Tingles. He woke up with his body completely filled with pins and needles. It was as if his whole body was asleep. Looking at the watch propped up against a glittering rock next to his sleeping bag he saw that it was eight in the morning. The perfect time to get up for a day in the woods. He picked up the neon green and grey pair of socks that he had lain next to him and slipped them over his feet. Throwing on his boots he walked outside the tent, the plastic ends of untied laces making a soft percussive noise against the gravel below them.

As he slowly continued to wake up he noticed that the forest around him seemed different somehow, almost less traveled. Normally he would chalk this up to not having been in the area for a few years, but out of all the times he had been to Three Forks it had never felt eerie. Making the decision to explore he bent down to tie the laces of his boots and started walking in the direction of the trail. Everything seemed so much more overgrown than it had the night before, and he felt the tops of his socks become damp from the snow dusted ferns that had not been there the night before.

The trail was gone. Where was it? He now started to grow concerned. He had hiked in on the trail last night, and it crossed the stream right where he was standing. There were no signs of a beaten path, let alone the signature white blazes of the Appalachian Trail. What the hell had happened? He returned to the campsite to ponder over the events that were taking place on this strange morning. Maybe this was just a dream of some sort, after all he always had the best and strangest dreams in the woods.

He wasn’t hungry enough to get out his gas stove and cook a meal, so he took a granola bar out of the top pouch of his rust colored bag. As he opened it the silver wrapping left a small cut on his finger, the sharp stinging pain solemn confirmation that this wasn’t a dream after all. A faint scent of smoke started to drift down from the hills to the North. It wasn’t forest fire season, so maybe another person had started the fire. He knew he should stay where he was in case someone came to rescue him. The prospect of there being another human, maybe one who could explain to him what was happening, was too much of a catalyst for him to stay and sit idly by.

There was a tall and rounded rock on the other side of the stream, a feature that also had not been there the night before, and one that he never seemed to remember. It appeared tall enough to where if he stood on top of it he may have enough height to see the source of the smoke. He hopped across exposed rocks to the other side of the stream, which had a much higher water level than the pervious night. He made it to the base of the rock and started to climb, his wet boots squeaking against the bare rock. Once he had made it to the top he surveyed the wilderness around him, and in the woods to the north of him he saw a plume of smoke rising above the treetops. He took his compass, aligned the needle so it was pointing directly at the plume, and with a sharp rock notched a reminder to the bearing he needed to hike towards on the clear plastic cover.

Making his way back to the campsite he started to put everything back into his backpack. A process he was very efficient at from the countless times that camp needed to be taken down from all of the trips he had been on in the past. With everything back in its correct spot in the pack, he slung the 40 pound rust colored turtle shell over his back. Pulling out his compass from his pants pocket, he aligned the needle with the mark he made in the plastic and headed off into the unknown.