" without explaining who they were. “They watch from the trees,” one line read. Another simply said, “I heard my name in the wind. That’s how they find you.”
The last entry was dated about a week ago:
“They’re close. I hear them at night. Gotta move again. Might head to the pass.”
Then—nothing. Just blank, water-stained pages.
I sat back on my heels, the notebook heavy in my hands. Dusk had crept in while I read, and the shadows between the trees had deepened into something less friendly. I suddenly felt very, very alone.
“He’s probably gone,” I whispered, more to convince myself than anything. But I couldn’t shake the feeling that eyes were on me.
I remembered one entry mentioning a “clubhouse,” somewhere nearby where he kept supplies. Against my better judgment, I decided to look. I followed the creek upstream, stepping carefully, every snapped twig beneath my boots sounding like a gunshot in the quiet.
About fifteen minutes in, I found it—a small, low cave barely visible behind a curtain of brambles. I crouched and peered inside. The beam of my flashlight swept across a stained sleeping bag, a pile of dented cans, a dirty water bottle. A crude knife with a carved handle lay beside the bedding. The place stank—of sweat, of damp rot, of something feral. Animal, maybe. Maybe not.
No sign of John. But the cave felt like it had been used recently.
I backed out quickly, heart in my throat, and hurried back to the clearing. Night was falling fast, and the air had turned brittle with cold. I got my tent up in record time and crawled inside, skipping the fire. No need to draw attention. The notebook sat in my lap, heavy with the weight of everything I now knew.
That’s when I heard it.
Footsteps.
Slow. Deliberate. Circling the perimeter of the clearing. I held my breath. My pocketknife was in my hand, useless as it was. I wanted to call out, to demand who was there—but all that came out was a shaky, “Hello?”
Nothing.
Then, another step. Closer.
Then silence.
I didn’t sleep. Every rustle of leaves, every shift in the wind, felt like someone—or something—was out there, just beyond the thin nylon walls of my tent. Watching. Waiting.
At first light, I broke camp and didn’t look back. My legs burned as I climbed the muddy trail back toward civilization. I didn’t stop until I hit pavement.
I ducked into a diner just off the highway, hands still shaking as I ordered coffee. The waitress, a sturdy woman with streaks of silver in her ponytail, took one look at me and raised an eyebrow.
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I did,” I muttered, forcing a smile. “Ever hear of someone named John? Maybe a fugitive, hiding up in the hills?”
She paused, the coffee pot hovering. “People talk,” she said slowly. “About camps out there. Weird ones. But the rangers? They keep things quiet. Don’t want to scare off the tourists.”
I nodded and didn’t press. Just sipped the bitter coffee and stared out the window, the mountains looming in the distance.
I never turned the notebook over to the police. Part of me still thinks I should have. But the other part? The part that heard those footsteps in the dark and felt eyes on my back the whole hike out? That part doesn’t want to stir up anything. Doesn’t want to be noticed.
I haven’t gone back since. And I don’t think I ever will.
The mountains are beautiful.
But they don’t belong to us.
And they don’t forget who walks into them.
"The Clubhouse":
I remember the exact moment I decided to return to my favorite campsite. It was early spring, the first truly warm day after a long, bitter winter, and I’d spent too many weeks cooped up in a concrete box, breathing recycled air and watching the world through glass. The memory of that place—tucked deep in the forest like a secret shared only between the mountains and me—had been gnawing at the edges of my mind for months. I needed out. I needed solitude. I needed the wild again.
My friend Jake had told me about it years ago, during a smoky campfire conversation on the edge of another forgotten trail. “It’s perfect,” he’d said, with that quiet reverence he reserved for only the most sacred places. “Secluded, beautiful, and hardly anyone knows about it.” He’d been right. For years, it had been my escape—an untouched clearing beside a quiet creek, with mossy stones for chairs and a sky full of stars unobscured by light pollution or noise.
That Friday afternoon, the city was behind me by 2 p.m. The sky was clear, the kind of crisp, endless blue that only seems to exist above the treeline. A gentle breeze whispered through the trees as I drove, sending light ripples through the canopy and rattling last year’s dry leaves. I rolled the windows down and cranked up the music, letting the wind whip through the cabin as I sang along to every word. The stress of the week fell away like old skin.
The final stretch was a narrow gravel road that wound through dense forest, the sunlight flickering through the branches like strobe lights. I slowed, savoring every second. When I finally pulled into the tiny gravel lot—barely a wide shoulder off the road—I cut the engine and sat in the silence for a moment, just listening to the wind in the trees and the distant call of a raven. It felt like coming home.
My pack was already prepped, just the essentials: tent, food, a book, and a flask of whiskey for cold nights. The trail leading to the site was familiar—my boots practically knew the way on their own. I noticed fresh saplings growing in places I hadn’t remembered, and a few fallen logs that hadn’t been there last season, but it still felt like mine. The air was rich with the smell of pine and loam, and birdsong danced between the branches above.
I could already see it in my mind—the wide clearing surrounded by firs, the well-worn fire pit of blackened stones, and the big flat rock by the water where I liked to sit and read or watch the light play on the surface of the creek. But when I reached the edge of the clearing, I stopped dead.
Something was wrong.
The air was different. Not just in temperature or sound—but in feel. Heavier. Tainted. And then the smell hit me.
