A Night in the Woods

This is how I have always liked to go. More with a sense of direction, knowing where I want to end up, than how I will get there. But in a new country, I wonder, is this the right way?

Photo by Kirk Thornton on Unsplash

I am drifting in and out of sleep. Whippoorwills fill the September night air with their eerie call in the forest below. The tree crickets seem to be getting louder. I don’t know why there are frogs so far from water but they too add their raucous call to the silent darkness. My sleeping pad has definitely deflated but I can’t summon the energy to get up and fix it. Also, I am a little bit afraid. Not frightened exactly. Just uncertain of my surroundings. I have been like this most of the night, falling in and out of a waking sleep.

There is a crash in the undergrowth. Branches crack and leaves crunch. There is something big out there beyond the shelter. I turn on my head torch, alert and fully awake now. For minutes I sit upright waiting, hardly breathing. But nothing comes charging out of the laurels. Maybe it is a widowmaker, the name hikers give to broken, rotten or lightning struck branches that hang precariously and suddenly fall from damaged trees. It is always worth checking before you pitch a tent.

This is Western Mountain Shelter where I have settled down for the night, perched over the valley from Bear Mountain. This is my first overnight outdoors in America. I am spending a few days exploring the wilderness. The experience is different in so many ways from hiking long distances in Europe, not least because in the Pyrenees and the Alps there are always huts with food and warmth at night.

Another big difference. Here there are bears. They are shy creatures, but can’t resist the temptations of human food. Arriving after a long day’s walk, I checked the app used by Appalachian Trail thru-hikers. Bears have been recorded close by. And recently. Someone also notes that they resisted a rattlesnake trying to snuggle into their sleeping bag. Unusually for me, I find myself getting into a slight panic. It stirs a sense of my aloneness out here. What would I actually do? I wonder if I have been reckless.

So I talk myself down. It is only natural to be nervous the first time round. Bear sightings are rare. I will use a cable far away from the shelter to hang my supplies out of reach. When it comes to deadly snakes, I am not sure I am ready for that nocturnal encounter. Would I be better in my tent? But the view from the open shelter is spectacular.

I continue in this state of half sleep. It is a long stretch. You might think that the first rays of dawn would have had me springing into action. But just the knowledge that the night stalking predators are no longer a threat, sends me finally into a deep sleep. When I wake, the sun is up and a woodpecker is busy in the tree above me. A bowl of hot oats and steaming black tea served under the trees revives my enthusiasm as I plot the day’s route before packing up my belongings and set off.

The terrain is very different from what I am used to. The state park is part of a green tunnel, where dense trees create a continuous overhead canopy, so that I walk for most of the day without getting a sense of the distance I am covering. It is liberating and this is how I have always liked to go, with a sense of direction, knowing where I want to end up, but not always how I will get there. It is also disorienting. In unfamiliar terrain, I wonder, is this the right way?

Then just as quickly this mood breaks when the endlessly undulating pathway breaks out on to the hot summit and there is a rush of free air in my lungs. Here are incredible vistas of rolling deciduous forest landscape in all directions. Then when the trail plunges down deep into mossy, prehistoric glades, I am grateful for the cool, damp air again. Here the light is dappled–I feel imbued with a sense of the sublime. These are places where the ancestors sleep. The path goes on for hours. I decide to change route, walking longer into the afternoon to reach a shelter next to a lake.

When I arrive, there is ample fuel to collect from the surrounding woodland as the sun drops and the chill of night comes in. It is a good feeling to drop my heavy pack and allow real physical tiredness to flow over me. I sit before the fire, contemplating the bliss of walking alone and free in the wilderness. Nan Shepherd–a famous solitary walker–comes to mind. She talks about walking all day and seeing no-one: “Man might be a thousand miles away.” Solitude as she describes it in her book The Living Mountain–a book which should be on every serious walker’s shelf–is a process of transcendence. In Scotland when I walk, I feel the land so intimately, my body almost becomes part of my surroundings. But this is an unfamiliar environment, where the birdsong rings differently in the air, where forests and creeks–though they look the same–unfold with newness. It is not an unpleasant feeling. Just one that demands a higher state of focus. I am not yet attuned to its call. As I clamber into my sleeping bag, sleep comes with a strong force.

Just being immersed in the woods without the distractions of conversation and free to choose my own direction is replenishing. My efforts are not focused towards an end point but observing the way there. It has always been my instinct, learning to listen to the mountain, as Shepherd writes. For me the point has never been about ascending the greatest heights. But about the experience itself. Even if the destination changes, the walk is never lost. And how lucky to discover a new pleasure–walking quietly with vigour by day and sleeping under the stars by night.