In a near future where environmental collapse has progressed, a late-middle-aged married woman, Syl, gets a call from a man she was in love with thirty years prior, Wade, and is transported into a long memory. Syl meets Wade when she visits a "Serenity Pods" store with her aging father. Wade is the salesperson. Serenity Pods are burial pods that facilitate the decomposition of one's dead body and return nutrients to the soil. Wade frames the expensive process as worthwhile, because it is a way to repay one's ecological debts to the world. This resonates with Syl's father, who is overcome with ecological guilt. Syl is unconvinced and later returns to the store, where she and Wade hit it off. She learns Wade works primarily as a shed-hunter — he illegally scours the woods for shed antlers from elk. The government considers him a "poacher" and his acts come with a minimum of five years in prison. Syl becomes Wade's shed-hunting partner. She is known as "Wade's girl" at the bar that the shed-hunters frequent. She tells her friend Kenny that she thinks she's in love with Wade. Kenny is unsurprised and encourages her to make a move, which she doesn't. One day, when Syl plans to confess her love to Wade, she gets a call that her dad is in the hospital as she is headed out to shed-hunt with Wade. Wade drops her off at the hospital and goes alone. Syl's dad obsesses over the amount of water he threw away when he worked as a trucker. When Syl sarcastically says she's sure the Serenity Pod will right all his wrongs, he implores her not to be mean to him and to let him attempt to "make amends." Syl and her dad find out from the TV that Wade has been caught by rangers. Syl posts Wade's bail and collects him from jail. She feels guilty she wasn't out there with him. Syl doesn't hear from Wade for days, until one day she tracks his car and follows him into the woods. She learns he's going to trap and turn in another shed hunter to get out of a prison sentence, and then he plans to move to Minnesota. Syl feels betrayed. Suddenly, another poacher runs out of the woods toward them. He thinks they're rangers and, without missing a beat, Wade pretends they are. He takes an antler from the man, which is the missing match to a fresh antler which Syl had found. The man claims to have seen a live elk. Wade wants Syl to come see it with him, but Syl chooses instead to help the man get home. In Syl's memory though, she imagines she went with Wade and saw the elk.