Page 1 of Rescued by the Lumberjack (Moonshine Ridge Lumberjacks #1)
Chapter One
Phoenix
I 'll head back after lunch, I decide. This spot is perfect for a picnic.
Slipping the little knapsack off my shoulders, I take a minute to stretch and admire the small clearing in the dense forest I've been hiking through.
There aren't many trails that cut through the Weeping Wilderness, which is such a shame, because the densely forested section of the mountain with the tragic backstory to its name is one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen.
When I first moved up to the tiny mountain community of Moonshine Ridge just a few months ago, I was blown away by the rugged, mountain scenery-- not to mention the rugged mountain men.
One of the first things I did was head straight across the street to Ash and Hyacinth McAllister's sporting goods store to pick up some hiking gear and a map of all the trails that run through the wilderness surrounding my new mountain home.
I'm determined to hike every one of them.
Of course, running the bakery on my own doesn't give me much opportunity to get outside for more than a few hours, so my new hobby is confined to day hikes.
I'm pushing my luck today, but it's still early and the sun won't set for a few more hours.
Plenty of time to enjoy my pb&j and sliced apple and still get out of the woods before dusk.
I don't mind hiking the last mile of the main trail back to my car in the dark, I have my headlamp and the trail outside the woods is exposed and well worn.
Settling on a large, flat rock with my sandwich and my thoughts, I look around at the lush forest surrounding me.
Moonshine Ridge also came with about a thousand local legends and the townspeople have been happy to tell me all of them-- particularly Mable Hart, who runs the local history museum and loves to gossip, and Alice McAllister, who runs the small general store and loves to gossip about how much Mable loves to gossip.
Those two old ladies and their friends are notorious around town, and, from what I've gathered from the gossip about the town gossips-- they're pretty wrapped up in the area's local folklore themselves.
I've been here for three months now and I haven't seen a single Sasquatch, I haven't heard any wailing women crying from the river's edge, I haven't picked up any ghostly hitchhikers, and all the clocks in my rented cottage keep right on ticking past three oh nine a.m. every night.
But then, I've never been superstitious.
Which is why I keep hiking the old trail that used to be a wagon road through the high mountain pass that ran to the settlement of Paradise Point and the larger town of Waterford Plains in the valley on the other side of these mountains.
Even though the road was abandoned a hundred and fifty years ago and relocated to the other side of the river.
Even though the reason the road was abandoned and the trail was left to be reclaimed by nature, was because several unmarried women went missing along the old road as they traveled between the settlements.
Even though locals are still telling stories about what happened to those women-- and why it was only unmarried ones that went missing-- around campfires to this day.
And even though our own local cryptozoologist, Finch Diaz, keeps losing game cameras from the area, as if someone--or some thing , as the locals like to say in an ominous tone-- is intentionally removing them to prevent anyone from catching sight of what really lives in these woods.
Several tiny blue butterflies flutter around a cluster of wildflowers that have found a rare patch of sunlight to bloom in. A cool breeze rustles pine boughs all around me, birds sing in the distance and squirrels chatter in the trees overhead.
I tuck the little container my sandwich was in back into the small day pack I carry, take a long drink from my bottle of electrolyte-infused water, and get back on my feet.
It's so peaceful here, it's hard to imagine that some silly folklore still manages to keep people from enjoying these woods.
More for me, I decide, shrugging my pack back on and breathing in the scent of the forgotten forest one last time before heading back to the car.
The mountains around Moonshine Ridge are forested in pretty much every direction, including the center of town, but no other trail I've explored yet smells as good as the Weeping Wilderness.
Maybe because it's so remote, or maybe because it gets so little traffic, but there's a primordial, untouched quality here that adds a deeper layer to the usual pine and petrichor fragrances of the forest.
I'm almost to the edge of the woods, where the trees thin out before suddenly stopping and the old road meets up with the well-maintained, modern trail that skirts the forest in favor of an exposed ridge-line.
Something about the air changes, the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, and the woods around me go silent.
