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In the morning, Stewart rose late and moved slowly. He had little appetite, but knew he had better eat. Once before, in the Porkies during a torrential rainstorm, Stewart had broken camp without breakfast and two hours later, exhausted, had made a mistake and walked two miles down the wrong trail. He had never skipped breakfast since.
He cooked in front of the tent this time, not bothering to take the food elsewhere. He would not be here tonight anyway and ─ he convinced himself ─ neither would anyone else. By the time the camp was used again those food smells would be long gone.
Today the oatmeal tasted pasty and the coffee bitter, even when he added brown sugar to both. He felt physically drained and slightly sick, as if a little wet rag sat in the bottom of his stomach.
–
The trail continued to ascend from the campsite, and a half-hour into the day’s hike Stewart noticed that he was walking over an abandoned railroad track, the rotting ties grown up with moss and weeds. The last few miles of Tumbling Rock, the guide book had advised, followed old train tracks that once carried coal from the mountains to the towns below. Here was Stewart’s first proof that he was on the right trail after all and that the cairns in this wilderness were indeed trustworthy.
He marveled that any train could ever have operated over terrain like this.
Stewart eventually stopped at a level place and dropped his pack to catch his breath. As soon as he did, he noticed a man trailing him a hundred yards or so away. As the figure grew near, Stewart could see that he was wearing an orange cap emblazoned on the front with the head of a full-antlered buck. He carried a pack and a rifle.
“Morning!” he called as he approached.
“Morning,” Stewart answered.
The man stopped in front of Stewart. “Are you here to hunt or just hang out?”
“I’m just backpacking. Not much of a hunter. You?”
The man was tall — six-foot, five, Stewart guessed, but not particularly muscular. The lines in his face, accented with several days growth of beard, hinted of a life spent in the mines or on a logging crew. He looked tired.
“Originally here for bear, but now I’ve got a big problem. My wife and son are out here somewhere by themselves and I’ve got to find them. I don’t suppose you’ve seen them – little boy’s about this big.”
The man indicated the boy’s height with his hand, keeping it level with chest.
Stewart almost said, “yes, I may have seen them the other night,” but he didn’t.
“You’re the first person I’ve seen in two days. What are they doing out here alone?”
The man frowned, glanced at his feet and then looked back at Stewart.
“Brought them out here four days ago, fun family time you know? I went out the next morning to hunt and when I come back they’d taken their tent, packed up most of their stuff and run out on me.”
Stewart looked at him quizzically.
“It’s a private matter, mister. But that don’t change the fact I’m worried about them. They didn’t take enough food to last two days, much less a week out here.”
The man looked away, then back at Stewart. “She is CRAZY, a real crazy bitch. If you see them, tell them I’m looking for them, OK?”
Stewart nodded.
The man started up the trail, then turned around.
“You’ll need to be careful,” the hunter said and pointed in the direction he’d been traveling. “On the other side of that ridge you’re going to find a lot of folks hunting bear. You got any orange?”
Stewart did have orange, a fluorescent stocking cap that his wife had made him bring along “just in case.” He thought perhaps he’d better put it on.
“I thought Cranberry Wilderness was a bear sanctuary,” Stewart said. “I didn’t know you could hunt them here.”
“Yes sir, but there’s such a shitload of ’em this year they opened it up all this week for hunting.”
Stewart nodded.
“Well sir, if you see Donna and Danny, you tell ’em I’m looking for ’em, OK?”
Stewart watched him walk up the trail and disappear over the crest of the ridge. He wondered how a person could ever get a 400-pound black bear over these trails and back to his truck.
–
Stewart wasn’t sure how long he’d been walking. Four hours? Five? He’d forgotten to look at the time when he broke camp, but surely he’d been hiking that long.
He’d turned left at Tumbling Rock’s junction with the North-South Trail then turned right when he came to the Laurally Trail, which he planned to take down to the Middle Fork and make camp for the night in the first place that looked reasonably hospitable.
But the Laurally was longer and harder than he had expected, and after lunch he decided he might need to revise his plans and shorten his day. There was plenty of time to see the wilderness, and continuing on with spent legs would be stupid and dangerous.
Stewart stepped down a side path near a rocky overlook to take a leak. As he moved quietly into the large clearing and began to unzip, he caught something out of the corner of his eye.
He turned to look.
