He's real. Not a satellite ping. Not a data point. A living animal I watched through the scope until the light gave out. He's moving again now, somewhere ahead of us. I can feel it in my bones, an instinct sharper than any GPS reading. The tracks we found before we made camp were fresh, less than six hours old. The scat was unfrozen.
I should be feeling professional satisfaction. The job is almost done. Now it's just data collection, patience, and waiting for the right conditions for the capture. Standard operating procedure.
But as I watch Aris, I'm not feeling professional. I'm feeling something that sits heavy in my gut, a mix of pride and a gnawing, hollow ache that I know from experience means trouble.
She hasn't said much since we ate. The high of the tracking has worn off, replaced by a quiet introspection that I'm trying not to interrupt. She's probably thinking about her data, or her next grant proposal, or whatever it is academics think about when they're not fighting for survival in sub-zero temperatures.
"You told me the shape of your family. Not why you all stayed. That's a different story," she says suddenly, her voice cutting through the crackle of the fire.
I look up, startled from my own thoughts. "Here? In the valley?"
"Here, in this life." She shifts on the log, tucking her legs under her to keep them warm. "You're not like the other guides I've met. I've worked with dozens of them across the Yukon and Alaska. They usually talk about trophy scores, inches of antler, and how fast they can get a client tagged out. You talk about … balance."
I poke the fire with a stick, sending a fresh shower of sparks upward to die in the cold air. "I'm not a guide because I like killing things, Aris. If that's what you're asking."
"I don't think that. Not anymore. I see the way you move through the woods. You don't fight it." She hesitates, and when she looks at me, her eyes are direct, stripping away the layers I usually keep between me and the clients. "I want to know who you are, Nash. Not the 'Wilderness Logistics Expert' on the brochure. You."
The question hangs there, demanding an answer I don't usually give. My history is usually something I keep locked up at the lodge, buried under logistics and schedules. But looking at her now, with the firelight catching the stray strands of hair escaping her beanie, I find I don't want to shut her out.
"I ended up here because it's the only place that ever made sense to us," I say finally. "My parents built a good life out here. Raising five boys and a daughter on an island in the middle of nowhere wasn't easy, but they loved it. They loved us."
I lean back, looking up at the stars, letting the memory wash over me. "The kitchen in the house we grew up in … it used to smell like yeast and sawdust and wet dogs. It was loud. Constant noise. Five brothers—Kane and Finn, me and the twins—who counted as a riot all on their own. We fought over everything. The last biscuit, the best fishing rod, who got to ride shotgun in the boat."
"It sounds chaotic," Aris says, like chaotic is the best thing a family could be.
"It was. But it was good." I pause. "My parents parceled the land out to all six of us. Finn got the Crystal Creek piece, and the whole family helped him raise the lodge on it, board by board. My mom was … she was the glue. She was this incredible force of nature. She could field dress a moose in the morning, clean up, and teach us Shakespeare in the afternoon. She taught us that being strong didn't mean being hard."
Aris is watching me intently, her tea forgotten in her hands. "What happened to her?"
The question is gentle, but it still lands like a blow.
"Cancer," I say, the word still tasting like ash. "Ovarian. We got it late—the kind doctors in Anchorage shrug at by the time they see it. We had her for the year of the fight, and then we didn't."
I take a breath, the cold air stinging my lungs. "Dad did everything he could. He fought for her. He burned through savings, flew her to specialists in Seattle, tried every treatment. But it was a losing battle. He loved her so much it practically burned him up watching her fade."
"I'm so sorry," Aris whispers.
"Yeah. She made us promise to stay close. To keep the land. Said this place was in our blood." I look at the fire. "Dad found his way back to the Hollister house, the one he built with her, still walking the rooms like he's looking for her. He's working through it the only way he knows. We let him."
"So you all stayed? To help him?"
"We stayed because it's who we are. Each of us found the piece of it that fit. Mine was the field—the cold, the tracks, the hours you can only fill with your own thinking. Misty Meadows was the piece nobody else wanted. It was the piece I couldn't let go of."
I was the slow one. It took me longer to find solid ground. The winter after Mom died, I put a snowmobile through the iceon the Blacktail River. It was February, when the ice was already going rotten. I went through up to my shoulders, the current pulling at my boots, the ice breaking apart every time I grabbed for an edge.
Kane hauled me out. He didn't say a word about it. Just built the fire back up and sat with me until I stopped shaking. It was a long time before I stopped dreaming about falling.
"And your grandfather?" she asks. "The one who taught you to hunt?"
"Granddad Silas," I say, and the name lands with a heavy warmth. "He was the reason we knew what we were doing before we could shave. He'd taken us upriver every summer since I could walk, taught us to read weather off the water, to name the trees, to skin a rabbit without flinching. By the time we lost him, the lessons were already ours."
I nod toward the darkness beyond the firelight, toward the invisible peaks of the mountains. "That caribou on my wall? That was his last lesson. He was dying too, his lungs were failing him, but he insisted on one last trip. He wanted to make sure I understood the weight of it."
"The weight of what?"
"Of taking a life," I say softly. "He told me, 'Nash, you don't pull that trigger unless you're willing to carry the responsibility of it. You take the meat, you use the hide, and you say thank you. Because that animal is giving up its future so you can have yours.'"
Aris holds her silence. The fire snaps, a log collapsing into glowing embers, sending a pulse of heat against our faces.
