Trail Tales: Animal Encounters

A rainy day in Grayson Highlands; Virginia, Appalachian Trail, 2017

Some of my funniest stories from the trail are born from rather harrowing experiences—being woken up at two in the morning by a disgruntled porcupine, grabbing a mouse midair, in the dark, in my tent of all places—none of it was humorous then, but the circumstances were so outrageous that in hindsight I can’t help but remember these stories fondly and laugh during their retellings. 

Dear reader, while you process whether or not it is appropriate (or mature) to laugh at poop jokes and my own personal suffering, I encourage you to relish in the fact that you are warm and dry, possibly clutching a steaming cup of coffee or mug of tea—not covered in someone else’s fecal matter or attempting to wrest it from the jowls of your resistant (and ultimately victorious) dog.

You should know, I regret nothing and neither does my dog.

The mouse might, though.

Great Smoky Mountain National Park; Appalachian Trail, 2017

Needle Beavers and Battle Pigs (Appalachian Trail, 2017)

Screen-grab from a mortifying video I recorded when I thought I was going to die; Vermont, Appalachian Trail, 2017

I fell asleep eating dinner in my tent—bad start to any story, but to be fair, I was bone tired.

I had made it within 8 miles of the northern border of Vermont after hiking several consecutive 20+ mile days, when I realized I couldn’t make it a step further. In my final mile of trudging, my tired feet were blessed with a spongy cushion of pine needles too irresistibly soft to pass up and I decided to camp alone, right there. Camping alone was not an unusual choice for me, and I did walk about 100 yards off trail, out of sight from any passersby. The area I chose to pitch my tent was surrounded by white pines that looked suspiciously lifeless, but there wasn’t a whisper of a breeze and my exhaustion won out over my desire to not get crushed by a dead tree. 

I made myself a pot of macaroni and cheese around 6PM and laid back in my tent to eat horizontally, careful not to spill a drop. At some point I must have drifted off, spoon in hand, because the next time I opened my eyes it was dark. I quickly packed my food into my food bag, donned my headlamp, and went to find a branch for an optimal bear hang. After a thorough assessment of the surrounding limbs, I realized every branch was dead and completely unable to support the 5lbs of food left in my bag. 

With an audible sigh, I gave up and walked back to my tent. I left the bag in my vestibule and said a silent prayer to the trail gods that they might let me make it through the night without any large and hairy visitors. 

Turns out my appeal didn’t quite cover all the bases.  

I laid back down in my tent, burrowing deeply into my sleeping bag and quickly fell asleep. 

Before I knew it, something was whimpering pitifully near my right ear, but I could not find the source of the disturbance in my dreams—which sounded like the keening of a puppy—my eyes flew open. 

Puppy? 

View from the Quarter Dome at sunset; Vermont, Appalachian Trail, 2017

Through my haze of sleep, I became oriented to the fact that I was in my tent, in a forest, in north eastern Vermont and there definitely wasn’t a puppy crying inches from my face. But something was.  

Bear!  My sleep-fogged brain, suddenly on high alert.  

I began barking like a dog, a rabid one, and yelling, while flinging my arms wildly into the sides of my tent. At some point amid the chaos that was unfolding within the four walls of my REI Quarter Dome, I flicked my headlamp on and began waving that about too. Now, not only was my tent barking and gyrating in the dark of the night, it was also strobing like some kind of mad disco tech.

Anything breathing within a quarter mile of my hysterical display would surely have fled; regardless, I paused in my flailing to record a video of my last words—you know, incase pieces of my mangled body were found strewn about in the pine needles at a much later date—yes, I still have the recording, no, I will not share it. 

I stopped talking and panicking long enough to hear something scramble up the tree beside my tent and then onto the branch above me; pieces of bark began raining down on my shelter and a shiver went down my spine. 

I strained my ears to garner more information, but the night remained painfully silent aside from the sound of hungry, scraping claws.

All I could imagine was that I had treed a bear, and the only plausible solution for my current predicament was to pack up my tent—it was now 3AM—and walk like my life depended on it for the border of New Hampshire and the town of Dartmouth. 

I mustered up every ounce of courage I had as bark chips and small twigs continued to shower my small shelter, and began frantically stuffing everything from my tent, into my pack. When there was nothing left to stuff, I knew I had to emerge into the night and expose myself to a potential arial attack.

One deep breath and I dove out of my vestibule; refusing to look above me I ripped my tent stakes out of the ground and peeled the rainfly off, exposing a set of collapsible tent poles. I had the whole ordeal torn down within 60 seconds and jammed into my pack; I flung the 75L Osprey onto my shoulders and took off at a run, bumping and slamming my way down the trail like some sort of discombobulated yard-sale waiting to happen.  