Ten yards away, an orange hunter’s cap lay on the ground, a proud buck staring up at Stewart from above the brim. Another 15 yards away lay a little boy with blond hair, face-up and bloody, eyes open and staring. No more than five feet away from the little boy lay a brown-haired woman, facedown, her light-blue shirt soaked a reddish black from her shoulders to her hips.
Their packs sat together, unopened.
Two vultures, which had been pecking at their feet, didn’t notice Stewart until he vomited. Then, startled, they flapped away from the bodies and into the open air beyond the overlook.
Stewart’s head flooded with confusion. He thought maybe he should get closer so he could describe the details to the police. Maybe he should even get a picture, in case he couldn’t remember.
He thought all of this. But his instinct was to back away.
And as he backed away, he suddenly bumped against what felt like a man who, without even seeing him, Stewart guessed to be about six-foot, five and not particularly muscular.
###
Tomorrow’s Out of Nowhere will feature the final part of this story.
*********
Tumbling Rock Trail feeds directly off the road a mile or so beyond the liming plant and is the re-entry point to the wilderness area, immediately ascending into the forest. Stewart’s pack felt heavier now than it had all day, partly because of the added weight of the water, partly because he was already tired, and partly because the trail rises almost straight up for a lung-bursting mile before leveling out..
When the trail did level out, Stewart found himself walking along narrow dirt ledges. He slowed his pace and kept his eyes to the ground, using his walking stick to stay upright, stopping only once to scramble up a steep slope to what appeared from below to be an old building. Instead, he found a huge boulder the size of a two-story house and paused there to consider whether bandits might once have stashed treasure below one of the craggy openings around the base. He suspected, on second thought, that these were probably filled with yellow jacket nests and, rather than attempting to confirm the theory, slid down the hill to where he had left his pack.
Just after noon, the trail disappeared abruptly into thick underbrush. Stewart retraced his steps, looking for an overlooked junction, but finding none, returned to where the trail seemed to end. On this second visit, Stewart discovered a pair of cairns that directed him across a creek bed and onto a trail that veered hard right from the direction he had been traveling.
According to his map and compass, going this way would take him southeast instead of northeast, as his map indicated he should be going. He spent the next half hour trying to decide if the map was wrong or if he had made another wrong turn. When it finally appeared there were no other choices but to move on or go back to the Tumbling Rock trailhead, he marked the blip on his map and followed the trail in its new direction.
At 2 p.m., Stewart happily arrived at one of the few designated camp sites in the Cranberry Wilderness, complete with an iron fire ring. The tent, as always, went up easily, and this time the bear bag did too, though not as far from his tent or as high off the ground as he would have liked. In the end, these two trees were his only practical choice and they would have to do.
Every muscle in Stewart’s body felt tight and his arches felt as if they had been beaten with rocks – as indeed they had been. He took off his boots and socks and plunged his feet into the cold water of a nearby stream in which rocks, elevated just above the water line, sprouted thick, green moss reminiscent of the shag rug in his old college apartment.
He let his feet soak and breathed deeply, letting the aroma of pine, mud, wildflowers and forest floor fill his nostrils. He closed his eyes and sat.
When he felt as if he were about to nod off, Stewart arose and heated water, stripped off his shirt and pants and improvised a sponge bath with soap and a red bandana, hiding behind the tent in case someone should come along.
It felt good to get clean and even better to put on a fresh shirt. Out here it took only a day or two for clean clothes to begin smelling like a chicken barn, but Stewart’s pack wasn’t big enough or his back strong enough to carry a full change of clothing for each day of the week.
Another good reason to hike alone, he thought, smiling.
Late that afternoon, as the sun began to cast long shadows through the woods and the temperature dropped, Stewart made his dinner on a large tree stump 50 yards up the trail, where any lingering food smells would draw bears away from his tent. Here he feasted on soft tacos filled with chicken, onions and cheese, washing it all down with a big cup of hot, sweet tea.
By 6:30, the sun was low behind the trees, and Stewart knew it would be another early night. Despite the presence of a fire ring, he again decided against making a fire. Stewart knew that by the time the fire died down enough to be abandoned for bed he already would have fallen asleep in front of it.
–
Stewart was standing beside a rock formation as big as a two-story house. He was looking for treasure. Stewart heard a noise and turned around to see a black bear run into the woods, a small arm dangling grotesquely from its mouth. He raised his camera to get a picture, but the bear was gone before he could snap the shutter.
