In Hiding

IN HIDING

Altitude 2134 feet. Sky clear. Vine maple leaves, red and gold, scatter in the breeze. Moss-covered ground is as soft and wet as a kitchen sponge, and I know this because I am lying on that ground. Flattened to it.

There is a rutted, gravel road just twenty feet away and a moment before I could hear a vehicle, a pick up by the sound of it, make its way up its steep contours, and, rational or not, I stopped…