It took Jake 90 minutes to get to the cabin in the woods. He drove about 35 miles down 101 and then turned off into the Santa Lucia Mountains. He passed a few houses and a few more driveways until the paved road gave out, then he followed the map along logging roads until he came to the patch of old-growth redwoods that Eleni had described. Where the dirt road petered out, he found the big white plastic bucket that marked the trail to the cabin. It was overturned and weighted down with rocks. Underneath it was an extra flashlight with a plastic bag of batteries, a jug of fresh water, and another little map for reaching the cabin.
It was only 3 in the afternoon, but the trees were already casting long shadows in the late November light. He didn’t hesitate but began hauling his supplies the last half-mile to the cabin. He’d thought about leaving Sadie in the truck until the last trip, but she jumped down the minute he opened up the cab and she trotted right along behind him on the narrow path as if she were an obedient dog and not a mind-of-her-own cat.
The wood-plank cabin sat in a small clearing. To the right, Jake could hear the sound of water. Eleni had said there was a year-round creek some hundred yards to the west that served as water supply. He didn’t stop to investigate though, just dumped his first load on the porch next to an old wooden rocker and went back to the truck. It took four trips to bring everything up. On the last trip, he removed the distributor cap to keep his truck from vanishing, as Eleni had advised.
He spent the next hour getting settled. The cabin was small and rustic but amazingly clean, as if someone had swept and dusted for his arrival. There was one big room, maybe 20 ft x 20 ft, with a sleeping loft that ran along the left side. He climbed up the ladder with his sleeping bag and pillow and laid them out on the thick foam pads he found there under a skylight. Then he hoisted the duffel bag up the ladder as well. From it, Jake pulled out a small sketch pad and a box of pencils. He had felt like a schoolboy sneaking cigarettes as he hid them away in his bag, hoping Eleni wouldn’t catch him. He didn’t think he could go days, let alone weeks, without drawing. It was as important to him as breathing.
At the bottom of the duffel bag under his clothes, he put the little red pouch and the envelope Eleni had given him. He suspected the pouch held some weird stuff to ward off the evil eye and that the letter would contain bad news. He’d deal with them later.
To the rear of the room under the loft was the “kitchen” with some shelves for his canned goods and plastic bags of dried food and the 20 pounds of cat food. There was a camping stove and a metal basin for doing dishes. There were some pans and plastic plates and bowls and odds and ends of utensils. As he was unpacking the groceries, he found a box of his favorite tea at the bottom of one bag. Atop it was a sticky note with a heart drawn on it and a big E, and he smiled at Eleni’s thoughtfulness.
In the big room, there was an old yellow sofa piled with mismatched cushions and a large table and straight-backed chair. The chair and table sat under one of the two windows, looking out into the trees. The sofa faced the potbellied stove, its back to the door. Jake wondered who had hauled all that weight up the trail. Near the stove was a stack of firewood and kindling and old newspapers. Above it were instructions for using the stove and camp stove, for sterilizing water from the creek, for maintaining the outhouse. There was a wooden crate in one corner and shelved along the bottom were a half-dozen books. There was also an oil lamp on one of the kitchen shelves, which he moved to the table.
Night was coming on fast, so Jake took two of the big plastic jugs from the kitchen and went in search of the stream. There was a clearly marked trail off to the right. The ground sloped up behind the cabin and when he reached the stream through the trees, he saw that it came down the same hill in small cascades. There was a pool at the bottom, and someone had placed several large smooth stones on the bank for kneeling. He filled the two jugs and took them back to the cabin. He made a fire in the stove and boiled water for tea and ate the sandwiches that Eleni had packed for him. Sadie too had eaten and now slept on the sofa.
Once he slowed down, the loneliness hit him. What was he doing here? Why had he agreed to come? Why couldn’t he sort out what to paint next at Eleni’s in a nice, comfortable bed? He’d never really taken to being a boy scout, a warrior in the woods. And while he’d had plenty of experience with solitude—he’d lived alone for all of his adult life—being alone in the city wasn’t the same as being alone in the woods.
Maybe he should go, pack up and head north to San Francisco or Portland, maybe Vancouver or Victoria. Moving on suddenly seemed appealing. He gave himself over to the self-pity for a long hour. Then he roused himself, coaxed Sadie up the ladder, and went to bed. He woke once in the night. Coyotes were calling to each other and not all that far away. But they didn’t frighten him and once he sorted out what they were, he let them sing him back to sleep.
