Page 1 of Rescued By the Mountain Man’s Pumpkin

CHAPTER ONE

POPPY

The sign says CONNORS FARM in hand-painted letters that look like they were done under protest. Below it, in smaller print: PUMPKIN PATCH OPEN SATURDAYS. STAY ON THE PATH. DON'T PET THE GOATS.

Today is not Saturday.

Today is Wednesday, and I'm standing at a metal gate with a chain loop that isn't locked, my rental car parked crooked on a dirt road that my GPS gave up on twenty minutes ago, wearing a sundress in October because I packed for the weather app and not for Montana.

The wind picks up. My dress, a vintage floral thing I found at a consignment shop in Boise, flattens against my thighs and balloons behind me like a sail. Goosebumps race up both arms.

"This is fine," I say to nobody. "This is content."

My phone buzzes in my hand.

Mom:

Did you eat today or are you surviving on photography and vibes again

Me:

I had a breakfast burrito in Missoula

Mom:

That was yesterday Poppy

She's not wrong. The breakfast burrito was yesterday. Today I've had gas station coffee, half a granola bar I found in my camera bag, and the quiet satisfaction of a woman on a mission.

The mission is pumpkins.

Specifically, the mission is Grizzly Ridge's annual Harvest Festival and the farms surrounding it, for a six-part content series I pitched to Mountain Fork Magazine three weeks ago. Small-town autumn in America. Farmers markets and bonfires and all that golden, crunchy, cinnamon-scented content my followers eat up faster than I can produce it.

I push the gate open. It swings without a sound, which feels like permission. The path from the gate winds through a stretch of open field, past a weathered barn with a green metal roof, toward what has to be one of the most Instagram-worthy pumpkin patches I have ever seen in my life.

Rows and rows. Hundreds of them. Big ones, small ones, white ones, those lumpy warted ones that look like they've been through something. Butternut squash lined up like soldiers along one edge. Acorn squash in dark green clusters. And at the far end of the patch, stacked on wooden crates against a fence, the absolute monarch of the whole operation.

A pumpkin so big and so aggressively orange it looks like it's daring someone to pick it up.

My fingers itch. Camera's in my bag, but I want the pumpkin first. I want to hold it, feel the weight, get a shot with it in my arms and the mountains behind me and the afternoon light doing that thing where everything goes amber. My content calendar needs this. My soul needs this.

The crates are stacked three high. The pumpkin sits on the top one, slightly tilted, leaning against the fence like it's been waiting for someone worthy.

Nobody's around. The barn is closed. A truck sits parked near a workshop behind the barn, but no one's in it. The whole farm has the feel of a place that's been working since dawn and isn't expecting company.

Too bad. Company's here.

My boots crunch on gravel as I cross the patch, stepping over vines and dodging a gourd that's rolling free near the edge of a row. The wind smells like cold dirt and woodsmoke, something sweet underneath. Apples, maybe. There are trees along the far property line, branches heavy with fruit going russet.

At the base of the crates, I set my bag down. Look up. The pumpkin is maybe seven feet off the ground. Eight, tops. The crates are sturdy. Wooden slats, each one about two feet tall, stacked flush.

Manageable. Definitely manageable.

The bottom crate holds my weight. The second one creaks but doesn't shift. My dress catches a little on a splinter, and I pull it free without looking because my eyes are on the prize. Third crate. Almost there. My fingers brush the pumpkin's smooth skin, cool from the morning air.

"Oh, you beauty," I whisper. "You absolute unit."

Both hands close around it. Heavy. Heavier than expected. My right foot slides on the edge of the crate, and for one stretched-out second, everything is fine.