She threw on jeans and a shirt and a light jacket, laced up her boots, and filled her water bottle in the communal bathroom down the hall. Food was the last thing on her mind, she slipped out the back way, avoiding the kitchen and dining room. It wasn’t until she’d crossed into the woods that she felt some of the oppressive despondency lift.
For a long while she did nothing but wander aimlessly, making no attempt to choose one path over another, deliberately ignoring all the dictates of safety she had learned over the summer. Safety, security, caution—all those things seemed unimportant now.
She followed narrow deer trails that cut swaths through the ferns and shrubs and small trees under the canopy of the forest, found the places where moose had bedded among the willow thickets alongside meandering streams. She discovered late-summer fruit burgeoning on thickly crowded shrubs and shared the sweet ripeness of huckleberries with forest birds. Grouse and chipmunks scurried out of her way as they gorged on the season’s final bounty, jays and squirrels scolded from above, contrasting with the sweeter songs of chickadee and warbler. She watched a black bear forage from the cover of a thicket of dogwood and narrowly avoided a pointed brush with a porcupine.
Her wandering led her out of the aspen groves, quaking leaves already gold with the touch of autumn, and up into the province of Douglas fir and spruce. Here the land rose, broken by meadows with the last of their summer wildflowers, reaching up to the elevations ruled by towering lodgepole pine. And beyond that, beyond her reach, the timberline marked the highest places, where only the hardiest wildlife flourished. All but a few of the animal species of the high slopes would move to the sheltered lowlands with the coming of winter, already the migrations had begun.
Joey settled on a large rock at the edge of a meadow and watched a wedge of geese move across the sky. Their mournful cries seemed to express her feelings more clearly than any sound a human voice could make, she observed them until they disappeared over a distant mountain range, tiny motes almost lost from sight, and did not give in to the urge to cry with that same wild longing.
She sat there as the day passed and saw the goshawks and red-tails as they passed overhead in search of prey, held so still that even the deer left the sanctuary of the woods’ edge to browse in the meadow. It was hard to focus on the death of her dreams when so much life surrounded her. But always, always, there was the bleakness of that unresolved loss, the memory of what she might have had, of wholeness, that might forever be just beyond her reach.
Had she not been so lost to any concern for her own safety, she might have felt surprise at the light touch on her shoulder. There was no warning, no footfall to alert her, but her heartbeat remained dull and steady as she turned to face him.
“Luke.” The indifference in her voice seemed alien even to herself. She felt no anger, no humiliation—only a leaden acceptance. “I don’t really want any company right now, if you don’t mind.”
Joey turned away before he could answer, and he moved soundlessly around the rock to crouch beside her “You’re a long way from home.” He let strained silence fall between them; in spite of herself, she felt her skin shudder at his nearness, an awareness that cut through the apathy that wrapped her in a protective cocoon. She didn’t want it. She didn’t want to feel anything, least of all about him.
“Yes I’m a very long way from home.” She folded her arms against herself and stared out at the meadow without seeing it. “It seems to me that this wilderness is big enough that a person should be able to find some peace. Please—leave me alone.”
She knew without any further comment from him that he had no intention of respecting her wishes. She pushed herself to her feet, muscles stiff from long sitting, and prepared to leave him there, as he had left her the night before. But he stopped her, his hand shot out and locked about her arm, holding her in place. From deep within the muffling folds of apathy anger flared, and she prepared to round on him; his voice arrested her as surely as his grip.