Deep in the woods, the group was erecting structures that seemed like they could be permanent, strange misshapen buildings that, in the darkness, looked more art than shed—straw bale houses, homes made of mud—using whatever materials they could find. Amid the shadows of the trees, I saw wood planks and sheets of corrugated steel that could have been lifted off a construction site or ripped from a warehouse. Nothing seemed habitable yet, not in the wind and snow. Loose bits of steel grated against each other, and the packed mud sides of the houses looked wet.

But it seemed like the group was making plans, making plans for a future I couldn’t understand. There were sacks of soil and cement, neat bales of straw stacked against tree trucks.

“I’d rather sleep in my own house. Or my truck. I don’t know why we had to leave it parked,” I said as I punched the sleeping bag Mica had produced for me. It was musty and olive green, like a relic from a Boy Scout camp.

The extra supplies the camp had rustled up for us weren’t as nice or new as the equipment they had brought for themselves. My bedroll was patched, thin, and smelled of a basement. When I had unrolled the sleeping bag, dust flew up in the lantern light.

“Their land, their rules,” Dance said.

“It’s not their land. They admitted as much. They’re trespassing.”

“Occupying.”

“Okay, Dirt Boy.”

Grayson snorted.

“Why didn’t you tell us about your past?” I asked.

“What’s there to tell?” Dance said.

“An organizer? That might be useful.”

But Dance shook his head. His sleeping bag was polyester, printed with a cartoon character. It looked even thinner than mine. “I doubt that,” he said. “I didn’t organize much. I was involved with a few groups, went to a few protests. Even before the first lost spring, when things were just starting to get bad, I wanted to do something. I wanted to try, you know? So I chained myself to a bulldozer, showed up to some rallies, smashed a bank window. That sort of thing.”

“You smashed a bank window?” Grayson said.

“It didn’t do much good, did it? I met Mica on a tree-sit. We were trying to stop a pipeline from going through a forest in Virginia. I guess we lost that one.”