I hadn’t seen Owl’s mouth since the first week out, when Dave from Bak­ers­field clum­sily rolled a boul­der over his foot. Owl howled that time loud enough to shake a rain of pine nee­dles onto our heads. New as we were then, we prob­a­bly laughed at him a lit­tle, and ner­vously watched our bear-like leader for the warn­ing signs of a charge. In­stead his beard closed back around his mouth, we all worked hard until knock­ing off time, and then Owl plonked his steel toe booted foot in the creek until the swelling went down enough for him to take it off. We soaked nearby, qui­etly wish­ing for a beer, for a joint, a mat­tress, a day off, ab­sorb­ing our first les­son with the creek’s icy chill.

That first week some of us had been wiry punks like Jenna from Fresno, dark goths like Trevor from San Jose, or slick drifters like Bob from Long Beach. We were all there, with var­i­ous de­grees of vol­un­tary, to learn how to work hard and live through an en­tire day of so­bri­ety. We had all lived through lesser mea­sures – board­ing school for delin­quents, liv­ing with grandma across the state, day jobs, and strict cur­fews and home drug test kits – but the six month stint of hard labor in the back­coun­try was a step up for all of us.

We’re now five months in, and sit­ting around the camp­fire read­ing our bi-weekly mail de­liver, we all look like Owl. Beards, dirty over­alls, white tshirts now brown with sweat, beat to hell boots, hair wild with camp­fire smoke and creek water and ban­danas, we look like the rough street kids who live in the park in the city, but with­out the dogs. And we smell worse. Five months in, we’re fi­nally start­ing to fig­ure life out. We’re build­ing trail ten times faster now. Our crew hasn’t had a fight in weeks. There’s a kin­ship now. In­stead of plot­ting our in­di­vid­ual es­capes back to the city and a first big score, we’re en­joy­ing our week­ends to­gether hik­ing up into the high coun­try, mov­ing fast with­out our tools. We are ex­cited for each other’s let­ters – we cheer with Jenna over good news about her brother’s new baby, we help Dave get over a breakup let­ter that was for the best.

Owl’s let­ter is from the of­fice and it has a pic­ture with it. His beard parts like two bears un­clasp­ing from a hug. His mouth ap­pears, but this time no howl. No sound at all. We aren’t laugh­ing – it’s us in the pic­ture, cov­ered in blood, fire­light gleam­ing off the bot­tle in Bob’s red hand.

A few months ago, an old guy with a huge pack came hik­ing through around din­ner time. We got to chat­ting with Mor­ton the old Ma­rine and he of­fered to give us a sur­vival skills lec­ture in ex­change for our beans and corn­bread. We were still cyn­i­cal then, but Owl was ex­cited and it sounded bet­ter than lis­ten­ing to his har­mon­ica. That was how we learned to snare a deer and butcher it. We talked about it all that week­end never re­ally be­liev­ing any of us city kids could do it. Mail de­liv­ery came Mon­day on the mule with Linda the camp cook. I had a new pair of boots my cousin sent (to re­place the too cheap, de­stroyed shells dan­gling from my feet.) Also, tucked away in the pack­ag­ing – just as re­quested – a bot­tle of Jager and a dozen joints, which some­how made it past scrutiny into my tent. I thought, this week­end we’re going to party. Four of us headed out Sat­ur­day morn­ing, half jok­ingly laid a few snares around the lake we’d hiked to, laid out our sleep­ing bags and built a fire. There was an ar­gu­ment, but in the end peer pres­sure won out. We got fucked up. It got dark. And then we heard the deer.

I woke up to re­al­ize that

1. it’s noon
2. I’m now sun­burnt
3. I’m hun­gover
4. I have a huge knife in my hand and a bot­tle near my head
5. I’m cov­ered in blood and it’s sticky
6. my three friends are scat­tered around also cov­ered in blood
7. there is a deer’s glossy dead eye star­ing at me

I scream and run into the lake. As every­one else wakes up, I try to dis­guise the bon­fire’s burn holes in my sleep­ing bag with ad­di­tional dirt, re­cover my cam­era from a nearby bush, bury the bot­tle, vomit and bury that too. Then we bury the deer, silently take vows of si­lence, and head back.

We cleaned up our act, worked hard. I even took pic­tures of wild­flow­ers on the week­ends. I had put that night far be­hind me, and sent my film to a dif­fer­ent cousin to get de­vel­oped. It was the sum­mer after Ted Kazin­sky was ar­rested. I men­tioned our hair and dirt, right? So when this acne-scarred six­teen year old work­ing the drug store photo de­vel­oper in Palo Alto sees our group shot from the night of the deer – blood like war paint, bare chests, wild hare, knives, no deer in­sight – he freaks. Calls the cops, who freak and call the Park ser­vice, and so on until the photo shows up here in camp with the let­ter says that Owl has to walk us out of the woods. We’re fired. We’re dis­owned.

Leav­ing wasn’t pretty. The fact that we would be out of the woods soon brought back some of our old selves. Bob from Long Beach got angry, even pulled his knife out. In the end, the re­main­der of our shocked crew helped us pack up and we started the two day walk back to the near­est dirt road. Owl led us out silently, only stop­ping once slowly to shake his beard, and then got on with teach­ing us how to walk back into the world.

Sarah Mad­dux