​     The man lives in the middle of nowhere and the center of everything. His state of matter is of here and not there. He exists at the intersection between present and absent, the way most things do in the high altitudes of the mountains. The threshold into this state of being is the weighted blanket of fog that falls over their summits. The lush crowns of canopy trees eclipse the already limited daylight that pierces past the fog, and the gaze of creatures hidden in obscurity gives all visitors the unnerving sensation of always being watched from behind. Shadows dash across before them, too quickly to identify their features. Loud and boisterous conversations happen all around them. Great horned owls speak in riddles and tongue-twisters, trees pass each other whispered secrets through their underground root system, mountain lions and lynxes cackle at each other’s jokes, and ants gossip as they forage together for the best leaf to take back to their colony. They all talk over each other and get louder at night, leaving campers no option but to gather around crackling campfires and tell each other stories to soothe their fears over the shadowy figures lurking around them. Like a string of red yarn, a single truth interlaces stories told by hikers, campers, and old conquistadores: as one ascends into the fog everything loses coherence. This is the moment when the mountain man enters the story. 

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     The man’s face, strange and disfigured, has been described minutely in ancient folktales passed down by the elder women of the mountains, who inherited those stories at a time when they were filled with youth, overconfidence, and naїveté. But, as they collected first hand encounters with this mountain beast, and settled into their wrinkled face, broader waist line, and long silver hair, they passed on the word. His skin is made of thick, reddish-brown tree bark, etched with deep furrows running down his large back and fissured patches on his limbs. His fingers are long, craggy branches that twist themselves into hands, and from his forehead two large horns spiral outward. His regalia consists of a cape made from elktoe mussels he gathered near the riverbend and a crown made of peregrine feathers. The descriptions of his great stature, his reeking odor of rotten moss, and his huffing breaths make all campers look behind their shoulders. They stare at the haunted woods surrounding them, where the light of their fire fades into darkness and can no longer protect them, convincing themselves that the black silhouettes slipping through the murk are merely figments of their imagination, born from exhaustion after long hikes, or the hallucinatory effects of high altitudes combined with the occasional shroom microdose—and not of the ancient creature coming to violently tear them apart.  

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     But his feasts do not consist of people. Those are just rumors. Easy to believe, and even easier to disperse. No, his intentions are not of violence—nor are his origins—not even after the day he fell asleep. He’s been wandering the mountains for hundreds of years, but to him it’s only been minutes. 

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     Heartbreak is what put him to sleep, the way it does to most people. Before the men with guns came, he used to live in wholeness; he used to have a body. He used to have people. In those days he foraged and hunted. He ate ripe pawpaws straight from the source. He tore the skin away, spit out the seeds back into the earth, and slurped the pulp from them. The citrus and gooeyness ran down his fingers, leaving them sticky. It was a primal and almost sensual ritual, but he licked them after, not letting anything drip to the ground. He grinned with his mouth full and bowed to the pawpaw tree in reverence. He did the same when he ate buffalo with his family. The buffalo wasn’t an ‘it’ to them, but rather a ‘Thy.’ They talked to the buffalo the way others talk inside cathedrals. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done. Before they ate the buffalo’s meat, they burned sweetgrass and sage, danced, and sang in gratitude for its sacrifice. He thought them wise creatures, beautiful in the summer and gracious in the winter, especially when their fur was covered in fresh snowfall. He canonized them by painting portraits of them inside caves with red pigments.  

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     It was spring when the men with guns came. The azaleas and bloodroots were in bloom. The apples were sweet enough to be picked off their branches. They arrived mounted on white horses, dressed in army jackets, armed with rifles and axes. They ordered him and his family to leave; they had declared themselves the new owners of the mountains. They now owned the chestnut oak trees, the white-tailed deers, the beavers and their dams, the sunlight that shines through twisted branches and morning fog, and the glint of river water when it flows. 

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     It was sacrilege. It was slaughter. It was unthinkable; the deer falling mid-jump after one shot, the heavy thump of axed tree trunks hitting the ground, ducks being shot down mid-flight; he watched it all unfold in slow motion. His family desperately gathered scraps of memories and belongings and were expelled out west. Although he too was urged to leave, he ran into the forest and hid. In solitude, he felt the pain of the carnage churning his insides out. He folded in half holding at his stomach and began retching violently. He howled at the sky surrounded by corpses of buffalos and cut down maple trees. His heart throbbing like it might implode inside his chest. He wept. Then, he fell asleep. 