It was faint at first, barely noticeable—a sour, acrid tang that made me wrinkle my nose. But with every step toward the clearing, it grew stronger, more putrid. It smelled of rot. Decay. And underneath that, something sharp and metallic, like old blood and rusted iron.
My heart sank as I stepped into the clearing.
My sanctuary had been desecrated.
The ground was littered with garbage—crushed beer cans, plastic wrappers, and something that looked like the remains of a tarp flapping in the wind. Several of the cans had been punctured, not crushed—jagged holes that looked like they’d been shot through. Arrows, some broken, were embedded in trees. By the old fire pit, the stones had been scattered, and something dark was soaked into the ground where the ashes should have been.
I followed the smell to the edge of the creek, where a pile of bones lay heaped beside the water. Small animals, maybe rabbits or raccoons, stripped clean. Some of the bones were still stained red, others snapped in ways that didn’t seem natural. The remains hadn’t been buried or hidden—just left there, exposed, like trophies.
It looked like someone had been living there. But not in the way I knew—this wasn’t camping. This was survival. Brutal, dirty, desperate. Whoever it was had no concern for the land or for decency. I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
I froze, scanning the trees, half-expecting someone to emerge from the shadows. But nothing moved.
Curiosity warred with caution. Every part of me told me to turn around, to leave and report this to the authorities. But something else—some darker instinct—drew me deeper in. I needed to understand what had happened here. Who had been here? Why had they chosen this place?
That’s when I spotted the cooler.
It was wedged halfway under a bush, dirt piled against one side like it had been hastily buried. I approached it slowly, the stench growing unbearable. Flies swarmed around the lid, buzzing angrily. When I opened it, the smell hit like a punch to the gut. Inside was meat—raw, rotting, grayish-pink with age and filth. Maggots squirmed in the folds of flesh. I gagged, slammed it shut, and stumbled back, swallowing bile.
Then I saw the trash bag. Black plastic, sagging, wet even though the weather had been dry for days. It looked heavy, sunken in the middle. I hesitated, then knelt and tugged it open.
Clothes—damp, mold-speckled, and reeking of mildew and sweat. Beneath them was a notebook, swollen from moisture but intact. My hands shook as I picked it up and peeled it open.
The first entry was dated over a month ago.
"Day 1. I'm here. I don’t know how long I can last, but I have to try. They’re looking for me. But they won’t find me here."
I sat down heavily on a nearby log, thumbing through the entries. The writer described how a friend had helped him escape from custody—though he didn’t say what he was charged with—and how he’d fled into the wilderness to disappear. He hunted wild turkeys with a bow. Fished in the creek. Ate wild plants. It was survivalist stuff, but under it was a current of fear and paranoia.
He wrote of snakes, of bears, of waking up cold and alone at night with nothing but the sound of the wind and the snap of branches nearby. He moved often, leaving behind signs for his “friend” in case he ever came back—broken sticks, carved symbols in trees. Rangers had found one of his old sites, he said. They were getting close. He needed to go deeper.
And then came the entries about “the clubhouse.”
"It’s perfect," he wrote. "An old place. Abandoned. Hidden. No one will find me there." He never said exactly where it was—only that some local men had told him about it, and he’d found it after days of searching.
As I read on, the entries unraveled. The handwriting degraded, jagged and uneven. He wrote about whispers in the dark, eyes in the trees, shadows that didn’t move right. He claimed someone—or something—was watching him.
"I hear them at night. They call my name. They know what I’ve done."
The last entry chilled me.
"Day 34. I can’t do this anymore. I’m going to turn myself in. I can’t live like this. I’m sorry."
Then nothing. The notebook ended.
I sat there in silence, staring at the warped pages, trying to piece together what had happened. Had he gone back to civilization? Had he been caught? Or… had something else found him first?
The woods were silent around me, but not in a peaceful way. The stillness felt thick. Watching. I stood up quickly, my eyes scanning the treeline, every rustle and snap of a twig suddenly amplified in my mind. I felt exposed, vulnerable.
I had to leave.
Still, as I turned to go, a part of me—a foolish, reckless part—wanted to find this “clubhouse.” I followed the creek upstream, pushing through dense brush, searching for any sign of a hidden trail, a man-made structure, anything.
But the deeper I went, the wilder the forest became. The light dimmed. The undergrowth thickened. After nearly an hour of stumbling through tangled roots and spiderwebs, I found nothing.
Only trees. Endless, ancient, silent trees.
By the time I returned to the clearing, the sun was already beginning to dip behind the hills. I packed up quickly, glancing over my shoulder more than once, and hiked back to the car with the notebook zipped tightly in my pack.
As I drove home, the journal sat on the passenger seat beside me, radiating unease. I kept thinking about that last line. "I can’t live like this." Had he truly left? Or was he still out there, broken and alone, watching as I read his final words?
Jake was stunned when I told him. “You should call the police,” he said. “That guy could be dangerous. Or worse.”
But I didn’t.
There was no name in the journal. No photo. No solid clues—only a glimpse into a man’s final descent into madness and fear. And deep down, I didn’t want to know more. Part of me felt like I’d trespassed into a story I wasn’t meant to find.
I still have the journal. I keep it in a box with old maps and camp tokens. Sometimes, on quiet nights, I flip through it, wondering.
The mountains keep secrets. Sometimes they whisper. Sometimes they scream. But most of the time… they just watch.
And some secrets, I’ve come to believe, are better left buried in the trees.