This happened last October in Red River Gorge, Kentucky.

I wanted one quiet solo trip before winter, and I picked a simple loop I knew on paper.

Start at Coomer Ridge Campground, walk sections of rough trail to Oxyar Ridge,

drop toward the Red River, sleep one night off trail,

then curve back out the next day. I brought a paper map and a compass, a 20-degree bag,

a small stove, and a knife I keep clipped to my hip belt. I wrote the plan on a card and left it

on my dashboard. The forecast was clear but cold. Lows in the low 40s,

dry leaves everywhere with enough down on the ground that you could see through the bare limbs.

It was a weekday. By mid-afternoon, the parking lot was thinning out. I didn't think much of that.

I've done lonelier loops. I noticed him as I shouldered my pack at Coomer, tan button-up, stitched rectangle patch that

said, volunteer without any agency logo I recognized, a beat-up day pack with no hip belt,

and no water bottle in sight.

He walked by close enough to nod, but not close enough to say anything real.

No hello, know where you heading.

The patch looked off.

The shape was wrong for the ones I've seen, and the letters were too chunky, like something from a craft store.

He clocked my pack and boots and then looked past me, like I wasn't the point. I chalked it up

to the kind of odd you get at trailheads and started walking. The ridge was dry and bright.

Oxier Ridge gets you those sudden views where the land drops away and clean sandstone steps.

You can see courthouse rock clear as a diagram.

I passed two day hikers coming out, and then nobody.

By late afternoon, the air had that still feeling you get when the wind isn't moving,

...