When I woke the next morning, the storm had passed, leaving the world in a brilliant, blinding white. I walked out onto the porch, expecting to see my rescuers waiting for me.
The clearing was empty, but the snow around the cabin was packed down with dozens of paw prints. The pack was gone, but they had left a final message on the porch. Lying right at the entrance was a fresh haunch of deer, still warm against the frozen wood. It was an offering—a payment for the life I had pulled from the water a week before.
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I returned home that day, but I didn’t tell the other rangers about the meat or the guiding. They would have called it a fluke or a hunter’s hallucination.
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