Light the Fire (Jackson's Hollow #1)

Chapter 8

After all the taunting about her being a hiker, Jo found the trails behind the house calling to her. It was such a nice day, and she hated to be cooped up inside while the sun was still out. The trails were on her property anyway, so as long as she didn't go too far, she wouldn't be trespassing anywhere...and with the way Ryker was such a rule-follower, there was no way she'd run into him on her property.

Of course, where the property line was, she wasn't exactly sure, but she did know it included a good chunk of the woods.

Yep, it was decided. She left the bags of school supplies and books in the entryway, traded out her shoes for studier boots, grabbed a water bottle, and then set off for her afternoon jaunt.

It was late summer, and it was still hot out and almost muggy under the pines and scattered evergreens of the Appalachian mountains. It was like walking through a greenhouse, and Jo was glad that she had filled her water bottle with cool water and a couple ice cubes. Sunlight filtered through the leaves, casting shadows and dappling the forest floor.

Out here it felt like she could breathe, relax, be herself for a few minutes. True, she had grown up in a city, but she preferred the countryside, especially now. There were too many people all crammed together back home, tight and jammed together, vacuum-sealed by a smattering of skyscrapers and social clout. The woods, one the other hand, were quiet and lonely.

The path she had taken was overgrown and in need of some care. She was going to have to check the shed to see if there were any hedge trimmers she could use and maybe a weedeater. Occasionally she would have to dodge a spider web. Hopefully the more she used the trails, the less spiders would be likely to make their home there.

Picking up a stick, she swirled it around through a particularly large web that stretched from one pine to a beech tree on the other side of the path. The spider was nowhere to be seen, so she cautiously made her way past the remnants, wondering if the disturbed weaver was about to jump on her from above.

Nothing happened, so she took a deep breath and moved on, studying the woods curiously--you could still see the remnants of the fire that had happened a few generations ago in some of the fallen, blackened wood peeping out from the underbrush. Her grandmother had always liked to tell the story of how it had just missed their house, somehow sweeping right by it before getting controlled soon after. Her parents had used the story of the fire to try to teach some kind of life lesson to her as a kid about new life springing up from bad things. Jo smiled a little, pressing her hand against a tree briefly. It was nice to know fire wasn't always the destroyer.

Jo was a good 15-20 minutes into her walk now, but she knew there was a creek somewhere up ahead that she wanted to use as her turn around point. Again, she wasn't entirely sure if it was on the property, but she'd been with her grandparents a few times as a kid so she figured whoever owned it, if not the Scotts, were at least friends to the Scotts.

Maybe it was just the spider web still creeping her out, but she kept feeling like something else was there. If it was actually scientifically possible, she'd say the hairs on the back of her neck were standing up. Or was that possible? It'd never made much sense to Jo, but that was all she had to describe the feeling right now. But every time she looked, all she saw was a small squirrel leaping from tree to tree, or a bird flitting to another branch. Jo groaned out loud. "Stupid park ranger wannabe," she muttered, thwacking the stick she was still holding against a sapling tree.

Sorry, baby tree.

Really though, Ryker and Charlie and their warnings about the wildlife and hiking and staying on trails...it was like they were actively trying to scare her. But Charlie had said that the more dangerous wildlife was mostly toward Mt. Mitchell. So she had nothing to worry about. She straightened her shoulders, determined to enjoy her walk.