Through the Solstice Door

The Hike

By the time I shut my computer off, most of the office had emptied. The tree in the lobby blinked away in the dim light, stubbornly cheerful. I grabbed my coat, wrapped my scarf around my neck, and headed for the parking lot.

Cold hit me as soon as I stepped outside, sharp and clean. The sky was already dark, that early winter kind of dark that made five p.m. feel like midnight. My breath puffed out in little clouds.

My car sat under a thin dusting of snow. I brushed it off with numb fingers and slid behind the wheel. For a second, I just sat there, hands on the steering wheel, staring at my own reflection in the windshield.

Functional. Hollow. A woman-shaped placeholder.

“Okay,” I told myself. “Home. Couch. Book boyfriends. You got this.”

I turned the key, the engine coughed to life, and I eased out of the lot. The roads glistened under the streetlights, damp and a little too shiny.

Black ice.

My heart stuttered. My palms went slick on the steering wheel. I slowed down to a crawl, ignoring the car behind me that probably wanted to go ten over the speed limit.

Headlights flashed in my rearview mirror and for a second I was back there again—phone ringing, the officer’s voice, the hospital, the white sheet.

“Nope,” I said, out loud. My voice shook. “Nope. We are not doing this. That was ten years ago. Today is just Tuesday. It’s just wet pavement and stupid drivers.”

I focused on the taillights in front of me, the familiar route home. Turn signal. Left, right, straight. Breathe.

By the time I pulled into my driveway, my jaw hurt from clenching. I killed the engine and sat there, fingers still gripping the wheel.

I couldn’t do another holiday like this. White-knuckling my way through every day, pretending I was fine, dodging calls, swallowing panic every time the weather app said “possible icy conditions.”

Something had to give.

Tomorrow, I decided, staring at my dimly lit porch, I was going to do something different. Not move to another country or shave my head or whatever midlife crisis Pinterest suggested, but something.

A hike, maybe. I hadn’t been out to the woods in months. The trails would be quiet. Cold. Maybe if I got away from decorations and carols and traffic reports, I could breathe.

I grabbed my bag, stepped out into the cold, and locked the car behind me.

“Tomorrow,” I told the quiet street. “We deal with the holiday mess tomorrow.”

The wind picked up, rattling the bare branches overhead.

If it answered, I didn’t hear it.

By the time my phone buzzed for the third time that morning, I was already wearing boots. That told you everything you needed to know about my mental health.

I glanced at the screen: MOM.

Of course.

She’d texted first:

Morning, honey! Call me when you’re up. We’re finalizing the menu for Christmas Eve! 🥰

Then a follow-up, five minutes later:

Are you ignoring me?

Technically no. Ignoring would imply I’d made a decision. What I was doing was more… not engaging. Like when you see a wasp in the corner of the room and decide if you pretend it isn’t there, maybe it won’t sting you.

The phone vibrated again, switching to a call. I stared at it as I zipped my coat.

“You know what?” I said to no one. “Not today.”

I hit decline, shoved the phone deep into my pocket, and grabbed my keys.

If I stayed in the house, I’d cave. I’d call her back, get sucked into an hour-long discussion about ham glazes and how much she “understood” my grief. I did not have the emotional bandwidth for that, or for the phrase “he’d want you to be happy” before coffee.

So I picked the only option that made sense: flee into the woods like a feral cryptid.

It was colder than it looked outside. The air had that sharp, clean bite to it that made my lungs feel like they’d snorted peppermint. I locked the front door, eyeballed the dead potted plant on the porch, and trudged down the steps to my car.

The sky was a uniform slab of gray, the kind that made it hard to tell what time of day it was. A dusting of snow lay across the roofs and lawns, more decorative than dangerous for now. My breath puffed in little clouds as I crossed the driveway.

Too many fae kings, not enough therapy, I thought, unlocking the car. This was what happened when you stayed up until two in the morning reading about immortals in leather trousers. You woke up and decided a solo hike in December was a good idea.

I slid into the driver’s seat and cranked the heat. The radio came on automatically, mid-commercial for some holiday sale.

“—doorbusters you can’t miss—”

I turned it off. The silence was instant and blessed.

