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The Appalachian Trail was 2,193 miles long. It ran through 14 states, from Georgia, North Carolina, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. About 2 million people visited the trail each year. It was a window into the wild that was cared for, protected, and traversed from generation to generation for nearly 80 years.
The coyote that wandered the trail in Hot Springs, North Carolina did not know any of this. To her, the trail was a path through the woods she sometimes used to get from one end of her pack’s territory to the other. It was where people smelling like wood fire walked with noisy boots and sticks this time of year. To her, there were no lines between the trail, the wilderness, and the backyards of Hot Springs, North Carolina.
The coyote came to a stop on the trail and sneezed, shaking her head briskly to get an insect off her nose. It distracted her enough to make her wander into a resident’s backyard, where a grey ranch house sat quietly, as the sun began to sink behind the trees. She put her wet nose to the grass and sniffed. Her nose found long dark hairs scattered over the ground. Her nose was fascinated by them. They smelled floral, and faintly of blood. She lay down on her side and rolled in the scent so she could bring it back to her pack.
That was when the coyote heard movement from within the grey house. She rolled to her paws quickly to stand. The porch door slid open and her ears flattened. A young man walked onto the porch barefoot, leaving the sliding door open behind him, and he stared at her. He was thin and gaunt with shadows under his wide blue eyes. His hair was shorn so close to his scalp that he had a still bleeding scrape near his hairline.
For a full minute, the coyote from the woods and the human from the grey house stared at each other. Then the coyote heard the distinct sound of two of her pack members trotting through the woods as they playfully bit the scruff around each other’s neck. With one more look at the human, she turned and snuck away into the safety of the woods.
A week after sniffing around the back yard, she was sitting under a bush on the side of the Appalachian Trail licking and cleaning her paws. As she bit her foreleg to relieve and itch, she heard the familiar sound of boots and raised her head up and froze. Her ears turned towards the sound like a periscope on a submarine.
She saw a pair of mismatched trekking poles, a pair of boots, and a young man walking on the trail. She sniffed the air. Though she could not remember, the scent she smelled as the young man passed her matched the hairs she had discovered in the grass five days ago.
Her ears perked up as the human began to sing. She listened to the sound of his singing, his boots, his trekking poles, and the rattle of his gear long after he disappeared till all she could hear were the birds and the wind whispering through the trees.
The coyote sniffed his scent on the air one more time and went back to licking her paws.