Airbnb Guest Vanished on Morning Hike – Months Later, a Hunter Found His Jacket…

 

In early October 2021, the air in Vermont carried that damp chill particular to late autumn, when the forests begin to fold in on themselves and the scent of pine grows sharper with decay. It was hunting season, though the woods that year were quieter than usual—tourist traffic had thinned, the cabins were empty, and the leaves had already surrendered most of their color. It was there, in a stretch of forest in Lamoille County, roughly twelve miles from the nearest marked trailhead, that a hunter stumbled upon something strange. A black North Face jacket hung neatly from a low pine branch, its sleeves drooping like the arms of a forgotten scarecrow.

The jacket was weathered, the fabric faded from exposure but intact. It hadn’t been shredded by animals or torn by wind. It looked as if someone had hung it there intentionally, almost ceremoniously, a quiet marker among the trees. Inside the left pocket, the hunter found a folded piece of notebook paper, soft with moisture, the blue lines faint but still visible. The writing was in blue ink, shaky but deliberate, the words partially washed away. It contained only three lines: a date from April 2020, a set of coordinates, and a single sentence that made no immediate sense.

When authorities later traced the jacket to its registered owner, they uncovered a case that had long since gone cold. The name was familiar to Vermont State Police: Michael Ree, age thirty-four, a software developer from Boston who had vanished after a weekend Airbnb stay in April 2021. He had driven north for what was supposed to be a quiet solo hiking trip near Stowe, Vermont, a region known for its deep woods, clean air, and endless trails. He checked into a small A-frame cabin on a Friday evening, told his host he planned to spend the weekend hiking, and left for a morning trail run the next day. He never returned.

When the property owner reported him missing, investigators found his rental car still parked in the gravel driveway. His phone was still plugged into the charger beside the bed. His suitcase lay open, clothes neatly folded inside. There was no sign of a struggle, no broken glass, no blood, and no note. It looked as though the man had simply stepped outside and vanished into the forest.

The cabin’s owner, Sarah Chin, was a forty-year-old artist who had been renting the property since 2017. The cabin itself was a renovated 1960s A-frame nestled between two dairy farms on a narrow road that wound into the edge of the state forest. By 2021, Sarah’s business was thriving—she’d hosted hundreds of guests, earning over 300 five-star reviews. Her system was simple: guests checked in Friday night, spent a few days hiking or skiing, and left by Monday morning. The cabin practically managed itself. Most weekends, the process was routine—cleaning, laundry, a new set of keys in the lockbox. Until the booking for April 16th through 23rd, 2021, when the guest didn’t check out.

Michael Ree had made the reservation two months in advance. He paid in full, left polite messages, and asked about local trail recommendations. His profile photo was unremarkable—dark hair, wire-frame glasses, a professional smile. A software developer for a mid-sized tech firm in the Boston suburbs, Michael was described by co-workers as quiet, steady, and unremarkable in the way that made people trustworthy. He’d worked for the same company for six years, specializing in backend infrastructure. He lived alone in a small Somerville apartment, the kind of place filled with neutral furniture and a single potted plant dying from neglect.

His life before the trip was ordinary in every sense. Friends said he wasn’t the type to disappear or take risks. He went to work, took the T home, cooked the same three dinners on rotation, and occasionally joined co-workers for drinks before excusing himself early. He had been in a relationship that ended amicably the previous summer. There were no signs of depression or instability. “He was steady,” one co-worker told police. “Predictable. Almost to a fault.”

In early April 2021, he requested a week off. He told his manager he wanted to “get out of the city, clear his head, do some hiking.” It wasn’t unusual. After the isolation of the previous year, plenty of people were taking solo trips into the countryside. He mentioned Vermont because it was quiet, close enough to drive, and scenic without being tourist-heavy that early in spring. He booked the cabin outside Stowe, charmed by its minimalist design and isolation. The listing described it as “a peaceful woodland escape with mountain views and no distractions.” No television. Spotty cell service. A small kitchen, a wood stove, and floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over the trees.

