I Went Hiking in a Remote Forest. Something Was Following Me.

The narrator arrived at the Raven Creek trailhead on a Saturday morning in late September, alone. The gravel lot was empty except for his car. He'd planned this trip for months: a week of solo hiking through old-growth forest in the Pacific Northwest, where the trunks run eight to twelve feet across and the canopy sits two hundred feet overhead. His pack weighed fifteen pounds. The GPS had a full battery. He'd read there would be no cell service past the lot and no other people. That was the point.

Before leaving the lot, he did something he later called stupid. He pulled out his phone while he still had one bar of service and scrolled through a hiking forum's thread about Raven Creek. Near the bottom, he found a comment he'd bookmarked: If you see a bright red bandana, it means someone was there before you and something went wrong. He looked down at the red bandana he'd just tied around his neck—bought at a gas station for sun protection—and laughed. Then he put the phone away and stepped past the trailhead sign.

The Wrong Path