Should I Be Scared?

A little over a week ago, I ventured alone to a backcountry campsite in the Yellowwood State Forest near Bloomington, IN…a formerly maintained site at the end of the Tecumseh Trail, the state’s second longest hiking trail.  I say “formerly” because, well, it’s not anymore.  In 2011 (I think) a tornado swept through the area, downing trees by the hundreds and essentially burying the site.  Too, the end of that trail is rarely hiked anymore, except by completists, since the layout of the trail necessitates that, to hike that last two miles, you essentially need to hike in then right back out, since the end is, well, a campsite in the middle of nowhere.

I took my nephew, Eric, here for his first backpacking trip when he was 10, in August of 2012.  Though we were heading in at night, I reassured him: “The trail is easy.  It’s only two miles.  There’s a stream with plenty of water.  The trail is wide and easy to follow, even in the dark.”  Unfortunately, however, the tornado had also buried large swatches of the trail, so what should have been a 30-minute easy jaunt turned into a nightmare of losing the path repeatedly, climbing over hundreds of downed trees with scratchy arms, and even stepping on a nest of hornets.  (Author’s note: I ran away heroically as soon as one of them stung me on the arm; I pretty much just figured Eric would follow.  He still brings this perceived abandonment up when listing his reasons as to why he doesn’t want to go backpacking anymore.)

Consequently, we arrived at the site very late.  Immediately, we realized two things: one, the stream that the map said was a good source of water year-round was bone dry (which would mean searching somewhere for water early the next day) and, two, I couldn’t find the site.  Eventually, we found some of it, and managed to squeeze our tent onto a relatively flat place surrounded by dead limbs and trunks.  Thankfully, the fire ring was exposed, so we had a few fires over the next three days.

That site was a place we (my wife, Patricia, and I) had visited regularly for years.  After that trip with my nephew, though, we began choosing to hike elsewhere – not out of aversion, entirely, but because we were constantly discovering other trails, other sites, other destinations and, well, because the site was not what it once was…a convenient and easy weekend getaway.

We didn’t return again until the very late summer of 2018.  As we hiked in (at night of course) we marveled at how long it had been since we had been there.  We asked ourselves why we hadn’t come in so long, seemingly hadn’t thought of it in so long.

When we got to the site that night, we couldn’t even find the remnants of it.  We moved through head-high weeds and rotten downed trees by the lights of our headlamps, saying things like, “It has to be around here.” And, “It couldn’t have just vanished!”  We were just about to give up and look for a flat space elsewhere, when I tripped over something.  Completely hidden by weeds perhaps five feet high was the fire ring.  We realized that no one had been here in years, maybe since Eric and I had come last.  Pulling the weeds meticulously, we cleared out the site, feeling sad and a little lonely…after all, this site used to be a destination for people…there had even been a log book, well filled out, hidden in a coffee can, with supplies people had left.  Now we saw it had been completely forgotten.

After getting the tent set up, our hammocks strung, our solar-powered lantern lit, and a fire going, some of this loneliness fled, but only somewhat.

The site is adjacent a “badly degraded old logging road” that leads up a hillside to a ridge and hiking, biking, and horse trails in the Yellowwood, Hoosier National Forest, and Brown County State Park.  That “road” was supposed to have been the first link in a much longer trail, the Pioneer Trail, which would connect the Tecumseh (42 miles) with the distant Knobstone Trail (55 miles and Indiana’s longest) and make a 150-mile path.  However, I saw that the “road” was not even the ghost of a path anymore; had I not known where it had been, I would’ve had no clue it even existed.  As it was, I had to struggle, mightily, through perhaps a hundred feet of thorn bushes before it opened up a little and I could move at all.  Apparently, the idea for the Pioneer Trail had been long abandoned.  (A memorial bench, just before the end of the Tecumseh, seemed to confirm this.  The woman whose dream it had been to combine the two trails had passed on in 2017…and, evidently, her dream had been put on hold.)

All this is to say that this spot, though beautiful, though ringed with tall pines and surrounded by a (somewhat) reliable stream, is very lonely, and very remote.

Patricia and I vowed to come more and more often.  To that end, I came again, by myself, a couple weeks later.  Fall was in full cry then, and I had aspirations of hiking to the Brown County campground (which I had done once before), taking a hot shower, and seeing all the sites decorated for Halloween.  I never found the trail there, but rather hiked for miles and miles out to a distant gravel road.  When I arrived at the end of the trail, the sun was going down, the night was cold, the wind was howling and moaning, and I was sad.  Hiking back maybe seven miles by moonlight, alone, with the sere winds of October blowing, headed to a lonely remote campsite (and hoping I would recognize where the decayed road led off the trail and not lose my way) was, well, not particularly enjoyable. 

