I'm not sure what I'm looking for lately. That's been true for a while.
I eat supper on the porch and watch the valley go from gold to purple below. This is the part of the day I like best. The town down there, small and lit, going about its business without requiring anything from me. The trail dark above. The ridge to myself.
Complete. That's the word for it. My life is complete.
I go inside, review the owl shots from the morning blind, find nothing worth keeping, and go to bed.
I'm back on the trail before dawn.
She's there again.
Further up this time, on a section of trail that veers close to the north-facing slope where the wildflowers have been going all month. She's crouched down looking at something in the undergrowth and again she hears me before I get close enough to announce myself, and again she doesn't startle.
"There's a nest," she says, without preamble. "Low in the huckleberry. Song sparrow, I think. Three eggs."
I slow. Crouch beside her without quite deciding to. She's right — the nest is there, tucked neat and deep, the female settled on it watching us with furious black eyes. We're close enough that I can smell whatever she's using in her hair, something clean and faintly herbal, and I'm aware of the warmth coming off her in the cool morning air. I look at the nest.
"Song sparrow," I confirm.
We stay there for a moment, neither of us moving. When I stand she stands too, and we walk the same direction because there's only one trail and it would be strange to pretend otherwise.
She doesn't fill the silence. That's the thing I notice first and then keep noticing. Most people, alone with someone they've just met, generate noise — questions, comments, the anxious paving-over of empty space. She just walks. Looks at the mountain. Occasionally says something short and accurate about what she's seeing.
I find myself looking at her sideways when she's not watching me. The way she moves through terrain — easy and unhurried, like she grew up near country like this, like her feet know what to do with uneven ground. There's a small scar at her jaw, barely visible. Her hands when she points out a hawk feather caught in a branch are capable-looking, no-nonsense. I have a habit of noticing hands.
I ask where she's from. Prince George, she says. Originally. Vancouver most recently, though that part's over now.
I don't ask what that means. Not my business.
But the particular quality of the way she saysover— not sad, not bitter, just factual in the way of someone who has processed a thing fully and set it down — I hear that clearly. I respect it more than I know what to do with.
We reach the junction where the trail splits. Upper fork goes toward my property. Lower fork goes back toward town.
She pauses at the junction, looking up the upper trail. The morning light is full now and it catches the side of her face and I think, involuntarily, about aperture and angle and what the spruce behind her would do for a background. I don't photograph people. Never have. I'm thinking about it anyway.
"Is that private?" she asks.
"My land starts about half a kilometre up."
She nods. Looks at the lower trail. Back up. Her profile is — I look away.
I should keep going. Memory card to swap, lens to clean, three weeks of field notes to sort.
"Diner's good for lunch," I hear myself say.
She looks at me. I keep my face neutral. She has the kind of direct gaze that most people flinch from and she doesn't even seem to notice she's doing it.
"I know," she says. "I've been twice."
"Right."
A pause.
"I could go a third time," she says.
We sit across from each other in the back booth at Juniper's for two hours. She tells me about the land-use work. I tell her about the grizzly — eleven days in the backcountry last October, tracking a male across three drainages, sleeping rough, waiting. She listens without interrupting. When I get to the shot she asks: "What did you do after?"
"Sat there for a while."
