Priya’s winter binder lives under the field guide to tracks.

Margin notes in her teeth-marked pencil: respect + method. The respect is for miners who had no radio and needed a story strong enough to keep tired people out of a bad drift. The method is for you.

A page from her first winter: rattled the lock. echo stacked. wrote stupid. crossed out. wrote scared, then sat down. She kept the page. It is a badge.

“Cabin can be finished as a mystery and still tick,” you tell the binder, because practicing sentences is part of the work. Ticks are heat. Heat is not a haunting.

You like Priya more for keeping the scared page. Researchers who pretend they were never foolish are harder to learn from. You close the binder like a door you can open tomorrow.