–
Stewart put on his fleece and a pair of sandals and crawled out of his tent, still shaking. The moon was bright white and high in the sky and surrounding it were thousands of bright white stars shining sharply through the trees. He could see his breath.
He looked toward where he had hung the bear bag and noticed it wasn’t where it should be. Stewart switched on his headlamp and walked toward the area, stopping where bag lay on the ground. This time it had been opened and the contents were spilled onto the ground. Most of the food was still there, but the cheese and several granola bars were missing.
He trained his beam on the trail up ahead and noticed something shining on the ground. He walked to it, kneeled down and picked up the discarded foil of a Quaker Oats blueberry bar.
The North Fork Trail as Stewart hiked it begins on the north side of the river, crosses a few miles downstream and crosses again a few miles after that. Stewart was surprised to find the stream low in some places and nonexistent in others. While it would make river crossings easier, he worried that it might also make drinking water harder to find.
Stewart welcomed surprises, to a degree. He’d chosen the Cranberry Wilderness partly for the challenge of following trails without markings. Unlike more heavily used areas, Cranberry trails were not marked, except at each trailhead. That meant Stewart could not rely on the blue or white tree blazes typical of other areas in which he had hiked. Neither would there be any markers to distinguish trails from deer paths or to announce distance to the next trail. He would be on his own.
Around 9 a.m., the trail abruptly fell off into a crumbled river bank, and Stewart saw that a flood had washed it out. He backtracked and found he had missed a side path that rerouted the trail briefly away from the stream and into the woods, where a honeycomb of competing paths crisscrossed the forest floor. Preceding hikers had marked the correct route with cairns ─ stones stacked in little pyramids ─ to show others where to turn, and Stewart was proud to read these accurately, coming back eventually to the riverbed downstream and a concrete buttress that he guessed had once held a bridge. He crossed here and easily resumed the North Fork Trail along an old fire road.
Around 10:30, Stewart found himself at a liming plant on the river. He crossed out of the wilderness onto a paved road and passed a picnic area, where he saw the only people of the day. Stewart always made it a practice to be polite, but preferred not to stop and talk. It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be friendly; he just wanted to be alone. He exchanged waves with three teenagers cooking over a fire pit and walked another three-quarters of a mile on the pavement.
Stewart’s feet were starting to ache from the weight of his pack and the hard concrete, a signal that maybe he should stop for an early lunch. He sat down in the grass beside a culvert, legs crossed, eating crackers and cheese and letting the breeze cool his back. He absently dug in the dirt with a stick.
Stewart had camped and canoed most of his life, but he was well into middle age before taking his first backpacking trip. He was 46 and his daughter was 16 when the two of them drove the two days to Copper Harbor, Mich., and took a boat across Lake Superior to Isle Royale National Park.
For the next week, the pair startled moose along the trails and basked in the sounds of loons at dusk, wolves at night. Both were experienced in the outdoors, but both were novices when it came to rugged trail hiking and the improvisation needed to salvage minor plans gone awry. In the end, they not only survived that trip, they acquired a deep appreciation for the experience. Isle Royale became a turning point in Stewart’s life, and he made himself a vow never to let a year pass without going backpacking at least once. In the six years since, Stewart had kept that promise, usually hiking solo. It seemed that the more time he spent alone─ relying on his own wits, his own preparations – the more in charge of his life he felt.
Stewart always noticed that by the second or third day his mental attitude began to change in a profound way. On the first day, he would feel a little out of place, thoughts of home still crowding his mind. Gradually, he would begin to feel comfortable and at peace with his surroundings, settling into a pace of thought and body that erased the importance of tasks left undone. Finally, on the third day, he would dissolve completely into the forest as if he had always been there, had always belonged there, had no existence outside of it.
Stewart finished his crackers and cheese. He gobbled a handful of dried cherries for dessert and climbed over the large, white chunks of rip-rap lining the mouth of the culvert, then descended to the Cranberry River, filtered two bottles of water, climbed back to the top of the culvert and placed the bottles in the side pockets of his pack. He stowed his food and cinched everything down.
It occurred to him that he had seen neither a tent nor other trail hikers the entire morning. He wasn’t surprised, since tents are easily hidden off the trail and their occupants, if few enough, may never cross paths with others.
Stewart generally liked it this way, but today there were two people he badly wanted to meet.
