The biting November wind swept the dead, crumpled leaves into the fire pit. It was quiet and ashy, specks of white soot falling away from the cracked logs. I stared at the blue tarp hanging over the wood pile snapping in the wind. Dad was by the camper, that old rusty thing with the orange streak down the middle, talking to Jim. Fists clenched and staring at the ground, I hurried past the wood pile, onto one of the many trails leading out of the property. 

            Leaves crunched under my feet, beer cans and cigarettes. I didn't know why I agreed to come. I hated it here, at Grandpa's Deer Camp. He brought me here often as a kid. Rowdy nights with his buddies around the fire. It was all too loud for a little girl, deep in the woods where no one could hear. 

            If I stayed, Jim would've given me his condolences. "What a good man your pops was," he'd say. I couldn't bear that. Maybe Grandpa was a good man, when he wasn't five Budweiser's deep. At Deer Camp, he was always five deep. Often more. 

            I didn't know what I was supposed to feel. Grandpa was dead. The normal thing to do would be to cry, to grieve, to share all the good memories like the rest of my family. But how was I supposed to grieve for the Grandpa who's breath was always rancid with cheap alcohol? How was I supposed to cry for the Grandpa who held on a little too tightly when he sat me on his lap? Where were the good memories of the Grandpa who either didn't pay enough or entirely too much attention to his granddaughter when hidden away deep, deep in the woods? 

            Grey, bare tree branches reached for my body hungrily. Possessively. Twig fingers snagged on my jacket, tearing it away to reach my skin. I clutched my arms to my chest, shrinking in on myself, and started walking faster and faster until I was running. I wanted out of these damned woods, the woods where no one could hear me. Where no one could reach me but everyone reached for me. I don't know how many turns I took as I ran, which offshoots I sprinted down. All I knew was that I had to keep running, keep going, survive until their timber arms weren't around me anymore.

            Then suddenly, they weren't. The trees unfurled their ribcage to the open, cloudy sky. I stopped, staring at the overgrown clearing in front of me dotted with small stone markers, crosses, planks of wood with chipped paint, some toppled over by weeds, wind, or just time. I stepped forward, crushing what must have once been a wire fence beneath my foot, long since dismantled, and walked towards the first stone. It was weathered and hard to read, but I could just make out the name Shawn Moore, and a date sometime from the 1800s. 

            I slowly drifted around the small graveyard. I could find no sign or marker that told me its name, only a rundown path leading out the back that may have once been a driveway, or at least a pathway. My fingers skimmed the tops of head stones. Sarah Culley. James Mcormick. "Little Tim." Unknown soldier. There were a few of those. 

            A snowflake landed on my hand. Then one on my nose, another on my hair. They glimmered on top of the dead leaves and head stones. Each was a cold kiss that seeped into my skin, but it didn't hurt. The cold was almost comforting, peaceful. I wrapped my jacket around me and laid down next to one of the soldiers, name lost to the earth that held him firmly in her embrace, seeping the skin off his bones over the years.

            How long would it take for Grandpa's bones to be left bare? For him to know what it's like to be stripped down to nothing? It's cold where we buried him. It might take a little longer. But until then, the earth will hold him in her arms just a little too tightly. 

            The snow blanketed the ground. It blanketed me. I felt like I was part of the earth; she held my body too, but gently, and only for a moment. Not forever, not like a cage, not like him.

            The thought made me smile.