Pihu had vanished from the morning woods, escaping the cabin, leaving me be for the time being. It had given me plenty of time to pack up my belongings: a bag of clothes and my camera bag. I tidied up the cabin as best I could. You couldn’t put lipstick on a pig and make it pretty, though. No one could. I closed all the cabin’s windows and locked the door behind me. Within a matter of minutes, crying, still unsure if I were doing the right thing or not—abandoning Timber a second time—I climbed behind my pickup’s steering wheel and started for home, driving away from the cabin, Lake Erie, and Skenandoa Deep.
While I drove southward, snow drifted down from the sky between the bare trees. Autumn had decided to nonchalantly end, and winter was eager to make its chilly appearance, showing its