Sarah Chin remembered him as polite, well-prepared, and slightly nervous. “He didn’t talk much,” she later told investigators, “but he smiled a lot. Said he was excited to see the trails.” She met him in person that Friday evening to hand over the key and show him how to work the wood stove. He asked about trail maps, which ones were safest, where cell coverage dropped off. She recommended the Sunset Ridge Trail—six miles round trip, moderate difficulty, great views of the valley. He thanked her and said he planned to start early the next morning. Sarah locked up behind him, got in her car, and drove home.

That was the last confirmed time anyone saw him alive.

The cabin’s outdoor security camera caught one brief video the following morning. At 7:04 a.m., Michael stepped out the front door wearing a black North Face jacket, gray trail pants, and blue running shoes. He carried a small daypack and a folded paper map in one hand. He walked to his rental car, a silver Subaru Crosstrek, opened the driver’s side door briefly—possibly to grab something—and then shut it. He didn’t start the car. Instead, he turned and walked down the gravel driveway toward the road.

The camera’s view cut off there. It didn’t capture which direction he turned—left toward the main trailhead or right toward the smaller, unmarked forest road. That was 7:04 a.m. on April 17th. No one saw him again.

By Monday morning, April 19th, Sarah returned for the standard 11:00 a.m. checkout. Michael’s car was still in the driveway. The front door was locked from the outside. She knocked several times and waited. No answer. Using her master key, she entered the cabin.

Inside, everything was undisturbed. The bed was unmade, but it looked as though it had been slept in only once. A half-finished cup of coffee sat on the counter, now covered with a thin film. His phone was plugged in by the bed, fully charged. His wallet, with ID, credit cards, and cash, was still in the nightstand drawer. His laptop sat closed on the desk near the window. His clothes were neatly folded in an open suitcase, a pair of hiking boots tucked beneath the bed. There was no sign of panic, no packing, no note, nothing missing except the clothes he’d been wearing and the blue daypack.

Sarah called the sheriff’s office that afternoon. A deputy arrived within the hour. His initial report was dismissive. Adults go off-grid sometimes, he told her. People wander, lose track of time. Maybe he’d met someone. Maybe he’d decided to extend his trip. But Sarah was uneasy. “He wasn’t that type,” she said later. “You could tell. Everything about him was precise.”

When she called again the next morning, the case was reassigned to Detective Paul Gerard, a fifteen-year veteran known for his patience and methodical work. Gerard had seen missing persons cases before—runaways, hikers, the occasional tourist who underestimated Vermont’s terrain—but something about this one unsettled him. Michael hadn’t left impulsively. His belongings were too neatly arranged. His car hadn’t been touched. It was as if he’d walked away from his own life mid-sentence.

Gerard began with routine steps. He confirmed with Michael’s employer that he’d taken the week off. He checked bank and credit card activity—no transactions since April 16th. He subpoenaed cell phone records. The phone had connected briefly to the cabin’s Wi-Fi at 8:32 p.m. Friday, then gone idle. No calls, no texts, no data usage afterward.

The detective hiked the trails near the cabin with a small search team. They found nothing—no shoe prints, no scraps of fabric, no evidence of an accident. The forest that time of year was still recovering from winter, the ground soft but not yet overgrown. A missing hiker should have left a trace. Michael hadn’t.

Search-and-rescue teams scoured the area for a week. They brought in dogs. The dogs picked up a faint scent that led down the road from the cabin before disappearing near a fork where the paved road met a dirt one. Beyond that point, there was nothing. No body, no evidence, no answers.

By the end of the month, the case was suspended. It remained open but inactive, another cold file in a drawer labeled “Unresolved.” His parents, who lived in New Hampshire, visited the cabin once. His mother couldn’t bring herself to step inside.

For months, the mystery of what happened to him became little more than local folklore. People speculated—a fall, an animal attack, foul play, a decision to vanish voluntarily. There were sightings, all false. A man in Maine who looked like him. A hiker in Canada mistaken for him. But the truth remained buried somewhere in the endless woods of Vermont.

