I Began Leaving a Chair Facing the Forest

I put the chair at the edge of the clearing because there was nowhere else to put it.

That was what I told people.

It was an old kitchen chair, oak, heavy enough that the wind couldn't move it. I placed it twenty yards behind the house where the grass ended and the timber began, facing north into the trees.

Every morning I drank my coffee there.

The forest was quieter from the chair.

Not actually quieter. There were ravens, squirrels, wind moving through the firs. But after ten minutes, those sounds stopped feeling like sounds and became inventory.

One raven.

Two squirrels.

Wind from the west.

Branch breaking somewhere beyond the first ridge.

You notice more when you sit still.

Especially footsteps.

My neighbor, Carl, saw me out there one morning.

He leaned on the fence.

"Waiting for something?"

"No."

He laughed.

People laugh when they want the answer to stay harmless.

The next week I moved the chair twenty feet closer to the trees.

Carl noticed.

Didn't ask.

By October it was beneath the first row of pines.

I kept drinking my coffee there.

Sometimes before sunrise.

Sometimes after midnight.

The chair became damp. Moss started growing along one leg. I scraped it off with a hunting knife and left the knife stuck in the stump beside it.

That seemed to bother Carl more than the chair.

He stopped waving.

Then hunting season started.

A man from Spokane parked along the county road one morning. Orange vest. Expensive rifle. Clean boots.

He asked if he could cross my land.

I said no.

He pointed toward the timber.

"Public land starts back there."

"Eventually."

He stared at me.

I stared at him.

There are conversations where both men understand that grammar is no longer doing the work.

He left.

Three days later I found one of his orange gloves beside the chair.

I hung it from a branch.

Carl saw that too.

"Find that somewhere?"

"Here."

He looked toward the trees.

"Whose is it?"

"I don't know."

That was mostly true.

After that, Carl's curtains stayed closed on the side of his house facing mine.

Winter came early.

Snow buried the legs of the chair.

I shoveled a path to it every morning.

Not to the woods.

Just to the chair.

That distinction seemed important.

The strange thing about snow is how accurately it records visitors.

Deer.

Fox.

Rabbit.

Human.

One morning there were boot prints approaching the chair from deep inside the timber.

None leaving.

I stood over them for several minutes.

Then I brushed them out with a pine branch.

Not because I was afraid.

Because they spoiled the view.

Carl disappeared in January.

His truck was still in the driveway.

His dog barked for two days.

Then it stopped.

The sheriff came by.

He stood in my kitchen with his hat in his hands and asked whether I had seen Carl recently.

"Not recently."

"When was the last time?"

I looked through the window.

The chair was visible between the trees.

Snow had collected across the seat.

"Hard to say."

The sheriff followed my eyes.

"That your chair?"

"Yes."

"Why's it out there?"

"I like the view."

He stared at a wall of dark timber.

"That's your view?"

"Most days."

He wrote something in his notebook.

I noticed his handwriting was very small.

Careful people write small when they're nervous.

Two deputies searched Carl's property.

Then mine.

They walked the tree line but never crossed into the deeper timber.

The younger deputy found the orange glove.

He pulled it down from the branch.

"What's this?"

"Decoration."

He didn't laugh.

I liked him immediately.

The sheriff eventually returned my hunting knife.

They had found it in the stump.

He handed it to me by the blade.

"Keep better track of your things."

"I usually do."

His eyes moved toward the chair again.

That night I carried it deeper into the woods.

Past the creek.

Past the old logging road.

Past the place where cell phones stopped pretending.

There was another clearing farther in.

Small.

Private.

The kind of clearing you would never find unless someone showed you.

I set the chair in the center.

Facing east this time.

There were scratches in the dirt around it from something heavy being dragged.

Snow covered most of them.

By spring, nobody asked about Carl anymore.

His house sold.

A young couple moved in.

Nice people.

The husband introduced himself across the fence.

He asked whether the woods were safe.

"Mostly."

"Wolves?"

"Sometimes."

"Bears?"

"Sometimes."

He smiled.

"Anything else I should worry about?"

I thought about it.

"No."

That seemed to comfort him.

For several months I stopped going to the chair.

I didn't need to.

Things had become orderly again.

Then one morning I found footprints outside my bedroom window.

Mud.

Bare feet.

They led away from the house.

Toward the forest.

I followed them.

Past the tree line.

Past the creek.

Past the old logging road.

All the way to the clearing.

The chair was exactly where I had left it.

Except someone had turned it around.

It was facing the trail.

Facing me.

There was something folded neatly on the seat.

Carl's jacket.

I stood there for a long time.

The forest made its little inventory sounds.

Raven.

Wind.

Branch.

Then footsteps behind me.

I rested my hand on the knife at my belt.

For the first time since I'd put the chair in the woods, I understood what it had been for.

I wasn't supposed to sit in it.

Someone else was.