The uphill got to me quickly. I doubled over, gasping for air, caught in the grips of sudden onset irritability (a real condition related to “hanger”, not to be confused with “hiker hunger”—though if left unaddressed hiker hunger may develop into SOI and/or hangryness). My blood sugar nosedive was not surprising. I subsisted on a diet of primarily tuna packets, ramen, and snickers bars dipped in Nutella, and had become quite the carb addict. I felt like I was dying. Like every cell in my body was throwing a temper tantrum. 

I screamed angrily into the humid dark, daring whatever animal had woken me from sound sleep to show itself. When no ominous figure materialized from the night, I snatched a Cliff bar out of my hip belt pocket and continued walking at a more reasonable pace while I viciously stuffed the gooed-together, protein powder-coated granola into my mouth (we all know it’s an honest assessment). 

In lieu of a more relevant picture, here I am hanging a bear bag, which apparently was enough of a spectacle that someone bothered to take a photograph; New Hampshire, Appalachian Trail, 2017

Around 6AM the stars vanished, and the sky began to lighten ever so slightly. Tension evaporated from me with every step. I relaxed into the pre-dawn quiet. 

My eyes wandered the indigo forest cloaked in its varying shades of abstract shadow until I sensed movement from the corner of my eye.

I jerked my head around. Dozens of silver-backed dinosaurs were moving in silent unison up the grey trunks of the pines. 

My sight played tricks on me; I was unable to pick out true colors or textures in the faint morning light, which melted the vegetation into one ambiguous and depthless miasma of grey.

The hoary, spine riddled bodies were the size of large house cats, but I couldn’t make sense of them. I was so baffled that I stopped dead in my tracks to watch the upwards migration taking place all around me. 

I didn’t utter a sound as understanding washed over me. 

My midnight visitor hadn’t been a bear. The whining I’d heard—all the bark raining down on my tent—I had been called on by a porcupine, albeit a grumpy, territorial one. 

A burst of laughter escaped me, the night’s festivities seeming so silly now.

I don’t know how long I stood there watching hoards of battle pigs and needle beavers hump and rasp their way up the rough pine bark—no doubt to get away from me (word travels fast on the Appalachian Trail). But eventually the sun rose and I tackled the remainder of my walk to Dartmouth with renewed enthusiasm, already fantasizing about omelets and bacon.

7:00AM border crossing VT/NH; Appalachian Trail, 2017

THE omelet; Dartmouth, NH, Appalachian Trail, 2017

I thought I’d suffered the worst of it, at this point in my hike, I thought my way to Katahdin had been paved smooth by prior suffering—this was, of course, false. Only two days later I began to show the first symptoms of Giardia which eventually landed me in a hospital near Lincoln, NH. But that’s a story for another time…

Vermont, Appalachian Trail, 2017

One Frozen Fiasco (Appalachian Trail, 2017)

Jill frolicking in the Unicoi Mountains; Tennessee, Appalachian Trail, 2017

By the time Jill and I departed from Springer Mountain together on March 6th, 2017, we had known each other for 6 months. And we didn’t know much about each other besides the fact that she would dive over a cliff to eat a bite of some wild varietal and I would dive after her if only to pluck it from her maw. As a biproduct of our rivalry, she developed stealth skills and I honed a keener eye. 

Jill. Is a poop-eater. She pursues all varieties of poop with equal vigor, save for her own.  And, in case you hadn’t gathered, Jill is a dog. 

We were barely more than 100 miles into our hike and had reached the (then) hard-won summit of Standing Indian Mountain in North Carolina, in a snowstorm. Every branch was perfectly frosted and the trail was covered in a fresh foot of snow. Papa Bear, Turtle, Mountain Goat, Jill (who had been dubbed Mountain Police and not for good reasons), and I peered out from beyond the icy reaches of our own personal snow globe, into an adjacent and relatively green valley. We were all excited about the progress we had made that day despite conditions, and I allowed my attention to wander away from Jill momentarily. 

Summit of Standing Indian Mountain before things got out out of hand, North Carolina, Appalachian Trail, 2017

And that’s all it takes, people. One minute. 

All of a sudden, I heard Mountain Goat make a strangled noise—one of complete and utter horrification—and I knew. 

“Jill NO!” I shouted and I turned just in time to see her mouth full with something frozen solid and brown, with the tell-tale furls of soiled TP poking out at all angles. 

“Dear God,” Was all Turtle said. It was all anyone could say. 

Jill had finally dared pick up a poop I doubted my will to fight her for. She stood there proud as punch with the awful prize locked firmly in her jowls, nose ducked, the white half-moons of her eyes showing as she craned her vision to get a good look at my expression of defeat.

Inside myself a violent war was being waged, and though I desperately wanted to look the other way and pretend like my dog didn’t have a giant, frozen, human turd hanging out of her mouth, I just couldn’t in good conscience let her swallow.

