Chapter 1

I’d like to thank the talented, newish author ‘A duck named TEF’, both for the inspiration she provided for this story, and for her invaluable help and advice during its writing.

You’ve been planning and looking forward to this hike for weeks; it’s far too long since your last, and you’re increasingly feeling an itchiness in your feet and legs to get going.

You’ve covered all the trails easily reachable from the small town in Montana where you live at least once, and this time you’re moving further afield, to pastures new, as it were.

‘Planning’ might be overstating it, though: there are no real maps of the area, and your planning largely consisted of poring over Google Maps satellite views, trying to spot a route through what you think are mostly animal trails.

But you’re happy with what you found in the end: a circular walk that you should comfortably be able to manage in three days of steady walking, but you’ve taken the Monday off as well, so even if things go a little wonky, you’ll still be fine. You even spotted the corner of some kind of cabin or hut, but it’s a way off your chosen route, and with any luck, you won’t be needing that.

The weather forecast looks good, so you’ve packed light: a water-resistant sleeping bag (mostly to keep the dew off), since you love to sleep under the stars, but also a lightweight rain fly that you can string up between trees in the hopefully unlikely event of rain. That, food, a few changes of underwear, along with the rest of the paraphernalia that you’ve perfected over the years, and you’re good to go.

You’re perfectly comfortable in your own company, and three days utterly alone is a large part of what you’re looking forward to. It’s not that you don’t like people. Actually, it is that you don’t like people: most people, anyway. There is some old joke along the lines of ‘The best committee consists of three members, one of whom is generally sick’, and that’s pretty much how you feel about the number of people who should be in a conversation. Individually, people can be OK, but the larger the group, the more assholey they all inevitably become.

Driving your beloved old big red V8 truck along the dirt trail slash fire-break is exhilarating, and you’re almost disappointed when you get to the clearing where you plan to start walking.

You park the truck as far out of sight as you can, lock it, grab your pack out of the bed, and head off, a spring in your step. Not literally, though: you’ve developed an almost silent gait where you roll your foot from heel to toe, before carefully placing the next one. If you manage to avoid twigs, you can often sneak up on even quite skittish wildlife.

Although there are plenty of mountains around, you’re not a peak freak, preferring to keep to the valleys and lower slopes: a beautiful mixture of forests and sub-alpine meadows. It’s not long before that’s exactly what you’re walking through, and you can feel the stresses of modern life oozing out of you.

As planned, you ease yourself in relatively gently and reach your intended first stopover in plenty of time to clear the area thoroughly before making a fire and setting about rehydrating a mushroom risotto.

Lying in your snuggly bag a little later, looking up at the stars, and listening to the sounds of the forest around you, your only regret is that you didn’t do this much sooner.

The next morning, you’re up bright and early, keen to get moving, and, after a breakfast of instant (ugh!) coffee and a couple of granola bars, you’re off again.

A few hours of good walking later, you see the dark clouds coming along the valley, and berate yourself for putting your trust in the weather report: you should know by now that, in amongst the mountains, squalls can spring up out of nowhere. The clouds look nasty, and you try to picture where that little cabin was in relation to where you are now. You have three choices: get all togged up in your waterproofs and slog it out, put up the tarp and sit it out, or try to outrun it to what - fingers crossed - is a dry cabin.