And then, eighteen months later, the hunter found the black North Face jacket hanging from that pine branch. Twelve miles from the nearest trail, eight more miles from the coordinates written inside the folded paper.

The paper’s ink had bled in places, but one detail was unmistakable—the date. April 17, 2021. The same day he disappeared.

The discovery reopened everything. But the question wasn’t just where he had gone. It was why that note had been written—and what, or who, those coordinates were meant to lead to.

Continue below

 

 

 

In October 2021, a hunter walking through dense forest in northeastern Vermont finds a black Northace jacket hanging from a low pine branch approximately 12 mi from the nearest trail head. The jacket is weathered but intact.

 Inside the left pocket is a folded piece of paper, lined notebook paper, the kind you’d find in a rental cabin. The note is handwritten in blue ink partially faded by moisture. It contains three lines, a set of coordinates, a date from 18 months earlier, and a single sentence that doesn’t explain anything.

 The coordinates point to an area another 8 mi deeper into the wilderness. When state police trace the jacket’s owner, they find a case that’s been cold since April 2021. A software developer from Boston who checked into a Vermont Airbnb for a week of hiking, left for a morning trail run, and never came back. His rental car was still in the driveway. His phone was still charging on the nightstand.

 His suitcase was still open on the bed, and no one has seen him since. The Airbnb is located outside Stowe, Vermont, in a rural area where vacation rentals line the narrow roads between dairy farms and State Forest. The host, Sarah Chin, had been renting the property, a renovated 1960s A-frame cabin since 2017. By April 2021, she had more than 300 bookings and a five-star rating.

 She knew the routine. Guests checked in Friday evening, spent the weekend hiking or skiing depending on the season, and checked out by 11:00 on Monday morning. The place practically ran itself. Most guests left the key in the lockbox, texted a thank you, and drove back to Boston or New York or Montreal.

 It was reliable income with minimal hassle until the booking for April 16th through April 23rd when a guest named Michael Ree didn’t check out. Michael Ree was 34 years old, a software developer for a midsize tech company in the Boston suburbs. According to his LinkedIn profile, he’d been with the company for six years, working remotely even before the pandemic made it standard.

Co-workers described him as competent, quiet, not particularly social. He attended the occasional happy hour, but usually left early. He lived alone in a one-bedroom apartment in Somerville. His most recent relationship had ended about 8 months before the trip to Vermont. His ex-girlfriend later told investigators it was amicable.

 No drama, just two people who wanted different things. Michael had taken the breakup quietly. He didn’t talk about it much at work. He kept showing up, kept doing his job, kept to himself. In early April 2021, he requested a week off. His manager approved it without questions. Michael told a few co-workers he was going hiking in Vermont. Needed to clear his head. No one thought it was unusual.

 A lot of people were taking solo trips that spring, trying to shake off the weight of the previous year. He booked the Airbnb in Stow because it was close to several trail systems, Smuggller’s Notch, Mount Mansfield, the long trail. The listing described the cabin as quiet, off the grid, perfect for solo retreats.

 It had a wood stove, a small kitchenet, and no television. The photos showed tall windows looking out at pine trees and a narrow gravel driveway that wound down from the main road. Michael messaged Sarah a few days before arrival asking about trail recommendations. She sent him a list, moderate loops, a few challenging climbs, notes about where cell service dropped off.

 He thanked her and said he’d see her Friday. He arrived on the evening of April 16th. Sarah met him at the cabin to hand over the key and walk him through the basics. how to work the wood stove, where the circuit breaker was, how to lock the door from the inside. She later told police he seemed fine, tired from the drive maybe, but polite.

 He asked a few questions about the trails. She recommended starting with Sunset Ridge if he wanted something manageable, about 6 mi round trip with decent views. He nodded, thanked her, and said he’d probably head out early the next morning. She left him to settle in and drove back to her house 3 mi down the road. That was the last time she saw him. Michael spent Friday night at the cabin.

