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Chapters (65)
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  65. Acknowledgements

Then two more, the booms ricocheting through the endless pine trunks and echoing inside my own head.

Did an elk just die? A wolf? A wild boar?

I walk on and get to a twenty-metre-high cliff of craggy granite. Trees sprout from its cracks and moss covers any surface that’s not completely vertical.

But there is no blue tape flickering on tree branches. I’ve seen what they look like, I’ve written articles on them. Hunt teams tie plastic ribbons of varying colours so they can locate their own elk-hunting towers the next year. Did Sven send me the wrong way? Intentionally? Some kind of test? I check my phone. No reception here, seventeen per cent battery. And then I check the cameral roll on my phone for the last photo I took. Five hunters clearing their bench, all looking this way and that. But the sixth man is different. The sixth is the big guy with the red beard and he’s staring straight into my lens. He saw me take the photograph.

I switch my phone to airplane mode to preserve the battery and I slip it in my inside pocket. I learned this trick last year. Battery life is extended if you keep the device at room or body temperature. A lithium battery will drain much faster at seven degrees than at thirty-seven. Is it even seven degrees still out here? Feels closer to zero.

There are no blue ribbons so I try to get back to the cliffs, back the way I came. All I need is that cliff, the beech, the other beech, then the clearing, the butchered animal, then the muddy path. I’ll take my chances with the mother elk. Better her than a night in this unlit forest all alone.

You might think a twenty-metre-high granite cliff would be easy to find in a forest but you’d be wrong. I can’t see up and I can’t see across. No view to speak of. I try to stay calm, to breathe slowly, but I know I’m lost. I have no idea what direction is what. Two bites on my wrist and a scratch on my neck where I killed the mosquito, a wet smudge across my hairline.

No cliff.

No pair of beech trees.

No nothing.

The forest thickens up and it darkens. No more sounds of gunfire. Have the hunters left me here? Did they assume I found the trail and now they think I’m back in the safety of my truck?

I push through a dead bush and on up over a rocky escarpment.

A house.

A place I have seen before.

No windows or doors at ground level. Plenty upstairs. No lights on. No signs of life. Okay, so, worst comes to worst I break in and sleep inside tonight. At least I’ve found something man-made out here. Somewhere safe.