Moth Flight

She didn’t have a penny to her name when she hit the trail. It was cold. The frozen grass crackled under the weight of her cheap hiking boots.

“I’ll worry about it all later,” she said to herself, a little too loudly, though only the wind and the trees heard. She should have felt alone as she hiked into the deep crevices of the frosty forest, but a veteran hiker knows you are never alone in a forest, though it was the quietest she’d ever heard it. No birds sang, not even a chickadee.

I wonder if there’s a predator close by?

She stopped to consider but resumed when she spotted a parcel of white tailed deer browsing nearby. They scattered when they heard the crunch of her footfall.

I’m the only predator here.

It was early, the sky still blue from waking. She turned on her flashlight even though she could see the snow-covered ground well enough.

The sun will be up soon enough.

The stride of her hard boot soles created a meditative opportunity. She tried to divert her mind from the pile of unpaid bills; her negative bank account; her parents, both dying in a nursing home she couldn’t visit; and the impending doom of her life to the symphony underfoot, a steady, rhythmic stream for daydreaming, but the needling pulse of despair glimmered at the edge of her hearing.

She moved deeper into the forest, a perfect storm of snow-covered beauty.

The ground below her feet grew steeper, and she had to tread carefully as she climbed down embankments. The earth grew colder the further down she went.

Ice. Don’t slip.

Her breath fogged her face, obscuring her sight until she stopped to wipe off her glasses. The frigid air shifted, and she caught the scent of something else. Not her own sweaty musk underneath layers of worn flannel and imitation down, the scent of piss and shit and warm blood. She scanned the trees for movement and saw nothing, but the scent was indistinguishable.

Not a skunk.

Her hairs were on alert. Her skin pricked with cold and fear. Her hearing sharpened but the only sound she could really hear was the blood rushing through her own veins and the nervous fog of her breath, her lungs steaming like bellows. She reached down to unclip bear spray from her fanny pack and saw a print on the ground, about four inches wide and two inches tall, the toes shaped like teardrops. She knew from experience it wasn’t canine.

No claw prints.

Something in the trees moved which brought her attention to the sky. A barn owl lit on a branch and looked down at her, like a silent sentry gauging the battleground. Time suspended, and she watched the owl, distracted from the permeating scent.

She guessed it was male from its white chest. The female would be speckled. His heart-shaped, lunar face cocked in curiosity, but it only took a few seconds for her to realize he was not curious about her. He spread his wings wide and lowered his head.

It’s behind me.

A twig cracked. She spun around and aimed her spray just as a mountain lion sprinted from behind some brush.

“Hey, no, no, no,” she yelled, waving her arms overhead. “Get out of here.”

The mountain lion wasn’t dissuaded and ran towards her. His thick muscles rippled like giant pools of water under his fawn coat. Her heart stopped beating. Everything went white. Silent as space. She deployed the spray.

The barn owl flew overhead, just as the cougar leapt into the air, but the cat turned his head in disgust when the smell of the bear spray hit. Talons and fur collided, and the owl ripped off a chunk of the cougar’s ear. The mountain lion landed a few feet from her, shaking his head. She deployed more spray, aiming for the cougar’s eyes, and he ran off into the inky horizon.

Her heartbeat returned. Sight returned. Sound. She bent over, heaving, moaning with frightened exhales, falling to her knees.

Finally, she stood.

Like a thousand whispers, the owl hovered in front of her. They call it moth flight, that moment of suspended animation, of slow wingbeats and dangling feet. A moment passed between them. Human to bird. Bird to human. Predator to predator. Prey to prey.

The forest stood aside, finally singing.

And then he was gone.