There’s no record of what he did. No texts, no calls, no social media posts. His phone connected to the cabin’s Wi-Fi briefly around 8:30 p.m. then went idle. The next morning, Saturday, April 17th, the security camera Sarah had installed above the cabin’s front door, captured him 

leaving at 7:04 a.m. He was wearing a black Northace fleece jacket, gray athletic pants, trail runners, and a small blue dayack. He carried a water bottle in one hand and what looked like a folded paper map in the other. He walked to his rental car, a silver 2021 Subaru Cross Trek, opened the driver’s side door, leaned in for a moment, then closed it, and walked down the driveway toward the main road.

 The camera’s angle doesn’t show which direction he turned once he reached the road. That’s the last confirmed sighting. By Monday, April 19th, Sarah arrived at the cabin for the 11:00 a.m. checkout. Michael’s car was still in the driveway. The front door was locked. She knocked, waited, knocked again. No answer. She used her master key to enter. Inside, everything looked normal. The bed was unmade.

 A coffee mug sat on the kitchen counter, still half full, a thin film of mold starting to form on the surface. His suitcase was open on the floor near the bed, clothes folded inside. His toiletries were lined up on the bathroom sink, toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, a bottle of ibuprofen. His phone was plugged into the wall charger next to the bed, screen dark, battery full.

 His wallet was in the nightstand drawer containing his driver’s license, two credit cards, $63 in cash. His laptop was closed on the small desk near the window. The wood stove was cold. There was no note, no sign of distress, no indication he’d planned to leave permanently. Sarah called the Loyal County Sheriff’s Office at 1:15 p.m.

 A deputy arrived 40 minutes later, took a statement, looked around the cabin. The deputy’s initial assessment, documented in the incident report, was that this wasn’t unusual. Adults go off-rid sometimes, lose track of time, forget to check out. The deputy suggested waiting until the next morning. If Michael hadn’t returned by then, they’d escalate.

 Sarah called again Tuesday morning. Still no sign of him. This time, the case was assigned to Detective Paul Gerard, a 15-year veteran of the department, who’d worked missing person’s cases before, though most of them involved teenagers running away or elderly residents wandering from nursing homes. Missing hikers were less common, but not unheard of.

 Vermont’s trail systems could be disorienting, especially for outofstate visitors unfamiliar with the terrain. Gerard started with the basics. He contacted Michael’s employer in Boston. Confirmed he’d taken the week off. Confirmed no one had heard from him since Friday. He pulled Michael’s cell phone records.

 The last activity registered on the network was Saturday morning at 7:38 a.m. when Michael’s phone pinged a tower near Stowe and briefly accessed data. Specifically, he’d opened the All Trails app and viewed a trail map for Sunset Ridge Loop. After that, the phone went silent. No calls, no texts, no data usage.

 Gerard checked with the rental car company. The Subaru was registered to Michael, rented from Burlington Airport on April 15th, due back April 24th. No accidents reported, no parking violations, no indication the car had been moved since Michael parked it at the cabin. On Wednesday, April 21st, search and rescue teams were deployed to Sunset Ridge.

 It’s a moderate trail popular with dayhikers, well marked with blue blazes. The trail head is about 4 miles from Sarah’s cabin, accessible by a short drive or a longer walk along back roads. The parking lot at the trail head had space for maybe a dozen cars. Volunteers checked the area, found no sign of the Subaru, no sign that Michael had parked there. Search teams hiked the loop, 6.

2 mi, elevation gain of about 1,500 ft, scenic overlooks at the rgeline. They called his name, checked the side trails, looked for any evidence he’d passed through. They found nothing. No footprints, no discarded water bottles, no clothing. One of the volunteers noted that if Michael had started hiking Saturday morning, any tracks would have been disturbed or erased by rain that fell Sunday night.

 The ground was soft, muddy in places, but there was nothing definitive. The search expanded over the next 3 days. Helicopters swept the area using thermal imaging to check the forest canopy. Cadaavver dogs were brought in, though their effectiveness in dense wilderness is limited. Too much ground to cover. Too many scents, too many variables.

