I checked again. Southeast. Which meant either my watch was wrong, the season was wrong, or I was not where I thought I was in the world.
I sat with that for a moment.
Then I heard footsteps on the trail behind me.
They were unhurried. Even-paced. The sound of someone who knew where they were going.
I stood and turned. A man came around the curve in the trail — sixties, weathered, a worn pack on his back and walking poles in both hands. He looked at me the way hikers look at each other on remote trails: assessing, cautious, then warm.
“Thought I might find someone out here,” he said. “Saw your boot prints at the junction.”
“I’m turned around,” I said. “I’ve passed this tree three times.”
He nodded, unsurprised. “Carrow Ridge does that.”
I waited.
“There’s a magnetic anomaly in the rock shelf under the north valley,” he said. “Compass reads fine everywhere else on the route, but in the valley it pulls three degrees east. Three degrees sounds small. Over two kilometres it puts you on a completely different fork.” He looked at the tree. “Most people don’t notice until they hit this point.”
I thought about the clay soil on my boots. A different fork. A different valley floor.
“How do I get back to the trailhead?” I asked.
He turned and pointed back the way he had come. “Stay on the trail, ignore the compass for the next kilometre, aim for the rocky outcrop — you’ll see it once the trees thin. From there you’ll see the car park.” He paused. “You have a light?”
I showed him my head torch. He nodded, satisfied, and kept walking. I watched him until the trail curved and took him into the trees.
I stood for a moment, then checked the beacon again.
And then I stopped.
I looked back down at the map. The magnetic anomaly the man had described — I had never heard of it, but I was a teacher, not an expert on every trail system in the region. It was plausible. Everything he had said was plausible.
But I had filed a route plan at the ranger station before I set out.
And the ranger I had spoken to — an older woman, careful and thorough — had told me something I hadn’t thought about again until this moment.
She had told me Carrow Ridge was currently closed to the public due to trail damage from last month’s storms. Reopening was scheduled for the following weekend.
She had told me I was the only permit issued today, as a known and experienced hiker.
The only one.
I activated the beacon.
Then I looked at the trail where the man had gone. No sound. No movement. The forest, again, completely silent.
I thought about the footsteps I had heard — even, unhurried, certain. The steps of someone who had walked this route many times. Someone who knew where the trail forked, where the anomaly pulled, where confused hikers tended to stop.
I thought about the fact that he had said, without being asked: thought I might find someone out here.
Not: I’m glad I ran into you. Not: are you lost?
He had expected to find someone. He had known, before he rounded the curve, that I would be standing by that tree.
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