The Ranger Asked Me To Describe The Man Again And Then Went Very Quiet

Eleven miles in, on a trail that takes a fit person five hours, I met a man walking out.

No pack. No water. Jeans. A red jacket, the cheap kind, zipped to the chin on a day that was twenty-six degrees.

He was walking at a good pace, and he said good morning, and I said good morning, and I asked — because you do, out there, it is the etiquette — whether he was all right for water.

He said, "I'm nearly there."

And then he was past me, and I walked on, and it took me about four minutes to work out that "nearly there" was, in the direction he was going, another nine miles of exposed ridge with no water on it.

I turned round. The trail behind me is straight for at least six hundred metres.

Nobody on it.

I sat down for a bit. I am not a nervous person. I have done long trails since I was twenty and I have slept alone in places you would not park a car.

At the ranger station I reported it, because you do that too: a man with no water is a body in two days.

The ranger — a woman in her fifties, competent, kind — asked me to describe him again. I did. She asked what he said. I told her. She asked what colour the jacket was, and I said red, and she looked at the desk for a moment.

She did not write anything down.

She said, "Thank you. If you see him again, don't follow him."

I asked what that meant.

She said, "It means don't follow him."

Then she gave me a map, and pointed out where the water sources were, in the exact tone of a woman doing her job, and the conversation was over.

I have hiked that trail twice since. I have never seen him. I have never seen anybody in a red jacket anywhere without my whole body going cold for a second, which is an inconvenient thing to happen in a supermarket.

I do not have a monster for you. I have a polite man with no water, and a ranger who did not reach for her pen.