Once I was back at the site, nursing my thorn scratches and giving thanks I had not lost my way, I felt better, accomplished.  I cooked dinner and worked to get a fire going.  As I was eating and nursing the blaze, however, a question suddenly arose:

Should I be scared? 

A quick calculation put my distance from the nearest person (and that a house on a lonely road by the lonely parking area) at more than two miles in all directions, much more in some.  I was, thus, alone in an area of at least ten square miles, and probably quite a bit more.  No one would be able to hear me scream…nor even blow my whistle.

Even with Patricia there, or my nephew, the place could be lonely.  (Eric admitted later that he was a little shaken during the dark hours on that trip.) 

I wasn’t scared, but wondered why – as well as how many people would be in my situation. 

Patricia and I came back in the spring, and made finding the trail to Brown County’s campground a priority.  The first day we hiked almost twenty miles, but never found it (though we did find a trail to a beautiful reservoir) .  The trail was mucky and gloopy throughout, and, when we arrived back at our site, we felt its isolation and inconvenience fully.  The next day, we did find the way to the campground, and had hot showers, but, even with a pal, heading into the woods by bone-colored moonlight for a remote six mile hike, is enough to make one feel rather desolate.

I returned, alone again, in the fall, vowing to visit Brown County earlier in the day so as not to have to hike back in the lonely dark.  And I did.  But then I decided to hike a few trails in the state park and, well, it became a twenty-mile day.  Hello darkness my old friend.  Again, I wasn’t scared; I was too tired to feel anything.

Flash to this weekend, when I returned again to the place Patricia and I call “Our secret place of thunder” for some reason.

I got to the parking area (that in itself is a remote, lonely spot) at twilight, hoisted my pack, and hiked up into the hills on the last of the Tecumseh Trail.  I chatted with a few pals via text on the ridges where I had reception, snapped a few pics, and then, as it got dark and the trail narrowed, focused on following my headlamp.  On one high, lonesome ridge, a whippoorwill sang to me.

I arrived at the site, alone, in the full dark, and immediately began making camp.

All was well, even though the night had grown chilly and I discovered I had left one of my four tent poles along the Adventure Trail (Indiana’s third-longest) the last time we had hiked, so my tent looked a bit like a half-smashed insect.  I made a fire and listened to the sounds of owls hooting back and forth.  I ate a nice dinner, lay in my hammock looking up at the pines and the stars, and then headed into the tent around midnight.

Once inside, I turned on my Kindle and began reading from a book of ghost stories, called “Echoes: The Saga Anthology of Ghost Stories” compiled by Ellen Datlow.  The one I was reading, “About the O’dells” by Pat Cadigan, was a truly scary piece, about an abusive husband who brutally murders his wife in plain view of a whole neighborhood.  Ten years later, he comes back, out on parole, and so does his wife and, spoiler alert, she is not happy.  Also, spoiler alert, she is creepy.

Anyway, as I was reading, listening to the sound of the gurgling stream (it was not dry this time) in the distance, I paused, thinking how much the water sounded like voices whispering.  And the question occurred to me, again: “Should I be scared?”  Or, more accurately, “shouldn’t I?” 

Again, I was not scared.  Miles from the nearest person, on a dark, quiet night, with only a hobbled tent between me and whatever walked abroad…I was not.

            I finished the story and then lay down and slept like there was no tomorrow…even though I had not brought a mattress so as to have room for my bigger winter sleeping bag, and realized, fully, how different sleeping on the ground is at 42 than at 22 – or even 35. 

            I was a little scared I might need a new spine in the morning.

            The fact of the matter is, I am almost never scared (at least illogically) when I am backpacking alone.  I did feel a bit uneasy when hiking, in November 2016, a very, very remote part of the River to River Trail in rural southern Illinois.  It got dark at just after 4:30 which meant I had to do a lot of headlamp hiking.  At one point, a dog began scream-barking at me.  I never saw him, but this continued for more than an hour, and I realized that, wherever he was, he was following, or at least paralleling me.  Then, just as he had given up and gone home, a chorus of many, many coyotes began…and they were close.  If you’ve never heard a chorus of coyotes, know that it is beautiful and terrifying and not what you might expect.  To me, it sounded like old women screaming, wolves howling, and something akin to electronic bleeps and bloops, an almost liquid sound, rising and falling within a susurrus like a moaning wind.