Stewart quickly fetched the stick from his tent and went after them, hurrying over bushes and branches to reach the top of the hill and the trail. He trotted after the pair for 100 yards or so, hoping to gain ground on them. But everything melted into darkness in the direction they had run, and Stewart soon abandoned the search as futile.
It had begun to rain harder now. Stewart hurried back to his tent, left his boots under the vestibule, and crawled in. Wide awake, he tried to read his trail guide, a book he had already digested at home but which he brought along now to confirm landmarks and trail descriptions. He found himself going back over the same words again and again, none of them making sense. He thought about the woman and the child and wondered what in the hell they were doing alone in the woods and why they were poking around his campsite.
He turned off his headlamp and lay on his back until dawn.
–
It rained all night, water pelting Stewart’s tent in waves, carried along by the regular, rhythmic groans of the wind. By morning the rain had stopped, and by the time Stewart crawled out of his tent for good the sky had begun to clear and the air was chilly.
He walked toward the trail, toward the spot where he had first noticed the woman and child the night before. Except for a small patch of bare mud – perhaps where a shoe had lost traction and scraped away a layer of leaves ─ Stewart found no clues to explain what he had seen.
What was he supposed to find, anyway, he asked himself. A lost wallet with an identification card inside? A bracelet with a name engraved on it? A toy that might give an indication of the sex and age of the child? He didn’t know.
Stewart felt frustrated and suddenly hungry. He headed toward the bear bag to see how it had survived the night, pushing aside the dense underbrush and soaking his pants on wet rhododendron leaves.
He recognized immediately that the bag was not hanging where he’d left it. Shit, he thought, it was too low after all. He imagined his week’s worth of food inside some bear’s belly.
Then he noticed that the bag was on the ground, halfway between the two trees and still attached to the rope with a carabiner. As he approached, he could see that the bag was unopened and undamaged. Instead, one end of the rope had come undone from its tree trunk and the weight of the bag had pulled it to the ground.
Stewart wondered how such a thing could have happened. He always took great care to tie the rope securely. In fact, the rope had been too long, and he’d wrapped the ends around the two trees half a dozen times each. Stewart wanted to believe that the rainstorm had somehow loosened the rope, causing the bag to fall. But he knew that couldn’t be, that someone had deliberately untied it.
Stewart unclipped the bag and coiled up the rope in elongated loops, finally tying it up into a cylindrical shape to fit better into his pack. He made his way to the tent and set the bag on the ground.
He fished the Dragonfly from his pack and lit the burner, filled his cooking pot with water and made coffee. Then he made oatmeal, stirring in dry imitation butter, some powdered milk and a little brown sugar. It was too much oatmeal for one person, but Stewart ate all of it anyway, reluctant to throw food into the woods and knowing that he might welcome the extra calories later in the day when the trail got tough.
Stewart tried to put the woman and child out of his mind. He checked over his trail maps as he ate and tried to regain his enthusiasm for his second day in the wilderness. He looked forward to moving deeper into the forest, but knew full well that the first couple of days were always the hardest, the pack still laden with the week’s provisions and lungs not yet acclimated to the climbs and descents of mountain trails.
Then he finished his breakfast, combed the camp for debris and, finding none, hit the trail just after 7 a.m.
Night falls like this in the Cranberry Wilderness: Shafts of gold through slots in the trees grow lower, longer, leaving the high branches first, then the lower leaves and the trunks, lastly illuminating the ferns and mosses and lichens clinging to the lowest stones until darkness envelops the whole forest floor.
Birds, silent in the midday sun, begin calling to one another, locating partners and acquaintances before bedding down for the night. When full darkness finally comes, the singing stops, dropping a fragile stillness on the forest through which every cracking twig, every rustling leaf, every nearby insect wing can be heard.
Stewart pondered the darkness but he did not make a fire. He seldom made fires any more, except in cold weather. Here, the ground cover was too dry and the weather too warm to make a fire either safe or necessary. Instead, he sat quietly with his thoughts, listening for the breaking branches that signal a traveling bear.
Despite the many trips he had made to bear country over the years – Ontario, West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, Michigan’s Upper Peninsula– he had seen a bear only twice (though he had heard them passing through the night on many occasions). One morning in the Porcupine Mountains west of Marquette, Mich., he heard a rustling across the creek from his campsite, grabbed his camera and waited in front of his tent. When the cub poked his head out of the brush to get a drink along the Little Carp, there Stewart stood like an idiot, in plain view, giving the young bear an instant excuse to dash back into the woods before a picture could be taken.