 By Friday, April 23rd, more than 60 volunteers had combed the trails and surrounding forest within a 5m radius of the cabin. They found a lot of things. Old campsites, discarded gear from previous seasons, a rusted bicycle frame someone had dumped decades ago, but no trace of Michael Ree. The official search was called off after 8 days. Gerard kept the case open, kept checking in with Sarah, kept Michael’s information circulated among local law enforcement and park services.

 But without new leads, there wasn’t much more to do. Michael’s family, his parents who lived in Connecticut, and a younger sister in Philadelphia, drove to Vermont in late April and stayed for a week distributing flyers, talking to reporters, organizing their own search efforts with a private company that specialized in wilderness recovery.

 The private searchers used drones, covered areas the official search hadn’t prioritized, checked abandoned logging roads, and seasonal hunting camps. They didn’t find anything either. By midMay, the family returned home.

 Michael’s mother posted updates on a Facebook page dedicated to the search, pleading for information, sharing photos of her son smiling at a family gathering, standing on a beach somewhere, holding a nephew. The page gathered a few hundred followers, mostly local residents and true crime enthusiasts. Tips came in sporadically.

 Someone thought they’d seen a man matching Michael’s description at a gas station in New Hampshire. Another caller claimed to have spotted him hitchhiking near the Canadian border. Every tip was investigated. None led anywhere. Detective Gerard reviewed Michael’s laptop in early May after obtaining permission from the family and a warrant to access it. The laptop wasn’t password protected.

 Gerard working with a digital forensics specialist from the state police went through the browser history, saved files, email correspondence. What they found wasn’t alarming, but it was strange. Starting in late January 2021, about 10 weeks before the Vermont trip, Michael had begun researching unsolved missing person’s cases. Not casually, obsessively. He’d bookmarked dozens of articles, forum threads, and databases. Most of the cases involved people who disappeared while hiking or camping in remote areas.

 Cases from the 1990s and early 2000s spread across different states, none of them particularly wellknown. He’d downloaded topographic maps of various wilderness areas in Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine. He’d saved satellite images from Google Earth marking certain locations with digital pins.

 There were notes, too, plain text files with lists of coordinates, distances between landmarks, elevation data. One case in particular seemed to interest him, a man named Daniel Cormier, who disappeared in 1998 while hiking in the White Mountains of New Hampshire. Cormier had been 29 at the time, an environmental science grad student doing field research on soil erosion.

 He’d told his adviser he was heading to a specific research site near the Pemagawaset Wilderness. He never returned. His car was found at a trail head. His tent and gear were recovered from a campsite, but Cormier himself was never found. The case went cold after a few months. No foul play suspected, no evidence of an accident, just another person swallowed by the forest.

 Michael had saved multiple articles about Cormier, including a long- form piece from a New Hampshire newspaper published on the 10th anniversary of the disappearance. He’d also saved a scanned image of a topographic map that appeared to show Cormier’s last known research site with handwritten notes in the margins.

 Notes that didn’t match Cormier’s handwriting because the scan was from a public records request someone had filed years ago. Gerard didn’t know what to make of it. Was Michael interested in cold cases as a hobby? Was he trying to solve something? The digital forensics specialist suggested it might have been a coping mechanism.

 Some people process grief or stress by fixating on puzzles or mysteries. Michael’s ex-girlfriend, when asked about it, said he’d never mentioned anything about missing person’s cases during their relationship. She said he liked hiking, liked being outdoors, but he wasn’t the type to get obsessed with true crime or unsolved mysteries.

She didn’t know what had changed. The case stayed cold through the summer and into the fall of 2021. Gerard checked in with the family once a month. Sarah Chen cleaned out the cabin in late May, boxing up Michael’s belongings and storing them in her garage, waiting for someone to claim them.

