“Are we safe?” I asked.

The camp spread out at the foot of the hillside, tents as colorful as flags. There was smoke and work. On the other side was wilderness. The big hill sloped, grassy in warmer days, now patched with snow.

I felt turned around. I no longer remembered which side Skate State was on, which side was California. Other smoke was rising from the trees in the distance. More people, strangers, in camps or families, trying to survive.

“What are their plans for keeping warm here?”

“I don’t know,” Dance said. He knocked the pieces of the log he had split into the pile. “Building more permanent structures, insulated ones.”

“They’re not going home?”

“They say this is their home now. Their ancestors lived like this, built cabins by hand, dug coal scraps out of the ground to keep warm. They made it. They got by on a lot less. Mica says they can do it again.”

These hills could hold anyone, I knew that. Cabins and farms I couldn’t see, even compounds: trailers and sheds spotting the woods under its woven canopy. The most broken, abandoned-looking shack, leaking and thin-walled, could shelter someone temporarily.

Temporarily could last a long time.

The trees were bare, but clustered together they still gave cover. Rocks could hide. Cliffs could hide. There were caves in the rocks, mines in the ground. Only smoke betrayed the people who might be surviving there.

“What was Ladd Ridge like?” I asked Dance.

“The tree-sit with Mica? That was a long time ago. Spring into summer.” He took a break, resting his ax against the stump. “A real summer,” he said. “I sat up on a monopod in this tree in the middle of the road they wanted to bulldoze for their fucking pipeline. I guess they did it, after all. I was the tree-sitter. I was the healthiest then, so I was up there, strung up by wires. I had to tie everything down—my phone, my pillow. Mica was part of the support team. She brought me food, took away my buckets. It was pretty lonely up there. I knew I had support, though, down below. I had food, water, people yelling positive things to me from the trees. It helped me keep going.”

“Was it like this?”

Dance scanned the hillside, the hiding trees, the smoke from the fires. “No,” he said. “This is something else.”