The problem with being on the right track toward a Garou settlement is that you keep getting onto the wrong track. Werewolves don't build a lot of walls, but they know how to shape paths that veer subtly away from places they want to protect.
You spend hours getting subtly veered. It's infuriating. Worse: you're being followed by something that smells like hot metal and rotting leather. You can smell its reek whenever the wind shifts. You keep checking your maps, but you can't see where you're going wrong. You only make progress when the contour of the woods encourages you to head downslope, and you instead defiantly turn ninety degrees and walk up a hill.
Directly ahead: an abandoned ATV half-buried in a snow drift. A leather glove lies nearby, its back covered in a design you don't recognize: some kind of crowned dragon in…the sun? Almost certainly not Garou. When you turn it over, you realize there's still a hand in it. You hastily back away. Looking around, you find a stick, kick some snow off it, and use that to turn it over and conduct a quick search. Nearby: a .38 revolver, rusted beyond hope of repair, a bronze sword so thick with verdigris that it looks like moss, and a wallet. The wallet has $7, two gas cards, and a card from Banicki Gunworks, which you've already checked out. The wallet also has a Forbes library card with name: Harmonie Palys. If you manage to meet any other Garou here, they might want to know about this. But though you range back and forth for more than an hour, you can't find more signs of fighting or habitation.
You head downslope and find yourself standing over a half-frozen bog: a maze of tiny islands and hillocks, surrounded by gelid black water. A badly defaced standing stone rises crookedly out of the mud. The air is warm with rot that makes you gag. Flies seek your eyes and nostrils. But you force yourself to think clearly, because this place looks familiar—especially that crooked standing stone. You've never been here before but…have you seen a picture?
Wait, you remember. You pull out the Field Notes.
The zigzags are a map. There's the standing stone, there's the large hillock…
You're sure this is important. But the map represents hundreds of acres, and what good is a map without a destination? You scout as far as you dare, but though it's strangely warm down in the marsh, the sun is setting, and you don't want to get trapped here at night. You feel like you'll be back here, though…once you know where you're going. You turn away from the marsh and head back into the woods.
The sun has set and it's bitterly cold and windy by the time you reach the Veterans Hospital. You warm up in the garden center before the bus comes.
How many days have you spent on the streets? You don't think even a werewolf can survive more nights exposed to a New England winter: you have to try getting a place to stay.
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