Fate

It was to be a quick trip before she starts her career. She recently graduated from college with a degree in finance and will be starting a job with a major bank in a month.

Before the pressure of starting her life as a real adult, this trip, camping for a week in her favorite spot, all alone, will allow her to rest and renew. That is the plan.

She parks her Chevy in the parking lot at the start of the trail. Opening the trunk, she lifts out her pack. It is heavy, filled with all she needs for the week. Camping pans and a stove, a sleeping bag, hooked onto the bottom, food ( to supplement what she will fish and forage for), fishing gear, a bit of hygiene products, and a few changes of clothes.

No tent. The weather is favorable for sleeping outside. She wants to feel the night air and fall asleep under the stars.

Before placing it on her back, she checks the tautness of her boot laces. Shouldering her pack, she lets it fall flat against her back before starting out on the well marked trail.

“Fate, are you sure? At least take someone with you?” her mom and dad had pleaded with her at being told her plans.

“Mom, dad, I understand you are concerned. But the idea is to spend some time with myself. I will be camping at___. You know it is safe. It is where we went camping when I was a child.”

“Yes, with your parents.” The scent of the vanilla candle fills the room as her mom wrings her hands.

She kisses her face. “Mom, I am an adult. I know it is hard to accept but I can handle this.”

“You will have your phone, right?” Her dad asks.

“Yes dad with a solar charger.” He nods.

“It will be okay Vivian. She is right.”

She smiles at remembering as she moves through the increasingly heavy canopy. Their fears are valid if she was younger or had less experience. But she has been camping since she could walk. Her dad taught her to hunt and fish, how to build a fire, tell directions from the sun and the moss on the trees. She is prepared.

It takes a few hours of hard hiking to get to the camping spot. She takes a seat on a fallen log, pulling her refillable water bottle out. A deep pull helps to revive her. She sits for a moment gathering her strength before standing up and starting to gather bits of kindling after setting the pack down.

A few stones are also retrieved as she builds a fire pit. She lays the sticks down in the pattern she learned at her dad's knee. It keeps the fire going before the bigger logs are added.

The sound of it crackling is very relaxing. Leaning against the log, she watches it burn, just breathing in the smell of the burning pine. All the stress of the last few years falls away.

She pulls out a stick of beef jerky and lazily chews on it as the sun starts to set. She will lay out the sleeping bag and add some logs on the fire soon. For now though it is enough to watch the fire and breath in the smell of nature.

The morning finds her walking around the outside of the camp searching for fresh berries and herbs. Later, she will go down to the stream and fish. Moving through this day and week with the rhythm of the earth and nature. Slow and steady without the hurry and stress that will soon surround her.

Her evening, that second day, she sits by the fire, reading until the light grows to dim. Then she sits meditating and praying before climbing into her sleeping bag where she slept hard.

She wakes up to the sunrise. Stretching, a sigh as she tastes the pine drifting from the dying fire. A few more stretches before she rises to greet the day. A pee in the woods before she gathers more wood for the fire.

A few times she thought she heard something, she shrugged it off as an animal. Cooking the fish she had caught the day before, she is the most relaxed she has been in years. Her only concern was avoiding the patch of poison ivy that is growing by her campsite.

This is her time and nothing is going to disturb it. She well and truly believes this.

She finds a sheltered part of the creek and decides to take a dip. Stripping down to her underwear and bra, she slips in.

“Ah,” she sighs as the cool water washes her night's sweat off her, “this is the life.” laying her head back, she drifts as the sun rises over her.

Later she uses the same sun to dry her body as she lays out on the shore.

“She was supposed to be home two days ago!’ she paces back and forth before the police officer.

“And your daughter,” he pauses as he waits for her name…

“Fate Donna James.” Her father replies.

The officer lifts his eyes. They get that a lot. Not that right now, they really care how this man reacts to their daughter’s name.

“Right. Ah Fate is an adult?”

“Yes, she just graduated from college.”

“Then Mrs. James, we can't do anything until she has been missing three days. She probably got caught up in her trip and decided to take a few extra days. Did she go alone?”

“Yes! That is why we are so concerned.”

“Call us back if she isn't back by tomorrow.”

The woods are searched from a mile out from where she camped in all directions. Her campsite is right where it is supposed to be. They find her sleeping bag, the dead fire, her pack, placed high up in a tree a few paces from her site.

All is exactly as it should be. All except the missing woman.

They spread the search grid out farther, bringing in the dogs. They scent on clothes left in her pack and take off only to stop after a mile from where they start. More teams are brought in. Every square inch is meticulously searched.

Nothing.

She is just gone. Vanished without a trace.