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The Ozarks were supposed to feel familiar.

Same limestone ridges I'd hiked as a kid, same

cedar-scented humidity, but stepping onto Wolf Creek Trail with Sage that Monday afternoon

had the weight of crossing a border. Behind us, the ranger's gravel road hissed shut, and ahead

the forest gathered itself in a rough circle of trunks, as if checking our

passports before it let us in. I shifted the dry bag of acoustic loggers on my back, caught

sages grin, and we started down the leaf-choked path toward base camp. We worked in easy silence

until sunset. My thesis depended on capturing the Ozark's sub-audible life.

The moaning limestone, owl wing beats, bats so high-pitched they sounded like camera flashes.

Every kilometer we strapped a recorder to a trunk, sinked the clocks, and marked GPS.

Sage hummed to herself while she tightened straps, her ponytail

flicking black against the orange evening glare. She was better at fieldwork than most professors

I knew, steady, precise, quick to laugh even when mosquitoes clouded our faces. We pitched

camp beside a shallow bend of Wolf Creek just after nine. The

cedar needles under the tent smelled like pencil shavings. Sage rigged the bare hang. I logged the

metadata, normal, rhythmic, safe. At 9.57 p.m., the forest was still chirping. Katie Dids, bullfrogs, one distant coyote.

At 9.59, the soundbed thinned, the way a crowded cafeteria drops to a hush when a teacher steps in.

And on the exact stroke of ten, the world punched us in the chest.

I didn't hear the boom so much as feel it. The air turned solid, my ribs buzzing like struck tuning forks.

...