I went in.

I straddled her, trapping her skinny, brindle body between my legs before she realized her mistake in assuming I wouldn’t fight her on this. I locked my hands around her face, careful to avoid the poop, and attempted to wrench her jaws open.

No one said anything as the ultimate battle of wills unfolded atop that snow covered peak.

Typically my method of extraction involved a lot of muzzle shaking, intermittent prying, and plenty of unnecessary yelling. But this particular situation seemed to require surgical level precision, something I did not possess. The harder I worked to prize open her jaws, the quicker she gulped.

It was a horrific spectacle; Jill looked something like a python swallowing an ostrich egg, while I featured as an angry, poop smeared snake charmer, fighting a battle I’d long since lost and had no business fighting in the first place. I could have just let it go, but no, the opportunity cost was too great; I was already invested, I was already covered in someone else’s poop, to give up now would mean it was all for nothing.

In the end, it was—all for nothing, that is—and I still let her sleep with me in the tent that night. 

There is a lesson buried in all the mayhem, though—don’t poop at view points! And if you absolutely must, then bury it for Pete’s sake, and if not for Pete, then do it for me.

A very tuckered out Miss Jill (Georgia, Appalachian Trail, 2017)

Cutest poop-eater there ever was (Georgia, Appalachian Trail, 2017)

A more distinguished Jill than the one described; Georgia, Appalachian Trail, 2017

The Breach (Appalachian Trail, 2018)

Even mice have dreams; Appalachian Trail, 2018

It was pitch dark in the White Mountains of New Hampshire; the air felt like a damp blanket draped across my exposed body, close and hot. I laid on top of my sleeping bag in an attempt to stay cool; I was just drifting back to sleep having been woken only moments before by a soft scratching noise against the outside of the tent.

Chit, chit, chit—came the noise again, this time at the foot of the tent. 

I sat up quickly and blinked my eyes open against the dark, straining my ears to pinpoint the exact location of the sound. I thought about waking my tent mate, So Hum, but decided against it. I doubted the culprit was actually in the tent and I was confident I could scare it away by shaking the frame. 

Chit, chit, chit.

I swung my arm with precision at the source of the scratching, planning to bang on the mesh lining to scare away the would-be intruder, instead, my open palm connected with something soft, small, and furry. 

Mt. Washington Ridge; Appalachian Trail, 2018

“Ohmygosh,” I gasped, loud enough to wake surrounding tents. “It’s a mouse! There’s a mouse in the tent!” 

I opened my hand reflexively and the tiny, squirming body vanished across my fingertips. 

I snatched up my headlamp and shone it about frantically—it was then I noticed the breach—a hole in the mesh wall of the tent down near my feet. The hungry visitor was no where to be seen, though. I felt totally violated while also feeling sick with regret for possibly giving a mouse a heart attack. I couldn’t fathom how terrifying it would be to get snatched mid munch by a giant hand in the dark. 

My headlamp beam then alighted on a stray PopTart wrapper tucked into the corner pocket of the tent, irresistible bait for a rodent on the hunt for snacks, also completely my fault. 

The new, quarter-sized hole was one of many adorning the bug netting of our three-person Mountain Hardwear tent. The poor structure had taken quite the beating in the heavily trafficked sections of Massachusetts and New Hampshire, the places where mice knew to look for tasty treats and crumbs left behind by careless hikers. In our case, the crumbs were scattered about the bathtub of our tent from all the times we’d eaten “indoors” to avoid the rain and the bugs—a practice which I do not condone, to be clear—but after spending months living outdoors, it became easier to cut corners and choose the few comforts we had available to us, over responsibility.  

PopTart Bliss; Appalachian Trail, 2018

Blame the person who spilled the crumbs, not the mouse, it’s not the rodent’s fault that a highly addictive substance was dropped at its door step (a metaphor for life… I think?); Appalachian Trail, 2018 

After The Breach, I recommitted to hanging a bear-bag every night and eating outside, come rain or mosquitos; to this day I can honestly say I maintain this level of commitment about 90% of the time. Practice over perfect. Am I right? 

One morning an older man by the trail name of Bald Eagle, stopped Jill and I mid stroll. He asked for my trail name and a picture for his blog. Of course Jill chose that moment to attack my arm with enough violence to convey she was being starved to death and I wasn’t wearing a bra—which has nothing to do with anything, but somehow it feels important enough to mention. He then asked me about my trail name (you know the story if you’ve read it!) and as I grinned and guffawed through the pain of having my arm literally consumed by my dog, I gave him the gist.   

Thank you for reading!

You can expect more Trail Tales in the future, as I have plenty of misshapen stories to share from past adventures (and future ones, I’m sure).

—Kaleidoscope