 The rental car company eventually repossessed the Subaru after the contract expired. Michael’s employer kept his position open for 3 months, then quietly filled it. His apartment lease in Somerville lapsed. His landlord packed up his things and put them in storage. Life moved on the way it does when someone disappears without explanation.

Then in late October 2022, 18 months after Michael vanished, a man named William Puit was deer hunting in a section of the Green Mountain National Forest about 12 mi northeast of Stowe. It was remote, accessible only by a network of old logging roads that hadn’t been maintained in years. Puit had been hunting that area for decades, knew the terrain, knew where the deer trails ran.

He was walking a rgeline on the afternoon of October 28th when he saw something unusual. A piece of black fabric hanging from a branch about 6 ft off the ground. He approached and found a jacket, a black Northace fleece, men’s size medium. It was weathered, covered in pine needles and dust, but still intact. Someone had deliberately draped it over the branch.

 Puit checked the pockets. Inside the left pocket was a folded piece of paper. He unfolded it carefully. The paper was damp. The ink partially faded, but still legible. At the top of the page was a set of GPS coordinates. Below that, a date, April 17th, 2021. Below that, a single handwritten sentence. If you find this, I made it farther than I thought I would. That was all. No name, no explanation, no additional context.

 Puit didn’t recognize the handwriting. He took photos of the jacket and the note with his phone. Sell service was non-existent there, but he could save the images. He folded the note, put it back in the pocket, and carried the jacket out of the forest. 2 hours later, when he reached his truck and had cell service again, he called the Lumwell County Sheriff’s Office.

Gerard met with Puit the next day. The jacket matched the description of what Michael had been wearing when he left the cabin. Black Northace fleece, size medium. Gerard sent it to the state crime lab for analysis. DNA recovered from the collar confirmed it. The jacket belonged to Michael Ree. The note was more complicated.

 A handwriting analyst compared it to samples of Michael’s writing, notes from his laptop, a grocery list found in his apartment, his signature from work documents. The analyst concluded the handwriting was consistent with Michael’s, though degradation from moisture made absolute certainty impossible. Inc. analysis suggested the note had been written sometime in the spring or early summer of 2021, consistent with the time frame of his disappearance.

 The coordinates written on the note were entered into a GPS system. They pointed to a location approximately 8 mi northn northwest of where had found the jacket deeper into the national forest in an area with no marked trails and no easy access. Gerard organized a search operation for early November. The team included state police, volunteers, and a K-9 unit.

 They hiked in from the nearest logging road, navigating by GPS, moving slowly through dense undergrowth and uneven terrain. It took most of a day to reach the coordinates. When they arrived, they found evidence of human activity, recent, but not current.

 There was a fire ring made from stacked stones surrounded by a cleared area about 10 ft in diameter. The remains of a makeshift shelter were visible nearby. A tarp torn and faded tied between two trees with paracord that had frayed and broken in places. The tarp had collapsed, partly covering a pile of debris, empty food wrappers, a crushed water bottle, a few pieces of charred wood from old fires.

The ground was disturbed in a way that suggested someone had been there for more than a day or two, but there was no tent, no sleeping bag, no body. The K9 unit searched the immediate area, alerting in a few spots, but excavation turned up nothing. Likely animal remains or old organic material.

 Forensic teams bagged the tarp, the wrappers, anything that might yield DNA or fingerprints. Initial field analysis confirmed the food wrappers matched brands that would have been available in 2021. The tarp showed UV degradation consistent with prolonged outdoor exposure at least a year, possibly longer. But Michael wasn’t there. The question that haunted Gerard and everyone else involved in the search was simple.

 Why? Why would someone hike 12 miles into remote forest deliberately with enough supplies to set up a camp and stay for some period of time only to leave again? And if Michael had made it that far, where was he now? The note suggested he’d been alive at least long enough to write it long enough to walk even farther.

 But farther where? And why not call for help? Why not activate the emergency beacon most hikers carry? Why not leave a clearer trail? Gerard returned to Michael’s digital records, re-examining the research he’d done on Daniel Cormier and the other missing person’s cases. He plotted the coordinates Michael had saved on his laptop against the location where the campsite was found.