The hike I had in mind wasn’t far. Twenty minutes out of town, a state park with a handful of trails that wound through the woods and around a half-frozen lake. I used to go there with him sometimes, back when we thought winter was romantic and not… whatever it was now.

We’d hold hands, breathe steam into each other’s faces on purpose, joke about our noses falling off. Once, we’d made snow angels in the middle of the path and had to scramble out of the way when another couple came around the bend.

I hadn’t been back in years.

The drive out was uneventful, which was exactly how I liked my drives these days. I went the speed limit like a responsible adult who had learned the hard way that black ice didn’t care how good your playlist was. The closer I got to the park, the thinner the traffic got. Houses gave way to fields, then to stretches of dark trees.

My shoulders dropped a little when I pulled into the mostly empty parking lot. Only three other cars sat there, lined up like they were on break. No screaming kids. No big family groups. Just a couple of early morning overachievers who probably liked kale and waking up before sunrise.

I parked near the trailhead and killed the engine. The quiet that followed was… deep. The kind of quiet you didn’t get in town, where there was always a distant siren or a neighbor’s bass thumping through the walls.

For a second, I just sat, hands on the wheel, looking at the tree line.

“You wanted quiet,” I reminded myself. “Congratulations. You win.”

My phone buzzed again. I pulled it out, prepared to see yet another message from Mom. Instead, it was my sister.

SIS:

Mom says you’re “busy.” Is Busy coming to Christmas or nah?

I huffed a laugh.

ME:

Busy is going on a hike so she doesn’t scream at anyone today.

Three dots popped up, then a reply:

Please don’t get eaten by a bear. Or a man in the woods. Or both.

ME:

If a man in the woods wants this level of emotional baggage, that’s his problem.

She sent back a crying-laughing emoji and a heart. Then:

Seriously though, text me when you get back.

I rolled my eyes but my chest warmed a little.

ME:

Yes, Mom.

I dropped the phone into my pocket, grabbed my gloves, and stepped out into the cold.

The trailhead sign stood at the edge of the parking lot, partially dusted with snow. The main loop was listed as “moderate,” about three miles. In the summer it was nothing. In winter, with my current fitness level—best described as “sturdy but underused”—it would be a solid workout.

I hitched my backpack higher on my shoulder, adjusted my hat over my curls, and headed for the path.

The woods swallowed sound in a way that always felt a little unnerving and a little comforting at the same time. The snow on the ground wasn’t deep, just enough to crunch under my boots. Bare branches reached overhead, dark against the gray sky. Every now and then, a clump of snow slid off with a soft fwoomp.

I breathed in. The air smelled like damp earth, cold, and that faint piney scent that made my brain want to put on a flannel and chop wood I did not own.

This was better. No blinking lights. No Christmas music. No traffic reports.

Just me, my thoughts, and my aging knees.

The trail started with a gentle incline. After about five minutes, my thighs reminded me that I spent most of my days on my ass in an office chair.

“Okay,” I puffed. “Wow. Cardio. Love that for us.”

I’d layered badly, because of course I had. It was freezing, but the coat and sweater combo had me sweating under the arms already. Thirty-year-old me used to jog this loop like it was nothing. Forty-five-year-old me was currently negotiating with God for a bench.

I slowed to a more reasonable pace and focused on putting one foot in front of the other. Boots crunch, breath in, breath out. I could feel my heart thudding against my ribs, not in panic this time, but in that steady, hard-working way that was almost… reassuring.

“See?” I muttered. “Still alive. Take that, seasonal depression.”

My brain, naturally, took that as its cue to bring up every terrifying nature documentary I’d ever watched. Bears coming out of nowhere. People getting lost and eating their own shoelaces. Some guy on YouTube lecturing about hypothermia.

I glanced around. The trail was clearly marked. There were little blazes on the trees, bright stripes of paint every so often. I wasn’t exactly in the Yukon. Worst case scenario, I could probably yell loud enough for one of the kale people in the parking lot to hear me.

My phone was in my pocket, too. Emergency contact: Sister. How fun would that call be?

Hi, it’s Park Ranger Whoever, your sister slipped on a rock and died doing the one healthy thing she’s tried all year.

I snorted. “Not today, rock.”

A squirrel scolded me from a branch overhead, flicking its tail. I looked up at it.

