The path dipped down and I saw it. Fire, tents, a line of laundry strung between trees. There were bales of hay, a large stack of wood.

“We organized after the first lost spring,” the woman said. “Some of us started to move out here then, but our numbers keep growing. More and more people want to do something that matters.”

What are you doing? I wanted to say. What matters?

The dozen or so tents were clustered around each other, hugged by trees; there were fires in the middle. Nosing the hem of a blanket on the line was a large white pig. At first I thought it was injured, a gash in its side. As we came closer, I saw that the pig had been spray-painted with a red bull’s-eye.

“They use them for target practice at Skate State,” the woman explained.

“Then dinner,” Jamey said.

The woman looked closer at Jamey for a moment, then she addressed all of us. “Let me tell you the rules here. We don’t cook meat. We don’t use cars. We try to be as respectable and sustainable as possible.”

“Who are you?” Grayson asked.

Tent flaps had opened up and a few heads had poked out, a few people curious enough about the voices to wander out in the dark. People in their twenties, in clothes that fit. People who looked like they were in college, looked clean and well-fed, shiny. Their coats weren’t duct-taped. Their hair wasn’t matted. I didn’t see any children.

“I’m Mica,” the woman said. “We’re occupying this forest.”

“Mica?” Dance studied the woman. “I’m Dance. Do you remember me? From the tree-sit at Ladd Ridge? My action name was Dirt Boy.”

Grayson looked incredulously at me. Dirt Boy?

Then the woman—Mica—handed the baby back to Jamey, and pulled up her ski mask, revealing a face soft with youth, black freckles, and round cheeks. “Dirt Boy.” She and Dance hugged. “You look different than I remember. Not as thin.”

“Well,” Dance said. “When you’re not stuck in a tree, you can eat more. What happened to that tree?”

Mica shook her head.

“Sorry to interrupt,” I said. “But what is all this?”

The tents looked new, slick in the firelight. None of them had patches. Even the laundry, drying on the line, seemed fresh, unstained sheets that hadn’t even faded to gray. I didn’t see any bikes or cars, any way of getting out quickly. I didn’t see any weapons.