 They didn’t match exactly, but they were close within a 2-m radius. One of the coordinate sets Michael had marked corresponded to an area near the Pemagawaset Wilderness in New Hampshire, the same region where Daniel Cormier had disappeared in 1998. Gerard contacted the New Hampshire State Police requesting any information they still had on the Cormier case.

 Most of the physical evidence had been destroyed or lost in the intervening years, but the case file was still on record. Cormier’s last known campsite had been approximately 15 miles from the location where Michael’s campsite was found, though in a different state and separated by significant terrain. There was no obvious connection, no evidence the two cases were related, except that Michael had been researching Cormier obsessively in the months before his own disappearance.

A theory began to form, though it was speculative and couldn’t be proven. What if Michael hadn’t gotten lost? What if he’d gone into the wilderness deliberately, following some thread related to the cases he’d been researching? What if he thought he’d found something, some pattern, some clue, some location that connected the disappearances he’d been studying? The note suggested intentionality. I made it farther than I thought I would.

 That phrasing implied a goal, a destination, something he’d been trying to reach. But what? And why not tell anyone? Gerard interviewed Michael’s ex-girlfriend again, asking if Michael had ever mentioned Daniel Cormier or any interest in unsolved cases. She said no, not during their relationship. But she added something she hadn’t thought to mention before.

 In the last month or two before they broke up, Michael had become quieter, more distracted. He’d taken a few weekend trips alone, told her he was hiking, needed space. She hadn’t thought much of it at the time. People need space, especially during a stressful period. Looking back, she wondered if something had been bothering him, something he hadn’t wanted to talk about.

She asked Gerard if he thought Michael had been planning to disappear. Gerard said he didn’t know. Honest answer. In early December 2022, a woman hiking in the same general area where Puit had found the jacket reported seeing something unusual. A small Kairen, a stack of rocks placed on a boulder near a stream crossing.

 Kairenairs are common trail markers, but this one was off any established trail in a location where there was no reason for a marker. She took a photo and posted it to a Vermont hiking forum asking if anyone knew what it signified. Someone on the forum recognized the location and contacted the sheriff’s office.

 Gerard sent a team to investigate. The Karen was still there undisturbed. Beneath the rocks, they found a small plastic bag, the kind used for sandwiches, sealed with a zip closure. Inside was another note. This one was written on a torn piece of the same kind of lined paper as the first note. The handwriting was shaky, less controlled, but still consistent with Michaels.

The note contained only two things, a second set of coordinates and a name, Daniel C. The coordinates pointed even farther north into a section of wilderness that spanned the Vermont Quebec border. Gerard contacted Canadian authorities, explained the situation, requested permission to conduct a search on their side of the border.

 The process took weeks. By the time approval came through, winter had set in. Snow covered the region, making any search effort impossible until spring. The operation was postponed. Michael’s family held a small memorial service in January 2023, even though no body had been found. His mother told reporters she didn’t believe her son was still alive.

 No one could survive that long in the wilderness, especially through a Vermont winter. She said she just wanted closure, wanted to bring him home. The Facebook page dedicated to the search went quiet. Gerard kept the case open, kept the evidence filed, kept the second set of coordinates saved in his notes, but he didn’t know what else to do. The trail literally and figuratively had gone cold again.

In April 2023, a small group of volunteer searchers, some of whom had been involved in the original search, decided to hike to the location indicated by the second set of coordinates. They didn’t notify the sheriff’s office ahead of time. Gerard later said he would have advised against it given the difficulty of the terrain and the fact that it crossed an international border.

The group consisted of five people, all experienced hikers equipped with GPS units, satellite communicators, and enough supplies for a multi-day trek. They documented their journey, posting updates to a blog as they went. It took them 3 days to reach the coordinates. When they arrived, they found nothing.

