Between Dusk and Dawn

The doctors called it ALS in January 2021. Chris stood there, all 6'2" of him, those blue eyes steady as he listened to the diagnosis. He never wanted to be a victim. 'Well,' he'd say, managing that smile I loved, 'at least now I can definitely haunt you. Nothing could keep me away.'

Those first few months, he faced it like everything else in life - with stubborn determination and dark humor. He'd been a meat cutter for twenty years, his strong hands precise and steady with a blade. But he was so much more - a talented chef who could create masterpieces in the kitchen, an artist whose creativity flowed through everything he touched. Now those same skilled hands were betraying him. Still, Chris owned that walker, strutting with pride, working hard until the very end.

I'd catch him sometimes, staring at his hands, grief washing over him as another ability slipped away. The art, the cooking, the simple daily tasks - ALS stole them one by one. But Chris refused to "live in reverse," as he'd say. Each day, no matter how hard, he found something to be thankful for. When his hands could barely grip his water bottle, he'd still manage a grin and say, "Just practicing my ghost moves early."

But ALS doesn't just steal your body - it steals pieces of who you are. As the disease progressed, his humor faded. The man who promised to haunt me grew angry, distant. When the divorce papers came, they felt like another kind of death. The strong hands that once wielded knives with surgical precision, that created art and cooked with passion, now couldn't hold a pen to sign them.

A year after we split, after he died, I found myself drawn back to these woods. Fleming Falls Preserve - once Camp Mowana - where I used to hide as a bullied fifth grader. Some places remember you. Some places wait for you to return when you're lost again. These trees had sheltered my childhood fears; now they'd shelter my adult grief.

Fleming Falls Preserve holds more stories than years. Before it was Camp Mowana, these lands knew Native American footsteps, their trails still visible if you know where to look. The waterfall that gave the preserve its name thunders down ancient cliffs where, according to local legend, tragedy played out generations ago. Even the name Fleming carries weight - a reminder of lives lost, of history written in water and stone.

I'd wandered these paths since childhood, learning their secrets one by one. The unmarked hermit's grave that locals whispered about. The old farm where they said prison escapees had buried their victims in the cornfield. Even rumors of a ghost plane, its wreckage long absorbed by the earth but its presence still felt on quiet nights. Each tale added another layer to the mystery of this place, making it more than just woods and water - making it a keeper of memories, both beautiful and dark.

I walked through those familiar paths until I reached the quiet circle, where weathered logs sat in eternal audience around a worn pulpit and platform. Some had deteriorated, returning to the earth, but the space remained unchanged - aging with time but never truly moving on. Sunlight filtered through the pines like a spotlight on nature's stage, the kind of otherworldly illumination you'd see in a movie or in a memory highlighting a pivotal moment in your life.

The sky transformed into a canvas of pinks and purples, early stars beginning to pierce the darkening horizon. Through the thickening fog, the autumn leaves glowed like embers - orange and red against the deepening twilight. It was hauntingly beautiful, this moment between day and night, between memory and present, between fear and wonder.

The fog rolled in like ghosts from my past, reaching with pale fingers across the worship circle. It seemed alive, hungry, ready to capture me and pull me back into all those moments of loss - the bullied child I was, the widow they wouldn't let say goodbye. Behind me, the pines loomed darker, their shadows lengthening as the day bled away.

Old stories flooded back, rising with the fog - tales of the hermit buried in his unmarked grave somewhere beneath these trees. My neighbor's whispered warnings about Native Americans pushed to their deaths at the waterfall, their spirits trapped between dusk and dawn, drifting through these very pines seeking revenge. In the growing darkness, every shadow could be their ghostly forms coming for me. Logic told me these were just stories meant to frighten children, yet here I was, a grown woman, letting them climb back into my mind like the evening mist climbing through the trees.

The more I fought against these thoughts, the more agitated I became at my own irrationality. I was no longer that vulnerable child, yet these woods still held their power over me. Just like that cemetery where Chris lay beneath unmarked earth, this was another place where the dead seemed too close to the living - different location, same creeping dread, same tricks of a mind trying to make sense of loss.

But then it hit me - this eerie, beautiful place was close to my heart, close to my home. Death might thread through these woods like the evening fog, but so did new life. The same pines that harbored childhood fears had sheltered me when I needed escape. Love covers even death, bridging the chasm between what was and what is. Grief is just the measuring stick of how deeply we've loved, and hope remains, planted like seeds in the dark earth beneath these ancient trees.

Stopping my pace, I listened to the sounds that had terrified me moments before. Through the fog, I made out the shapes - a deer running in silence, a dog in playful pursuit, and a startled raccoon chittering at them both. My laughter broke through the evening air, scattering my fears like fallen leaves. Maybe that was the lesson these woods had always tried to teach me - not to take life quite so seriously.

The ghosts we fear most are the ones we carry within ourselves, but even they can't survive the simple truth of an autumn evening, a startled raccoon, and the sound of unexpected laughter echoing through the pines.