The architecture of our lives contains scenes like a storybook, the moments in time that we organize in our minds to give some narrative flow to our haphazard journeys. If one’s life were a hiking trail, the sheer number of detours would overwhelm the map, making it look like a spider web. Believing we are heading to a center, we might instead be circling it.

On one of these side trails I returned to Dartmouth one summer 10 years ago, more than a decade after graduating in 1993. I was hungry to explore campus, so I threw my suitcase on the bed at the Hanover Inn and set off for Baker Library, breathing in the smell of musty books as I wandered through the section of stacks where I had spent late nights writing. From the library I strolled to my old dorm on Mass Row and continued to explore the worn physical and emotional paths of my undergraduate years. The sun was setting as I walked down Main Street. As the bells of Baker Tower rang, I retraced more old strings of the web.

On a bench outside the post office I noticed dirty, joyful Appalachian Trail (A.T.) hikers opening boxes and relacing hiking boots for the journey ahead. I cut down East South Street to look at the old home I had rented senior year, and as I approached I noticed construction equipment—the house was scheduled for demolition. No one was working so I decided to have a quick look. The door was unlocked.

I peered inside the front door and sucked in my breath. The downstairs apartment was literally rotting—layers of moldy mattresses were stacked in a corner and sections of the suspended ceiling hung from the metal rafters. Moss grew out of the floorboards. I walked to the side entrance of the building and climbed the keeling stairwell to the upper unit where I had lived.

The apartment was stripped to the bare studs—anything of material value was gone. Electrical wires had been mined for their copper and the wooden bones of the house were exposed. One push from a wrecker would send the thin skeleton of lumber crashing down. But I was here for a particular reason beyond sheer nostalgia, to determine whether a small part of me was still inside this crumbling home, still swimming in color on the upstairs wall. I climbed the shaky ladder to the loft.

Twelve years prior, one evening while struggling to finish a short story, I had looked at the white wall and it had beckoned to me, asked me to splash it with color. So I called six friends, who joined me to paint a beautiful 20-foot-wide mural of exotic fish under the sea.

The mural was still alive and in full color, just as we had left it. Two beer cans and shreds of pink insulation were scattered on the floor next to a stained couch and a broken window screen. But this painting, this ragged painting, swam in front of my eyes. I snapped pictures and marveled at the exotic fish—the wild sea horse, strings of seaweed we had so carefully brushed. A diver’s fin broke beneath the surface of the ceiling. I felt dizzy.

How many times had I sat here, staring at our art, diving into imagination? How many students through the years had gazed at our creation? As if to confirm it was really ours, I looked for proof.

There, in the corner, covered in cobwebs, I stared at the stark, white initials of our names. We had etched those letters still wondering who we would be, where we would go, what we would do. Our concerns back then were limited in scope, but vast in amplitude as we prepared for adulthood and the new homes we would inhabit.

I noticed graffiti on the far wall and moved closer to read it: “Pegleg and Smokey stayed here. 7-9-04. A Thru Hikers SOBO.”

I counted back. Ten days ago. The code took me a minute. Then I understood. A.T. hermits had recently overnighted here, sleeping beside our imagined ocean while they washed through town. I felt the thrill of an archaeologist, discovering ancient hieroglyphics, trying to interpret the passage of time.

Pegleg and Smokey (trail names), A Thru Hikers (A.T. through-hikers), SOBO (southbound). They must have found the house after hiking more than 400 miles from the trailhead in Baxter State Park, Maine. I imagined them hunkered down a week earlier, excited to find this covert A.T. hut—and I supposed that they were likely the last travelers who would stay here. It felt good to find their note, to receive this peculiar communication with passing souls.

The smell of mold lingered in my nostrils as I climbed back down the ladder and closed the apartment door. I brushed my hands as I walked across the yard. Contrails from a plane streaking west in the sky ahead of me glowed against the amber light of evening. I did not look back.              

Brian Schott is the founding editor of the Montana literary journal Whitefish Review.