No campsite, no K, no evidence anyone had been there. The area was dense forest, unremarkable, no distinguishing features. One of the volunteers later admitted they didn’t know what they had expected to find. Maybe another note. Maybe Michael himself alive somehow. Maybe a grave. But there was nothing. They returned disappointed, posting a final update that concluded with the acknowledgement that some mysteries don’t have answers. Sarah Chen still owns the Airbnb.

 It’s still listed, still booked regularly, still gets five-star reviews. She doesn’t mention the case to guests unless they ask. Some of them do. Word gets around in small communities, and Stow isn’t that big. When guests ask, she tells them what she knows, which isn’t much. She kept Michael’s belongings for 2 years before finally shipping them to his family in Connecticut.

 His phone, his laptop, his wallet, his clothes. She didn’t keep anything except the memory of a quiet man who seemed tired and polite and normal. She thinks about him sometimes when she’s cleaning the cabin between bookings. When she notices the spot where his suitcase had been, the outlet where his phone was charging. She wonders what he was looking for. She wonders if he found it.

 Detective Gerard retired in late 2023. The Michael Ree case was one of the few he left officially open, unsolved. In his final interview with a local newspaper, he said the case bothered him more than most because it felt like Michael had left clues deliberately, as if he wanted someone to follow, but the clues didn’t lead anywhere comprehensible. Or maybe they did, and no one had figured it out yet.

 Gerard said he hoped someone would someday, but he wasn’t optimistic. The jacket is still in evidence storage. The notes are stored with it, sealed in plastic, labeled with case numbers and dates. Michael’s laptop was returned to his family, who eventually donated it to the state police in case future investigators wanted to review it.

 The coordinates he saved are still there, dozens of them, scattered across maps of wilderness areas in three states. Some correspond to known locations, trail heads, campsites, overlooks. Others point to empty forest. No landmarks, no clear reason why he marked them. It’s possible he was trying to map something to trace a pattern across the disappearances he’d researched.

 Or maybe he was just planning hikes, marking spots he wanted to visit, and the whole thing is a coincidence. No one knows. Daniel Cormier’s case remains unsolved. His family, like Michael’s, held a memorial years ago, accepted that he was gone, tried to move on. There is no evidence the two cases are related beyond Michael’s interest in Cormier’s disappearance.

 But the fact that Michael was researching it so intensely and then disappeared himself in a similar way leaves a question hanging in the air. A question with no answer, just the echo of two men, decades apart, walking into the wilderness and not coming back. In the fall of 2024, William Puit returned to the spot where he’d found the jacket. He doesn’t know why.

Curiosity, maybe a sense of unfinished business. He walked the same ridge line, looked for any other signs, found nothing. The forest had reclaimed the area. The branch where the jacket had hung was bare. He stood there for a while, listening to the wind in the pines, the sound of his own breathing. He thought about the note he’d found.

 I made it farther than I thought I would, and wondered what that meant. Farther toward what? Farther from what? He didn’t have an answer. He turned and walked back the way he’d come. Michael Ree is still listed as a missing person. His case is still open. There are occasional updates. A hiker reports seeing something unusual. A tip comes in from someone who thinks they saw a man matching his description in a different state.

 A conspiracy theory circulates online suggesting he faked his death and is living under a new identity. None of it leads anywhere. The most likely explanation, according to most people familiar with the case, is that Michael is dead. That he hiked too far, got disoriented or injured, and succumb to exposure somewhere in the vast wilderness of northern Vermont or southern Quebec, that his body is out there undiscovered, slowly being reclaimed by the forest.

 It’s a plausible theory, but it doesn’t explain the notes, the coordinates, the deliberate trail he seemed to be leaving. Sarah Chen visits the cabin once a month now, even when there are no bookings, just to check on it. She walks through the rooms, makes sure everything is in order.

 Sometimes she thinks about that Saturday morning in April 2021, the security camera footage of Michael walking down the driveway with his daypack and his map. She wonders what he was thinking. She wonders if he knew he wasn’t coming back. She wonders if somewhere he’s still walking. The forest doesn’t answer. It never does. It just holds its secrets, silent and deep, waiting for someone to ask the right question.