Betty’s Lament

Frank was due home at any moment. The day had been long, cold, and windy. Betty sat quietly in the one room cabin, a thick stew slowly simmering on a large iron stove. She glanced out the window and shuddered.

Frank entered the cabin silently. There was a coldness in his eyes that matched the dark of the coming night. Betty spooned his stew into a wooden bowl, wordlessly set it before him on the knotted table and left the cabin.

She stepped into the twilight, as she did every night, following her own worn path into the gloom.

~

Today hikers, horsemen and mountain bikers unwittingly retrace Betty’s woefull steps. Her nightly isolation into the thicket is mostly forgotten, but some say that she still roams the hollow. In the dark of night she whispers, she weeps, and she mourns. She mourns a life lost in the clutches of a cold man, in a cold world. But others say she mourns also for another…

And that is why the trail is today known as Betty’s Lament.