Good evening. This happened in May of 2003. I was teaching fifth grade at the time, and we'd been planning this field trip for months. Nature walk up in the Cascades, part of our unit on local ecosystems. I'd done the same trip probably a dozen times over the years. Knew the trail, knew the spots where we'd stop for observations, knew exactly how long it would take. The weather was perfect that day. Clear skies, temperature in the mid-sixties, just enough breeze to keep the mosquitoes down. We had parent chaperones, packed lunches, clipboards for the kids to sketch what they saw. Standard educational field trip. Nothing about that morning suggested anything unusual was going to happen. But I've taught long enough to know that kids notice things. They see the world differently than we do. They don't have the filters adults have, the ones that tell us what's possible and what isn't. So when every single one of them saw the same thing, drew the same thing, described the same thing - I had to take it seriously.
We started the hike around ten in the morning. I had twenty-two students with me that day, plus four parent volunteers. The trail we took was one I'd used before - starts at the ranger station, winds up through old growth forest for about two miles. Gets you up to this beautiful overlook where you can see three different peaks. The kids were excited, you know how they get on field trips. Lots of chatter, pointing things out to each other. We'd stop every so often and I'd have them observe something - lichen patterns on the trees, deer tracks in the soft ground, bird calls. They were supposed to be filling out their observation sheets, making sketches of what they saw. About forty-five minutes in, we reached this section where the trail gets narrow. Cut right into the hillside, trees thick on both sides, barely wide enough for single file. I always had the kids line up there, walk carefully, hold onto the rope railing. It's not dangerous, just steep. That's where we were when it happened.
I was near the front of the line, maybe five kids ahead of me, when I heard this sound. Not loud, but distinct. Like wind moving through tall grass, except there wasn't any grass up there. Just trees and rock. A kind of rushing, sliding sound. Hard to describe. The kids in front of me stopped walking. Just froze on the trail. One of the girls, Emily, she pointed up into the trees and said 'Miss Carson, what is that?' Her voice had this edge to it, not quite scared but definitely uncertain. I looked where she was pointing. At first I thought it was a branch. Something dark moving through the canopy above us. But branches don't move like that. This thing was weaving between the trees, maybe thirty feet up, moving with this fluid, continuous motion. Like watching a snake swim through water, except it was in the air. Just gliding through the space between the tree trunks.
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