There's a small clearing with a black, twisted tree stump in it, and at a certain point one of the older park rangers will quietly take you aside and have a talk about it, and how to act around it. Jackie unwraps a little package of waxed paper on top of the stump; a couple slices of fresh bread and a small handful of nuts and dried fruit. She pours some water into a paper cup, puts it next to everything else, and walks across the clearing at a carefully casual pace.
She takes a seat on a fallen log, puts her hat in her lap and runs her fingers through her hair, and stares into the trees for a while.
There are soft noises, in the end. What might be quiet footsteps; the waxed paper crinkles a little. Perhaps-imagined soft breaths and chewing.
"Couple of hikers been up in the park long enough for folks to worry," Jackie says eventually. She doesn't turn. Old Fred had never turned to look, he'd said when it was his turn to give her the talk. And the ranger who'd told him never had, either. Maybe it was just stories, Fred had said, rubbing his chin, that rangers who looked were never seen again. But a feller wouldn't necessarily want to risk it, given everything.
"They got spooked," says a low voice. It's hard to pinpoint where exactly it's spoken from, other than behind her and — closer than she expects it, almost close enough she expects to feel breath on her. "Went east, over onto — the other land."
Over the park boundary, as expressed by someone extremely tolerant of their insistence on thinking any such concept.
"Spooked, huh," Jackie says.
"They were talking about camping around the graves."
Someone accustomed enough to existing alongside that they developed a real protectiveness about the Native sacred sites up here. Protected, of course, by law.
"Decided there was something spooky out here, huh," Jackie says. "Got turned around. Yeah, that'd do it. These city people, jeez." She puts her hat on. "Well. Guess I'll just pick up my litter and head down to the ranger station and point any searchers out eastward."
She straightens her jacket and takes a swig of her own from her water bottle before turning around to the empty clearing, picking up the empty paper and cup, and getting on with her day.