“Yeah, well, you look like you have high cholesterol,” I informed it. “We’ve all got problems.”

It chattered louder, offended. I kept walking.

After about fifteen minutes, my breathing evened out. My legs settled into that dull ache that said they’d complain tomorrow, but for now they were willing to cooperate. My body warmed up, the cold air turning my cheeks into the color of ripe tomatoes.

I had forgotten how much I liked this. Not the exercise part—that could burn in hell—but the being-outside-without-an-agenda part. No emails. No phone ringing. Just… trees.

My mind, denied its usual distractions, started to roam.

I thought about Christmas Eve at my sister’s. The kids tearing into gifts. My dad pretending not to get emotional during the toast. My mom watching me out of the corner of her eye like I might shatter if she looked directly at me.

I thought about the last Christmas before the accident. He’d insisted on getting the biggest tree he could find for our tiny living room. We’d argued for twenty minutes in the lot about whether it would fit, then laughed so hard trying to get it through the front door we almost left it half-in, half-out.

We’d decorated it together. His hands on my waist as I reached for the top branches. My head on his shoulder as we lay on the couch afterwards, watching the lights blink.

I still had half those ornaments. The other half had been in the box in the trunk that night, on their way to his parents’ house.

I swallowed. The cold air burned my throat. My eyes felt hot.

“This is what I get for leaving the house,” I muttered. “Nature and feelings.”

It was stupid, but part of me had expected… something. Like the second I stepped into the woods, some great epiphany would strike. Maybe a voice from the heavens would tell me what to do about Christmas. Maybe I’d trip over the solution like one of those inspirational i********: posts where people “find themselves” on a hike.

So far, all I’d found was a blister forming on my left heel. Lovely.

My phone vibrated once in my pocket. I considered ignoring it, but curiosity won. I slowed, pulled it out, and glanced at the screen.

Weather app notification:

Winter Weather Advisory in your area. Possible snow/ice overnight. Use caution.

I rolled my eyes. “Where were you ten years ago, huh?”

I almost swiped it away, then froze.

The date. The time. The little warning symbol flashing next to “possible ice.”

My fingers tightened around the phone. My chest did that awful squeezing thing again.

I remembered that night. The way the forecast had just said “flurries.” How he’d texted me a picture of the first flakes hitting the windshield with a “looks magical” caption. How I’d told him to drive safe but not really thought anything of it. How stupidly normal it had all felt.

Until it wasn’t.

A branch snapped somewhere off to my left, sharp in the quiet. I jumped, heart slamming up into my throat.

“Jesus,” I hissed, spinning toward the sound.

Nothing but trees. Bare trunks, a scattering of snow, the faint outline of another part of the trail further off.

I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I was holding and laughed at myself, breathless and shaky.

“Okay, wow, you are really out here auditioning for a horror movie,” I said. “Calm down. It’s probably just a rabbit. Or Bigfoot. Either way, it doesn’t want your taxes or your emotional baggage, so you’re safe.”

I slid the phone back into my pocket, this time without looking at the screen too long. If I stared at that little snowflake icon, I’d spiral. And I’d done enough spiraling for one decade.

I kept walking.

The path curved, then narrowed, moving closer to the edge of a shallow ravine. A small stream ran at the bottom, mostly iced over. The ice was cloudy white in spots, clear in others, thin dark water wriggling underneath.

Black ice isn’t always black. Sometimes it just looks like nothing. Like air.

I stopped at the bend and took a long breath, exhaling slowly. My breath fogged in front of me, then vanished.

“You’re fine,” I told myself. “This is fine. Look at you. You’re in nature, like an actual healthy person. You might even have a vitamin in your system. Who knows.”

I snorted and shifted my backpack, letting some of the tension bleed out through the familiar weight of it. Water bottle, granola bar, travel packets of tissues because I was forty-five and practical.

The trail ahead sloped gently upward again, disappearing between two particularly thick pines. Their trunks leaned in like they were gossiping. Beyond them, the light looked… different. Brighter, almost.

For a second, my brain—saturated in too many late-night portal fantasies—whispered, what if.

I rolled my eyes at myself and started up the slope.

“Too many fae kings,” I muttered under my breath. “Not enough therapy. Gods, I should stop talking to myself so much.”