He woke at first light. Sadie was curled up in the crook of his arm inside the bag. The room was cold, the fire long out. He lay in the warmth of sleep for a few minutes and then got up, pulled on his jeans and his boots and headed out to pee. He couldn’t remember the last time he had been out in the woods in the early, early morning. The air was crisp, the fog hung in wispy strips in the branches of the trees. A Steller’s Jay barked at him. Sadie came to the open door and went over and dug in the soft earth to the side of the cabin.
He built a fire, heated water, and made a simple breakfast of rice milk and fruit and oatmeal. Then he put on his big jacket and found some gloves and went out exploring. He counted seven trails leading off from the clearing. Each was marked with a little carved plaque near the beginning of the trail. Two of the trails he knew already. One led to the road and his truck. A second went to the stream.
He found a plaque with a crescent moon and followed it about 75 yards or so behind the cabin away from the stream to the outhouse. It looked like something from an old movie with another crescent moon carved into the door and a large covered wooden bin next to it with big buckets of sawdust and cedar shavings. Inside he found both toilet paper and some old issues of the Farmer’s Almanac. He went back towards the clearing. On the small back porch of the cabin he saw a large metal tub. He realized it must be a bathtub, something he could fill with water from the stream or from the stove.
The other four trail signs each contained letters and numbers. The letters he realized marked directions: W for west, NW for northwest. The numbers he figured were mileage but to what he couldn’t guess. He decided to choose one and find out. He went back to the cabin, got a small pack and put in a water bottle, an apple, and a snack bar. He thought about his sketch pad and then remembered Eleni’s admonition to be with himself and he left it on the table.
Jake took the trail marked NW 2. At one side of the plaque was a mysterious vertical domino shape. The trail took him up the slope beside the stream. The going was steep in places, a few spots slick and muddy with seepage from the creek. He realized he was climbing up into a canyon. The conifers became sparse—there were more bushes and some small oak trees. Even though the air was cold and the morning fog hung on, Jake soon grew warm from climbing and he stuffed his jacket and gloves in the pack and went on in his Pendleton shirt. There were bird calls and chirps he didn’t recognize, the squawk and bark of more jays. A big black fly followed him for a time, circling his head and wanting to land. But as the trail moved away from the water, the fly disappeared.
After about 40 minutes of hiking, Jake came to a low ridge. Below him trailing down a slope was a clearing and near the center in a flatter area was a tall squared chimney, a remnant, he guessed, of an old homestead. It was the domino from the plaque.
He moved on down into the clearing, which formed a circle. There was evidence of fires in the fireplace and lots of footprints in the dust. Wiccan rituals? he wondered. Some big flat rocks and a couple of stumps had been pulled over for seats near the chimney. He sat down on a stump and ate the food he had brought and drank half of the water. The sun had come out and it warmed his face.
The clearing was peaceful. He could see the mountains in the distance. He felt a million miles from everyone he knew. He sat there a long time, resting. It took some effort but he didn’t think about much. An hour or so later, he made his way back down the trail to the cabin. Sadie was glad to see him.
He slept away the late afternoon on the sofa and awoke in the dark. He made a simple cold supper. Afterwards, he bundled up and sat out on the porch in the old rocker with a blanket over his knees and a mug of tea in his hand, Sadie curled up on his lap. He tried to clear his mind again, but now thoughts and memories ricocheted like pin balls. One minute he was thinking about Susan, the gallery owner in Santa Fe, and wondering if she had taken more paintings from the storage place and sold them. He could use the money. Then he thought of Marnie the last time he had seen her, flushed from making love with Paul. A pain went through his heart. Then Paul at Melissa’s house, the smell of body odor and stale breath and ammonia from his drunken skin as real in his nostrils as if Paul lay in front of him tangled in the unwashed sheets. More pain. He thought of Marnie again in the Holiday Inn, of holding her, of loving her, the smell of her hair and the green tea lotion she wore. He stayed with the sweetness of that memory for a long moment, before the guilt and shame came crowding in. He shook his head to clear his mind.
For the first time in many years, he thought of his mother. Of her at the stove on that last morning. Scrambled eggs and cheese toast. How she had smoothed her hand over his hair as she passed him at the table. He hadn’t known that that was the last time she would touch him. It had been an ordinary morning before school, but of course it hadn’t been ordinary at all.
Once or twice on the Internet, he had looked for her, but he knew he wouldn’t find her. She would have remarried, maybe more than once. Her name would no longer be the same. It occurred to him that she could find him. His name was the same and he had a web site with his artwork on it. But he had never heard from her.
He came back into himself when he heard the coyotes howling. He didn’t know if it was early or late, but it didn’t matter. He used the flashlight to see his way up to the loft and to bed.