Shoshone Lake Trail

Twelve miles in. I was alone, which I prefer. The kind of quiet out there that has texture to it — you can hear your own pack shifting, your own breathing. You become aware of what else is making sound and what isn’t.

Something stopped making sound.

A circle of maybe forty feet where the birds just weren’t. No transition, no thinning out. On one side of it, normal August backcountry noise. On the other side, nothing. I walked through it and out the other side before I understood what had happened. Then I walked back through it, which in retrospect was an interesting choice.

I stopped and looked at my watch for no reason. It was 2:14 in the afternoon. I wrote it down. I don’t know why. I had no other data to record and I suppose I felt I should be recording something.

There was a smell. I will not describe it again because I described it after No. 002 and a wildlife biologist changed the subject. What I will say is that it was present, and then it was not present, and I was aware of exactly when it stopped.

I kept moving. Made camp, ate, slept fine. A ranger at the trailhead the next morning asked how it went. I said fine. He asked if I’d noticed anything unusual near the lake. I said no. He nodded in a way that suggested he didn’t believe me. I nodded back in a way that suggested I didn’t care. We understood each other. Neither of us said anything else.

I haven’t been back to that specific trail. I will go back. I have the right lens now.