Another time, on a wilderness canoe trip along the Timm River in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park, Stewart and his wife startled a bear drinking along the shore in the early morning mist. When the animal saw them, it ran up a hill into the woods, turned, and watched them continue up river.
Given the skittishness of most black bears and the scant likelihood of seeing one, Stewart was not exactly afraid of bear encounters. Yet this time of the day, in the dark, alone, he always became a little wary.
He considered the long walking stick on the ground beside him. It was a straight, substantial length of wood found years ago on an afternoon hike with the kids. Stewart no longer remembered exactly where he had found the stick and had no idea what kind of tree it came from. But it had become a trusted companion, the bark around its grip worn smooth and the business end bald from banging along stream bottoms and rocky trails. It served variously as a balancing tool, a support for tired legs and as his only form of protection – something he long ago decided he could wield if confronted by an aggressive animal or hostile hiker.
Stewart grabbed the stick and pulled it after him into the tent. He zipped the flap, stripped to his underwear and crawled into his sleeping bag. It was barely 8:30, but he was asleep in minutes.
–
Stewart found himself perched on a rocky outcrop with his pack still strapped to his back. He raised his camera to snap a shot of a vulture, which had landed at his feet and was pecking at his boots. As he took the picture, Stewart backed up and suddenly realized he had stepped over the edge of the cliff. He grabbed a rock and hung precariously with two hands, his pack pulling him down. He found something hard and stood on it with his right foot, bracing himself against the cliff wall with his thighs. Tightening his grip on the rock with his left hand, he gingerly began with the other to loosen the straps of his pack, trying to get it off. But he couldn’t do it, and he felt his support break away from under him and his hand come off the rock.
–
Stewart sat up in a sweat, his heart pounding. He noticed that it had begun to rain ever so slightly, the drops hitting the fabric of his rain fly like bits of sand against a beach umbrella. He remained there for a moment to gather himself, then turned on his headlamp, pulled on his pants and shirt and his boots. He unzipped the tent and crawled out into the night air.
It was cooler now, the heat of the day having dissipated with the front that was moving in. Stewart stood for a moment and scanned the darkness with his headlamp, then switched it off to let his eyes adjust.
As he listened for movement in the underbrush, he gradually became aware of something present about halfway between the trail and his campsite. He heard no sound, but he could make out two forms among the trees, each moving slowly and quietly toward the trail. He switched his lamp back on and directed the beam toward the objects just as they reached the trail and began to run.
It was a woman and a child.
God, it was hot.
Stewart had come to the Cranberry Wilderness as a respite from the summer sun and the ordinariness of mid-September for the shade of high pines and the ever-changing landscape of streams, ferns, boulders and deadfalls.
The North Fork Trail gave him plenty of shade that first afternoon, winding down from the trailhead in a people-free course along the northern branch of the Cranberry River. Yet the heat still found its way below the canopy, enveloping him in a sultry humidity that made his chest heave at every little climb.
Stewart had entered the trail at midday, and within an hour his clothes were drenched. After three hours he became convinced that he always packed too heavy. All the necessities, but too many extras. This always happened, but it was beyond him what to give up. His sleeping bag, in favor of a light blanket? His fleece, packed as insurance against falling temperatures in the Alleghenies? His toothbrush?
Everything weighed on his back this day and so, after filling his water bottles at the first stream crossing, Stewart walked about 200 yards and made camp.
The clearing was straight downhill from the trail and nestled in the only visible opening among the mountain rhododendrons. Here the forest floor was covered with needles and leaves, thickly padded yet crunchy. The tent went up in minutes as the late summer sun began to descend. Stewart felt parched again, and he drank deeply from his bottle, clear water filtered through a carbon filament. He sat and rested.
But West Virginia was bear country, and Stewart had business to take care of before he could rest for long. He arose on stiff legs to find a place to hang his food bag. This was never easy work, finding the right spot.
Stewart religiously followed the prevailing wisdom that a bear bag should hang at least 200 feet from camp between two trees at least 20 feet apart and from limbs high enough to raise the bag at least 10 feet from the ground.
Good luck finding just that.
An alternative was to find a long branch of a single tree, assuming the bag could be hung a long way from the trunk and far enough from both the branch and the ground that a standing or climbing bear couldn’t reach it.
