69 exit. I’ll check my maps when I can. For now, I think I’m secure and have a fairly good position to take stock of my situation.” He clicked the unit off and slid it into his back shoulder pocket. For the next hour, he lay quietly waiting for something else to happen. The woods gradually recovered. Within fifteen minutes, the birds had returned filling the air with sporadic and random calls. By 11, John was sure that if something else were to happen, it probably would have by now. He secured his pack and most of the extra gear he was carrying under a small pile of leaves. The GPS numbers would bring him back within thirty feet, so it wasn’t necessary to mark the position. As long as he had his recorder, he could leave things anywhere he wanted. The chances of someone else stumbling on this particular spot in eight thousand square miles was beyond chance – especially since there were only seventy or eighty entry permits granted each year. Slowly at first, John started to move forward on his belly downhill. He crawled about a hundred yards and dropped into a culvert carved out of the hill by the free flowing water from the top of the ridge. The high banks covered his movements until he was nearly at the bottom of the hill. The culvert widened out and flattened as it became one with the lowlands. John crouched down behind an ancient maple and reassessed his position. The colorful nylon caught his eye. It was so completely unforestlike, it commanded attention. He pulled his recorder from his shoulder and flicked it on again. “I found her. I think I’m too late.” He flicked it off and returned it to his pocket. He was instantly irritated that he hadn’t logged the time. It was an unnecessary action – the new generation of digital recorders did that automatically anyway. John stood up and gazed around intently. He stopped at ten degree steps and looked carefully at everything he saw – every detail, every tree, every hillock, every bump in the ground – everything. Satisfied that he was truly alone, he moved around the last obstacles toward the bright patch of color. She lay face down in the soft dirt, one shoe on and one off. From the looks of things, she had fallen twenty or thirty feet and had tumbled and slid the rest of the way. John knelt down next to her and felt for a neck pulse. Nothing. She had been sweating heavily and her body was already cool and clammy. He rolled her over slowly. The front of her windbreaker was ripped and bloody and the forest floor was thick with dark syrup. He gently brushed her tangled and matted hair away from her face. Taking a few steps back, John sat down on a fallen tree limb and looked around once again. He pulled his recorder out and flicked it back into record.
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