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     In grief, the sodden earth underneath him began pulsating. The roots of dead trees wrapped themselves around his legs, went up his torso, down his arms, and finally covered his entire face. A thick layer of moss and resurrection fern formed around him. With no trees left to offer shade, the sunlight grew oppressive, searing and leathering his skin. Over time, oyster mushrooms started growing on his chest; militant ants crawled up what used to be his arms; old waxy leaves fell on him and grew mildew; beetles and salamanders inhabited his back; the occasional rabbit stood on him to eat clovers.

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     It was years before he woke up again, but he did. The mountain monster rose at the ripe beginning of fall. His cheeks were numb. The temples of his head ached. He felt drunk and woozy every time he took a step. When he tried to speak, his throat could no longer form vowels. The sounds came out in growls and hisses. His vision was blurred, he could no longer see color, but had a faint recollection of the color blue. When he approached some people for help—to ask if they knew what had happened to him, and if they knew where his family was—they screamed and ran away in terror. Others threw rocks at him and tried to beat him with sticks. He couldn’t recall language or sentence structure, the verbs and adjectives that had once breathed life into his songs and stories had all watered down and evaporated. Except, for the one occasion where two young men had wandered far too deep into the forest. The waning moon hung above them, and the forest fauna had fallen unusually quiet. He observed them from the dark; the men shone a light onto a large piece of paper and pointed around in confusion, scratching at the backs of their heads. I think we are lost, one of them said. And that’s a word he recognized, that’s a word he felt: lost. He ran out of obscurity to tell them that he felt that way too and maybe they could find a way out of the forest together. This sentiment came out as a vicious growl from his beastly mouth, and the two young men ran away in a freight. One of them dropped his torch light; the other one dropped the map. In the midst of such hysteria, one of the men tripped and fell off the side of the mountain. The splatting sound of his body hitting the rocks underneath him echoed throughout the mountain range. Hours later, the mountain monster found him unconscious; his leg was broken in half, but he could feel the young man’s heart beating faintly. He carried him upstream, and with the man in his arms, fragments of memories flooded back in. He remembered which leaves to forage to make healing ointments, the cadence of a prayer he once used to say, the smell of tobacco he used to burn, the red pigment he used to paint with. He found a bed of soft moss to lay the young man. He balmed his wounds; he tightly wrapped his leg with leaves; he prayed; he burned tobacco; and he painted red lines across his face. A search party eventually found the young man, and he told the story of a horrid creature who almost killed him.

 

     After that incident he stopped approaching visitors, retired to a small cave, and slept during the daytime. On occasion, a fox would curl up next to him and he’d let them. When superstorms thrashed the forest he’d let deers, squirrels, or badgers seek refuge in his cave. He pulled them close and kept them warm. He moved under the moonlight and observed, from afar, families come and go. They’d set up tents and light fires. They would cook meals and sometimes they’d say grace before eating them. When they’d slept, he approached their campground and stole their food scraps: crackers, half-eaten hot dogs, burnt marshmallows covered in chocolate, bags of grapes, and processed potato chips, he would feast on all of it. Never forgetting, to reverence in gratitude. Even though the stories of him were all wrong, he still saw and treated the earth around him as Thy. He’d leave the campsite trailing silver cookie wrappings and large footprints behind him.

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     His favorite nights were the silent visitor-free nights. No drunk teenagers daring each other to look for him in the dark, or loud boomboxes playing pop songs. Only the sound of leaves rustling in the wind, the river running downstream, the neighs of wild horses roaming free in the distance, and the hooting of barn owls. All a symphony. There were nights when he felt plenty lonesome, but not on those. He felt oneness. He sat in stillness next to the river; the moon above white and brilliant. He’d eat huckleberries and plums, licking his fat mossy fingerpads afterward. Momentarily—in the concert of the forest—the monster carcass is shed, and he returns, both body and spirit, to who he once used to be.