Good luck finding that, too.
Stewart finally found a couple of trees that he hoped would fill the bill and began what always seemed to become a 45-minute ordeal of trial and error.
Here’s how it worked: Stones or heavy sticks were tied to one end of the rope before launching numerous errant throws, the rock usually coming out, until one final, triumphant toss over a high branch. Next, Stewart would tie one end of the rope securely around the trunk of that tree and clip his bag to a loop tied halfway to the rope’s opposite end, which ideally now lay on the ground below the branch. Then, taking the free end of the rope, Stewart would repeat the tossing process on another branch of another tree, pull the bag high up between the two trees and tie it off.
Often, Stewart had to give up hope of a perfect arrangement, instead hoisting his bag only eight or nine feet from the ground on the support of short or dead branches. He was luckier today, finding two good trees with solid limbs. When he was satisfied that rope and bag were situated as they should be, he lowered the bag to the ground and retrieved his dinner and his toothpaste, knowing he could pull the bag up again before going to bed.
Tonight it was foil-packed turkey and instant Stovetop dressing. Thank God for modern food technology, Stewart thought.
As he devoured his meal, a sudden stirring along the trail made him turn his head. He stood up for a better look. But he saw nothing.
When he had finished eating, Stewart cleaned his cooking pot with his fingers and clear water, which he scattered into the brush a good distance from his tent. Hungry animals made poor tent partners, and Stewart took no chances. He brushed his teeth, pulled the bag back up into the trees, and returned to his campsite.
The long, gloomy stretch between Nov. 1 and March 1 has always been hard on me.
At the front end, the leaves are gone, the days are getting progressively shorter and colder, and there’s not much to look forward to except more of the same. You get up in the dark and quit work in the dark, and then one morning your windshield is covered in ice. This year, even the excitement of college basketball season, which ordinarily keeps me going through much of the fall, collapsed quickly with the fortunes of my dismal Indiana Hoosiers.
By March 1 we start to see a little bit of sun, with maybe a day or two of warmer weather thrown in, and I can’t help but think spring is coming. But it’s all a tease, Mother Nature simply flashing us a little leg before pulling her skirt back down over her ankles and walking out of the room with a satisfied smirk. Her real agenda is six more weeks of winter. And you, Punxatawny Phil — get a real job.
With the horrible attitude about winter that I develop as it drags on and on, I suppose it makes no sense that I jumped headlong into it on Friday by hiking into Zaleski State Forest and throwing up a tent. But, in fact, it made perfect sense.
Cabin fever can make a sane man crazy, and never having been particularly sane in the first place, it got me out in the woods at my least favorite time of year. But here’s the sanity of it: The woods are my favorite place to be. It’s a little like the bumper sticker that says “a bad day fishing is better than a good day working.”
I put no real planning into my trip. I decided sometime on Thursday to take Friday afternoon off and head out. I didn’t even go to the grocery — just raided the pantry for whatever food would get me through the weekend — whatever would make two breakfasts, two suppers and two lunches.
Rocks like this are now covered with six inches of snow and sheets of hanging ice.
There were already four or five inches of snow on the ground when I arrived, and I hiked through a light but steady snowfall all the way to my chosen campsite six miles in.
I’d been to Zaleski several times before, but only once in mid-winter. That ill-fated New Year’s Day trip was as memorable for its muddy ground, bare trees and slate-gray skies as it was for the hard feelings it arose within my wife, who — remarkably — would have preferred to spend her New Year’s with me rather than alone. A valuable lesson learned.
It continued to snow Friday night, and it got cold enough inside my tent to turn my drinking water to slush. For the first time I can remember, I couldn’t get a fire started, even when cheating with a bit of charcoal starter I brought from home. But, for some reason, it really didn’t seem to matter. I simply crawled into the tent around 8 p.m. and read inside my sleeping bag until turning off my headlamp, drifting off to sleep with the persistent snow against my tent fly, hitting it like little pieces of sand.
The sky from my campsite in March 2009
In the morning I awoke to two fresh inches on the ground and two solidly-frozen boots. My first thought was how wonderful everything looked under that pristine covering of new snow. My second thought was how glad I was it had snowed and not rained. And the third thought was, how am I going to get my feet in the damn boots?
Once I did, it took only a walk down the trail and back to warm my toes, and then it became a question of what to do with my day: hike out and return home? Move on to a new campsite? Or stay put? I chose the latter.