I get an eerie feeling of being watched, and when I turn to look into the shadows of the forest behind me I see something move quickly, disappearing in to the thick trees, but not fast enough to keep me from taking off running at a speed I didn't know I was capable of.
Adam
" P retty much this section, here."
The fire management inspector points at a cluster of dying cedars that look like they've been putting up a good fight for the last few years, but it's clear they're going to lose it.
The big boss, Clinton Murdock, who owns the logging outfit I've been working for for the last six years now, nods solemnly and waves me over to tag each tree individually.
For a guy who owns a logging company, the old man doesn't much like cutting down trees.
Which is the reason I'll keep working for him as long as he'll have me.
I mark the trunk of each tree with the company's trademark, just a 3CM that I've got down to a quick flourish of the spray paint gun after all these years, and follow the two older men deeper into the dark patch of woods we're working in today.
Nervously looking back over my shoulder to gauge how much daylight we have left before the sun drops behind Benson Peak in the west and plunges the Weeping Wilderness into early darkness.
I'm not much for folklore and I've never been known to scare easily, but this dense patch of remote forest gives me the willies.
I've been a resident of the small mountain town of Moonshine Ridge long enough to have heard all the stories the folks on this mountain are still telling after a century and a half since the old mining camp became a town, and I've been around for all the new stories that keep coming out of these ancient peaks.
Including the tales of women going missing while traveling the old road that once cut through this forest, and the more recent discovery of an undocumented wolf pack that might explain those disappearances.
"This one," Oz slaps a meaty hand against the trunk of another tree, the gold wedding band on his third finger glinting in the last of the sunlight that reaches beyond the tree line.
Clinton waves me forward with the spray paint again, himself glancing back toward the sun like I'm not the only one keeping track of daylight.
This forest stretches farther than we'll be able to manage in one season, covering the mountain pass between here and Paradise Point and running north for a couple hundred miles, based on the satellite images I've seen.
The old wagon road is the only trail that goes through the place and that doesn't get enough traffic to keep it intact.
Jake and Levi'll be up here this summer, running a couple of crews to cut the trees we're marking now. The area's too remote to get heavy equipment in, so the crews are gonna be camped up here for weeks, doing the work by hand.
After the Placer Canyon fire a few years back, fire management HQ finally gave in and gave Oz Lancaster the thumbs up to bring the Murdock brothers in to thin the deadfall out of the area, hoping to avoid another fire like the one that left Placer Canyon and most of the east slope of Benson Peak nothing but a charred scar running through the local mountains.
The few times I've driven up here with Oz, I see the way his hands tighten on the wheel as we pass the old forestry road up to the Benson fire lookout. The fire took the whole area out and I guess Oz and his wife, Meadow were the ones stationed at the tower the night the evac call came in.
That's the same fire that damn near killed Chief Diaz just a week later.
I get why the old man gets a little jumpy about the thought of losing more old growth forest to fire. Outside of the fact that he's our wilderness fire management inspector-- it's kinda his job to keep these mountains from burning down.
"Think that's plenty for the day," Clinton says, nodding toward the fading sunlight filtering through the canopy.
The boss is a man of few words. When Clint does speak, he does it in a deep voice that carries like he's yelling, even when he's not. Has a way of making you listen.
"We can be done for the day." Oz agrees with a smile and a pat against another tree trunk-- this one's just getting an affectionate love pat, I won't be marking that one to take out.
We're careful about what we cut, dead, dying, and carefully selected trees that are choking the forest's ability to thrive.
Birch McAllister even added some specialized equipment down as his mill to process the smaller trunks so we can keep operations local.
Working for the Murdock brothers is a far cry from the big logging outfit I started off with when I was just a kid. The one that operated out of pure greed and didn't give a fuck about the land it was scarring or the communities it was driving into poverty.
It's good to work for a company I can respect, and I like the way the people of Moonshine Ridge stand by each other.
It's the reason I bought the house in town, the reason I plan on staying here till I die, and the reason the glint of light off Oz Lancaster's wedding band catches my eye-- Moonshine Ridge is where I'm going to raise my family and grow old beside the woman I love.
As soon as I find her.