            After setting up my tiny pup tent, I used my limited signal to look up how many people had been killed by coyotes.  Turns out, it was one adult, ever, but I had no signal and wasn’t able to ascertain that fact…so lay down listening to their strange and beautiful threnody, wondering if they could, if so inclined, get me in my tent.  The answer I came up with: Of course.  Without even breaking stride.

            So, yeah, that time I was a bit freaked.  But I don’t think that was illogical.  And generally I am not.

            This was not always the case, at all.

            The first time I went solo backpacking was quite by accident, in August of 1999.  I was on a solo trip to Saskatchewan, and decided, looking over my Rand-McNally Road Atlas, I would spend the first night of the trip at Lake Maria State Park near St. Cloud, Minnesota.

            I arrived there at perhaps eight p.m., feeling fine.  I followed the signs to the “campground”, wondering why there were no lights, anywhere; when I arrived, I saw that all sites were “Hike In Only” and that the closest were more than a mile away.

            There were no other parks nearby, no other options, so I reluctantly began packing things for the night into my backpack.

            I spent the next ten hours in a state of literal terror.  Literal, abject terror.

            It was a windy night, and the forest was filled with sounds.  Hiking in, I felt like Ichabod Crane making his way home from Katrina’s party, darting at shadows and expecting the Headless Horseman (or something equally awful) to appear at any moment.  I arrived at an open site, made camp, cooked dinner (which I ate quickly), and then hurried into the tent, where I covered my head with my pillow and lay shivering, unsleeping, until perhaps two, when the wind died.  Then I did doze, but thinly, and every single noise awakened me in a panic.  Never have I been so glad to see the first light of dawn.

            The next time I backpacked alone was almost six years later, in the Spring of 2005, at Chicot State Park in Louisiana.  I was recovering from a recent breakup and had decided that, as I had been spending almost all my time either at work or with friends, I would seek out solitude, rediscover the joys of traveling alone. 

Again consulting with my friends Rand and McNally, I decided I’d camp at Chicot for three nights, head to the Gulf for a night, and then stop in (or near) New Orleans for a few more.

            I arrived at Chicot on a Saturday evening.  The forecast called for some seriously heavy storms, so when I saw a sign that said “Cabins for Rent” I stopped in, thinking I would spend the night inside and then camp the following days.

            There was a cabin available but it wouldn’t be ready for a few hours, so I decided I’d head into the park and hike a little before dark. 

            On the way in, I picked up a map, and saw there was backcountry camping…and, immediately, a thrilling, terrifying, wonderful idea came to me: Tomorrow, I would go backpacking.  I would not merely seek out solitude – I would go right into the heart of it.

            That night, writing and listening to storm after storm parading overhead, I wondered if I’d be as scared as I had been the last time I’d gone in alone.  After all, even with friends, I sometimes got a little nervous with the sheer solitude and isolation of backpacking.  But I felt resolute.  I knew I would do it.

            The next morning, I went to a local grocery store, bought backpacking food, packed up, and headed out on the trail – in daylight this time - feeling apprehensive, but also hopeful and adventurous.

            I hiked in only a few miles and chose a campsite right on the edge of a bayou.  I made camp and, as it was still early afternoon, set out on a lengthy dayhike. 

Heading back to the campsite near twilight, I said a little prayer to whomever – or whatever – might be listening, something to the effect of, “I will be staying in your woods tonight, and I hope you know that I mean you no harm.”

            Then I cooked dinner, got a roaring fire going, and settled in. 

That night was wonderful.  I felt very safe, very protected, very at ease the entire time. 

And, other than an owl hooting loudly in a tree just above me, I had no real scares to speak of.

The next night was much the same.  In fact, I felt even more comfortable out by myself, even though I might have had a genuine supernatural experience.

            In the middle of the night – I had no clock but I awoke to moonlight and the sense that it was very late, perhaps three or so – I heard, through the windless silence, what sounded like someone playing a drum across the bayou.  It went on and on – I thought that it might be an animal, a beaver perhaps, but the beat was too steady and it never changed, and I wondered what could be making the noise.  Would a human pound such an undeviating rhythm?  It would stop for maybe ten minutes or so and then start up again with the same rhythm.  And I was at least three miles from the nearest person, even if someone was in one of the other sites up the trail (which I found upon returning to the park office that there hadn’t been) and though it was distant, it didn’t sound as though it was coming from three miles away.

            I slept and awoke to it several times in darkness. 

            And I was not scared.

