I sat in my car on the ferry and pulled out the silver book-charm from the plastic bag and held it in my palm. I closed my eyes and felt the lolling teeter of the ferry as it surged forward across the bay. Flashes of Maggie stuttered through me, broken images: she was driving her car, tall evergreens whirring by out the windows, while the radio thumped loudly from the speakers. Maggie was singing along, belting out the tunes. But then the images splintered apart—I was too far away from her.
I needed to get closer: to the place where the police found her abandoned car.
I slid the silver charm back into the plastic bag and pulled out my cell phone. I typed Pastoral into the web browser and got pages and pages of disjointed links: Pastoral Pizza in Boston, Pastoral Winery in southern Italy, Pastoral Greeting Cards: now hiring. I scrolled the Wikipedia page for pastoral: a lifestyle of shepherds herding livestock around open areas of land according to seasons. It lends its name to a genre of literature, art, and music that depicts such life in an idealized manner. I narrowed down my search to the Klamath National Forest where Maggie’s car was found. I dug through layers of blogger sites and pages that led me nowhere—a deep, unending hole of research. Until I hit on something in a genealogical website for a man named Henry Watson, and his wife, Lily Mae Watson. They had disappeared sometime during 1972, and among the scant information about the Watsons was a newspaper article written on September 5, 1973 in the Sage River Review: a weekly paper for local folks.
The newspaper article was old, had been scanned-in at some point, and the heading for the article was smeared and a little off-center, as if the paper had been folded in several places. It read: Commune Buys Land in Three Rivers Mountains.
Not far from where Maggie’s abandoned car had been found was a small town and a local paper—that after another quick search, I discovered was no longer in business—but it had printed an article about a community that called themselves Pastoral, who had purchased a plot of unwanted land somewhere in the nearby mountains.
The article explained that previously, in 1902, a group of German immigrants occupied the section of wilderness. The immigrants had been gold miners, following riverbeds and creeks north through California. There was talk of a railroad being laid through this stretch of forest, so the group settled in an area deep in the mountains, hoping the railroad would come straight through their plot of land. But only a few short years later, when the railroad never came, they abandoned their settlement and left behind homes and pastures and several livestock barns. Decades passed, and most locals forgot the settlement even existed. Until, in 1972, a group of beatniks and hippies and undesirables (the reporter lamented) drove an old school bus up into the remote backwoods, and purchased the forgotten land.
They called it Pastoral and claimed they were part of a movement seeking purpose and a reinvented way of life, the reporter quoted. But one interview with a local man named Bert Allington called Pastoral a cult, a place of wild, reckless depravity. But to the reporter’s credit, she went on to say that the group had fled the social norms of society and came deep into the wilderness to live off the land and start a commune that was built from the simple principles of shared living. Their burdens would be spread over many, so as never to be too much for one. The article ended with the reporter leaving a few words to her readers: It’s easy to fear what we do not know. But perhaps these newcomers only wish for the same as the rest of us, a place to call home.
I read the article twice. Then I searched the same newspaper for more articles about Pastoral, but there was nothing. No other mention of it. Either the community broke apart in the years after, its members scattering back to their old lives, or something else happened.
When Maggie abandoned her car out on the road, she must have believed she had found the hidden location of this place. She must have thought she was close.
Maybe she was wrong.
Or maybe not.
* * *
The wood fence stretches along the left side of the road, straight and low, with snowdrifts against each post. I scan the trees, the length of road, but there are no signs of a house or a mailbox or lights in the distance.
Maggie’s afterimage loses its density, fading in with the snow. But I keep walking, following the road where it rises up over a small hill and the trees begin to thin, a clearing opening up on the other side of the fence. A field. A pasture in warmer months, where animals graze, ripping up the tall meadow grass. Horses or cattle or sheep maybe.
My gate hitches slightly as I move faster through the snow, the cold making my joints stiff. But I know I’m closer to Maggie than I’ve been; I can feel it in the hum at the back of my teeth, a grinding pulse in my eardrums.
I swing one foot in front of the other, moving quickly up the slope.
And then I see something ahead through the snow, blocking the road.
A gate.
A small outbuilding also sits on the right side of the road, with a single window at the front. The structure is just large enough for a guard to sit inside, his gaze turned out to the road. A checkpoint.
I take a few cautious steps closer—my heart ratcheting up in my chest, pounding like a fist.
I haven’t been invited.
Yet, chances are, way out here, this deep in the woods in the middle of the night, the hut will be deserted. A remnant of something: a compound, a logging site. It’s obvious no vehicles have passed up this road in a long time—the snow hasn’t been packed down—and with no visitors venturing this far up into the mountains, there’s no need to post someone at the hut to keep watch.