I’ll never forget the chill winter day when I went hiking and found a body on the trail.
Or, at least, I thought I had.
One recent December, I was on a hike with my friend Danielle. It was one of those clear, chill days of early winter, when the sun still shines occasionally, and the wind doesn’t yet carry knives.
Having learned our lesson on an earlier hike, we set out in plenty of time to make it back to our cars before dusk. Dutifully sending her husband snapshots of ourselves at the top of the trail, keeping record of where we set out and what we were wearing in case we went missing, we commenced with a few good hours of hiking.
And they were good. Very good. We huffed and puffed and talked and laughed and enjoyed stunning views before turning around to head back down.
That’s when it happened.
I looked down, and protruding from the dark soil, was a human toe.
It’s always the joggers and hikers who find the bodies. Given that these are two of my favorite outdoor activities, I always supposed it was just a matter of time.
Now that it was finally happening, I was completely taken off guard.
We were walking along, headed down a gentle curve in the trail, when I looked down and there it was, just sticking out of the ground.
A human toe.
I stopped stock still, the tips of my hiking poles the only things grounding me to the earth as the scene swung around me.
Perhaps I made a sound. Danielle half turned on the trail, looking back to see what was wrong.
“THERE’S A TOE COMING OUT OF THE GROUND,” I blurted.
I inched forward, suddenly and irrationally afraid it might move. Which is a wild thought, considering.
I mean, this was so clearly a dead body, long buried.
I leaned forward, peering at it. Yes, it was a human toe, all right. Or perhaps it was a thumb.
Danielle, who is a nurse, side-stepped back down the trail. She bent at the waist, narrowing her eyes. “That,” she announced calmly, “is a tree root.”
I scoffed. Leaned in closer. Scratched my head. Put a hand on my chest to soothe my racing heart. “Do you think?”
“Yes,” she said, her voice calm and reassured. “Look at it.”
I most definitely was.
“That’s clearly wood.”
To me, it looked like desiccated human flesh. But what did I know? I was just a novelist with an overactive imagination who consumed a steady diet of True Crime.
I crouched down. Reached out one tentative finger. Poked the toe. When it didn’t move, I touched it more carefully, moving my fingers across its smooth surface in a soft caress. It certainly felt more like wood than like fossilized human flesh, although I lacked the experience to know for sure.
“Just a sec,” I said, dropping to my knees. Slowly, gently, I began scraping away at the dirt around the toe, terrified and yet unable to stop myself.
“Take all the time you want.” Danielle stood silently, sipping from her water bottle as I scrabbled in the dirt, working through my process.
Believe me, digging up a dead body with my bare hands on a cold December afternoon was the last thing I wanted to do. Yet I could not handle the idea of letting sleeping bones lie.
To resist the urge to dig to the truth would have been to create a Schrodinger’s Toe situation. If I walked away without unearthing the mystery, the toe would forever both be and not be a dead body. I would never sleep again.
Someone had to end the quantum indeterminacy.
Clearly, that someone was me.
Friends, it was a tree root. But even now, looking at the pictures, I have trouble convincing myself of that fact.
Half my mind will always remember this as the day I found the body on the trail. The body turned out to be a tree root, sure.
But for those few moments when I thought the whole thing was real—when my worst imaginings finally came to fruition—when I experienced the terrifying reality of Schrodinger’s Toe—that moment will always feel fresh and vivid.
Of course, by the time we made it to the parking lot, the whole thing had become a joke, and by the next day, I was recomposing the lyrics to Into the Woods to match my experience.
Into the woods
I found a toe
I can’t freak out
I have to, though..
and
When you’re way up high
And you look below
And just to the left
There’s a dead man’s toe
Little more than a shriek
Is enough to show
Them just how scared you are…
If we ever pass each other on the trail, and you hear me humming show tunes, don’t mind me.
It’s just part of my process.