*

            When I was a child, I had many, many supernatural experiences (think The Sixth Sense).  Of course my memory may well be unreliable, but I recall seeing ghosts constantly, especially after nightmares (I called some of these “Green Grovers” because they looked like the muppet from Sesame Street only glowing phosphorescent green, and much more sinister and threatening).  I also saw old people peering into my bedroom door at me, an old lady floating over my bed, many, many shadows moving that shouldn’t have been.  I often heard footsteps echoing in the basement late at night (and found out later that my Great Grandfather, an insomniac, had often paced down there when he had been alive).  Camping in the yard, I’d sometimes hear what sounded like a man dragging his feet through the leaves; my grandmother told me that a man she used to know, who was “not quite right in the head,” had often walked through the yard like that.  “He died about thirty years ago,” she told me.

During the early years of my life, I lived in such a state of perpetual dread, I was scared to even leave the living room at night.

           

            So how in the damn hell am I able to not only spend the night alone in 16 square mile radii, but read – and enjoy the hell out of – scary stories while I am doing so?

            My friend Michael posited the same question to me one night at a party.  I had talked, over several different conversations, about seeing ghosts as a kid, about getting ideas for writing ghostly stories, and about my recent trip hiking the Knobstone solo, which had included a good deal of lonely night hiking.

            He had been lying back in his chair when suddenly he sat bolt upright.  “How, how can you hike alone like that…with a mind that can go to those dark places?  I can’t even imagine.  I am scared sitting here at this party.”

            The answer, I think, is that I am able to compartmentalize. 

            Over time, thankfully, I stopped seeing ghosts.  And, as I got older, I began to be fascinated with scary stuff, movies and stories and novels.  When I became a writer, I started visiting these realms as well, quite often actually.  Some of my stories really scared me (especially one about an outbreak of zombies in the Sahara Desert’s Empty Quarter…people can move much faster than them, but they don’t ever stop to rest.  Eeep!*) but I loved these stories, loved writing them, and count them amongst my favorites.

I found I could watch a truly scary movie, Session 9 or A Tale of Two Sisters, and then check my Facebook and go to bed.  I could write a story about a bloated, reeking dead thing scuffling into a remote oasis campsite in the Sahara – and then watch the end of the Cubs’ game.

            Because of compartmentalization.  My theory is that supernatural things scared me so much as I child, I subconsciously worked to surmount this fear, to conquer it, to shut it out.  (Maybe this is why I haven’t seen a ghost since I was a Sophomore at Purdue, when a cat (who certainly was not there) jumped on my bed one night.)  And, in doing so, I was able to make this darkness manageable, controllable – and even enjoyable.

            (The same thing happened with tornados.  I used to be terrified of even the idea of a twister.  Now, every time there is a tornado watch, I am usually outside, shaking my fist at the sky and doing my best Lieutenant Dan: “You call this a storm?!?)

            I can visit the shadowlands, but I don’t have to live there anymore.  And it’s fun seeing those ominous mountains reduced to navigable hills…and strolling amongst them.

            Last Saturday, I hiked up the badly degraded old road to a horse and hiking trail through the Hoosier National Forest and then to a remote road that led to a stream.  Spring was burgeoning everywhere, everything was green and beautiful.

            On the way back, it began to rain, heavily.  I had a hat and poncho with me, and waterproof socks, and though I worried a bit about whether my wounded tent would stay dry, all was well.  I hiked about nine miles, all told, returning to the site about 3 in the afternoon.  The rain stopped but everything was utterly drenched.  I ate lunch and then, feeling drowsy, headed into the tent.  The afternoon was very gray, cool, and quiet.  I lay for hours, in and out of a doze, only dimly aware that the light outside was waning.

            At dusk, I again opened my Kindle, and read two more stories, “A Hinterlands Haunting” by Richard Kadrey and “The Number of Things You Remember” by M. L. Siemienowicz.  Both were scary, but the latter is one of the creepiest things I’ve ever read.  It was about a man deathly afraid of trains who had to take an overnight train from Paris to Venice…what followed was either a ghost-aided and complete mental breakdown, or a literal descent into hell.

            When I finished, it was full dark, and very cold.  I bundled up, headed out, and made dinner.  I longed for a fire but everything, even the very air itself, was saturated.  I ate hot soup in the cold and then lay in my hammock in the dark, looking up at the starless sky and looming pines above.

            A small wind picked up on the hillside, which I at first mistook for people talking loudly, off at a great distance.

            When I realized it was just the wind, and that there were no voices, and that there was no one anywhere near (anyone living anyway) who had a voice, a lonely little chill went through me.

            Then I stood up, brushed my teeth, and went in to bed.

April 28-May 1, 2020

Hyde Park, Chicago, IL

* The story about zombies in the Sahara is called “Whirled Beyond the Circuit of the Shuddering Bear.”  It is scary.  If you want to read it, let me know, and I will send it along.