My name is Dana Sissek.

I was 34 years old at the time.

I want to be clear about something before I begin.

I am not a person who frightens easily.

I have been backpacking alone since I was 26.

I have done the Cranberry Wilderness Loop in West Virginia in February,

when the temperature dropped to 9 degrees. I have solo hiked sections of the Appalachian Trail in

Virginia during thunderstorms. I have woken up to a black bear pulling at the stuff sack I hung

20 feet in a hemlock tree. None of those experiences prepared me for what happened at

Dali Sods. Dali Sade's wilderness is a federally designated wilderness area in the Allegheny

Mountains of eastern West Virginia, in Randolph and Tucker counties. It sits on a high plateau

between 3,800 and 4,800 feet in elevation.

The terrain does not look like the rest of Appalachia.

The wind is constant.

The ground is boggy and covered in sphagnum moss and blueberry heath.

The red spruce trees grow sideways from decades of exposure.

There are rock outcroppings, open meadows, and a kind of emptiness that is hard to describe without comparing it to something else, which I will not do.

It just is what it is, a place that feels exposed and old and indifferent.

I drove up from my apartment in Elkins, West Virginia, on the morning of

October 16, 2022, a Sunday. I left at 6.15 in the morning. The drive to the Bear Rock's trailhead

on Forest Road 75 takes about an hour and a half if you are careful on the gravel road, which I was.

I pulled into the small gravel lot at

...