The trailhead box is a metal animal with a lid.

Ellis talks while you walk, which is Ellis’s way of not running. “Tommyknockers are little mine-people. They knock when the roof is bad. Or they steal tools. Or they are the miners who already—” Ellis stops, because even Ellis has a fence around some stories, and this book does not cross it. “Anyway. They knock.”

The hill knocks, once, polite, far. From here it is harmless the way thunder is harmless if you are not the tallest tree.

Ms. Solano’s scrapbook is wrapped in a dry bag. She treats kids as researchers, Priya said, which means she will not pet your hair and she will not laugh at a shiver.

The tarn’s song slides up the notch, a zipper of ice.

The trailhead box lid has a sticker: Take a story. Leave a fact. Someone has drawn a tiny hammer and then, in another ink, a thermometer. You like this place already. Ellis’s leftover sentence about miners who already—hangs, and you let it hang. This night is not a graveyard tour. It is a weather tour with extra knocking.