Selected notes from ranger logs & back-road hearsay, Tucker County WV
Footprints the size of frying pans skirted the snowline behind the hay bales. Five toes, long stride, a habit of walking as if late for a meeting. The ranger says bears meander; these prints did not meander. They kept their hands in their pockets and didn’t look back.
Mist kept misplacing the river, and in it a figure paused on the far bank—tall, easily mistaken for a spruce, until the spruce stepped away. No one spoke. Even the ravens adjusted their grammar.
Someone taller than the barber’s mirror tried on a felt hat from the donation box, admired the fit in a darkened window, and left two quarters on the sill—a fair trade, said the barkeep, though the hat now smells like river stones.
Heard a low baritone counting to four like a man learning a waltz. Wind joined on two and four. Nothing seen, but my coffee cooled in my hands as if the woods had taken a long breath in.
Not prints so much as suggestions—like someone wearing boots decided to grow a fifth toe halfway through. They led to the creek, then reconsidered, then were politely gone.