And for all of Saturday, I did practically nothing. I wandered around a bit to see what other crazy people had ventured into the forest. There were a few, including a hardy soul who set up his camp with nothing but a tarp slung between two trees and a sleeping bag under it. But most of the day, I simply stayed in my tent and continued reading Jeff Shaara’s The Last Full Measure, grateful I was in a reasonably warm tent in the middle of nowhere and not at the business end of a Civil War cannon.
Saturday night, I finally got a fire going by sticking my backpacking stove under a mound of kindling and cranking the dial up as far as it would go. I learned that even the greenest, wettest tinder will catch fire if you do that. Another lesson learned.
Later, I was awakened by howling coyotes in the distance. They’re thick in Zaleski, and it dawned on me that they were probably digesting some of the wild turkeys I’d seen on my hike in.
I broke camp Sunday morning, an additional inch of snow on the ground, and followed a group that had camped near me, trying to stay back a respectful distance but catching up several time when they stopped to rest. The four-mile trail back to the parking area was stunning — every rock and small cave was strewn with snow, floor-to-ceiling ice sheets and leg-thick icicles formed from the ever-seeping water in winter. Unfortunately, my camera battery had no charge — maybe from the cold, but probably because I didn’t charge it before I left. You’ll just have to trust me, I guess.
As I climbed into the car, I realized I had forgotten about work, a bum refrigerator and broken garage door. Whatever gnawing, unpleasant thing had been in my system, I’d gotten it out. Most of all, and best of all, I’d lost my cabin fever. In fact, my home — with a warm bed and clean clothes — seemed the perfect place to wait for spring.
From this morning’s Columbus Dispatch comes the report of Ronald Trick of Powell, who was hiking alone in Kentucky’s Red River Gorge Sunday morning when he fell to his death.
I didn’t know Trick, but I know people like him. I’m one of them.
Red River Gorge is a favored destination in the eastern U.S. for backpacking and hiking. One of my sons took a trip there with his scout troop years ago, and I’ve had it on my radar ever since. Full of rocky trails, steep cliffs and spectacular views, it’s close enough to Columbus that I’m not sure why I haven’t yet made it there on one of my backpacking trips.
Cranberry Wilderness, October 2008
Instead, I’ve chosen places like Isle Royale National Park in the middle of Lake Superior, the Porcupine Mountains in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, Zaleski State Forest just down the road, and the Cranberry Wilderness in West Virginia.
Except for the trip to Isle Royale, which I took with my daughter when she was 16 — and a week-long wilderness canoe trip in Ontario’s Algonquin Provincial Park with my wife in 2006 — all of my trips, like Trick’s on Sunday, have been solo affairs.
There are three reasons for this. First, I don’t have a consistent hiking partner. Second, those who might like to go wouldn’t always appreciate the demanding trails that I’m drawn to. Third, and most important, I like to go alone.
Backpacking for me is a cleansing ritual, a physical and mental purging that is best done solo. The silent conversations I have with myself are private things facilitated by the isolation that comes only by walking deep into the forest with just my pack, my food and my wits, such as they are.
Of course, there have been times a partner would have been a good thing to have around.
The night I spent on Government Peak in the Porkies, when a storm rolled in and battered my tent all night with roaring winds and torrential rains — I could have used some company then.
The time I missed a trail and walked two miles before realizing my mistake and backtracking — it would have been nice to have had someone there to say “hey, dummy, you’re going the wrong way.”
But all in all, I treasure the solitude that only is possible without companions.
From the newspaper report, it seems that Trick was an experienced hiker. Authorities believe he was resting at the top of a cliff when he fell, since he left a hiking stick and a fanny pack behind. Did he slip on some loose gravel, or a patch of ice? Or did he just stand up and lose his balance?
What actually happened will probably remain a mystery, one that will surely bolster arguments by some folks that no one should venture out alone. To me, it’s simply a tragic reminder that extraordinary care must always be exercised in the backcountry, whether in a group or by yourself.
I hope to backpack solo for as long as I can be sure of my physical capabilities, though an occasional partner is welcome. In every instance, I will try to remember Ronald Trick — and how we can go so suddenly from quiet amazement at earth’s unlimited richness to staring directly into the eyes of God.
See also: Heading to Red River Gorge and Back from Red River Gorge.
