Like bubbles blown out of a wand, a group of moths floated above us, hovering around a tree, bouncing and gliding in the air, while some perched on its bark, slowly opening and closing their brown and orange wings. Were they laying eggs? Feeding? Resting in a microclimate up 20 feet?
We’ll never know. We continued and hiked past Popsicle Pass onto a marsh, looking down at our shoes that sank in the muddy grass.
In the middle of the park, we found a pond. I swatted my neck. By that pond was a hill. And on the side of that hill, carved in dirt, by hand, was the face of an ape, a gorilla made of sand, staring right at us, looking straight ahead like some statue of KONG put there to keep us out. Beads of my sweat dripped to the ground. To the right, we saw a path. A walkway going up and around the hill. When we looked up, we saw a mattress and a lean-to on top of the mound.
My wife whispered to me and I nodded back. We both stepped back. All I could hear was the crackling of dead grass. We turned around and dashed, crossing a meadow of cactus, rock, and sand. We didn’t say a word until we were far off.
We all looked at each other and asked, “Was someone in there?"
“I don’t know.”
All you could hear were bated breaths and footsteps on gravel.
We sucked water out of our Camelbaks.
“Do you think he was in there the whole time?...Watching us?”
“I don’t know”.
And someone said, “We’ll never know,”
and that was that.
Onion Creek Metropolitan Park
2.31 miles
