The summer air in the thicket was heavy. I was stepping through the low branches, keeping a tight grip on a blunt. I had to look out for squad cars rolling down the park boundary. I just wanted a quick, quiet spot to clear my head away from the city noise.
Then, I stumbled right onto a hidden campsite.
I stopped dead in my tracks, my sneakers sinking into the dirt. I stared at the setup—the canvas tent, a primal stone hearth, and a tactical hammock strung between the trees. Immediately, my mind raced. I wondered if this belonged to the looney guy I had seen earlier trekking through the park. My friends and I had been looking at him strangely as he walked past, thinking he was either an army vet who had lost his marbles or some country bumpkin with that wild boonie hat on.
He hadn't even looked our way.
As I stood there staring at the camp, the man suddenly walked out of the thick brush. It was him. He had his bow slung around his back, and a squirrel was jammed in a trap in his hand. He had the boonie hat pulled down over a mini afro. His clothes looked rough and unkempt, but his beard was tight, straight, and trained like he brushed it every morning. I stood there, freshly trimmed from the barber, wearing my skullcap over my dreadlocks, watching him move.
The man worked with total precision, completely ignoring my presence at first. One, two, three—he skinned the fresh squirrel with a clean snap. He sprayed aluminum foil with Spam grease, cleaned the meat with lime and vinegar, added beans and onions with a slab of butter, and wrapped it tight. He set the foil pack right onto the glowing coals.
Then he reached for a small metallic tool. I couldn’t see what it was, and I didn't know anything about a ferro rod back then. I just had a cheap lighter in my pocket. He struck it downward. Huge, brilliant sparks exploded into a nest of cotton near his tent. He blew on the tinder until a small, steady fire formed.
He stood up, grabbed a paperback book and a full bottle of wine, and walked to the hammock. In one fluid swoop, he reclined. He cracked a metal can open, poured the wine right into it, and opened his book.
We stared at each other through the leaves.
"You gonna stand there all night, or you going to step up?" he said. His voice was calm but heavy.
The smell of the food was too good to pass up. A few minutes later, the street paranoia faded. I was sitting on a log with the munchies, eating squirrel meat, beans, and onions with butter on a piece of tortilla bread. We were drinking water and pouring wine straight out of the cans, just talking.
"So what's the play?" I asked, looking around the campsite sanctuary. "Ain't you bored? Where's your phone or your music? Don't you have family or friends?"
He took a sip from his can. "I'm an author," he said quietly.
That blew my mind. I pulled out my phone to look him up, completely confused by how a man could just live out here without the world dragging him down. I typed in the name.
As I stared down at the screen, reading his author info, something shifted. I looked back up to ask another question.
The clearing was totally empty.
The hammock was swinging by itself. The fire was covered in gray ash. In the split second my eyes were on the glass, he had packed everything into a rucksack. There was no noise on the dirt path. Instead, I heard a sudden rustle as he quick-stepped straight into the thick brush, vanishing into the trees.
I looked back down at the phone in shock. The screen was still bright. But I wasn't looking at a stranger's profile anymore. Reflected in the glass, I saw myself—but I had the face, the eyes, and the absolute sovereign strength of the man who had just disappeared into the leaves.