Gravel shifted in my shoes, between my toes, and during my pockets, finest ash.

The further I shuffled over the earth, the wider it became, stretching like a rotted

hide towards the mountains.

My knees were bleeding again.

I began to see the forms flickering, phantoms as a land on either side of the road.

Is it trying to tell me something?

To manifest in corporal form, to more mean a language, I'll understand.

Now that Michael Spanell has returned, seven years later, to the site where this story happened,

he thinks he is finally ready to talk about the long walk of June 2009.

Not much has changed.

I thought they would have blocked more of this off, put it more, no trespassing signs.

It's just something else from coming here.

It's not responsible.

In May of that year, Michael was a biology undergraduate at Lakeland College in Alberta, Canada.

Unsure of what to do with himself during the coming summer break.

He saw an interesting handwritten ad posted on a bulletin board in the student union and

tore a phone number slip from it.

In Messy script, it invited anyone who wanted to join a silent group meditation hike on

something called the Strong Bone Road north of Fort St. John to call for more information.

I never heard of the place.

I was from Michigan.

I'd look it up.

...