Uncomfortable Places I've Slept

 

Wildcat Mountain, Frost Valley, New York

 I’d found Wildcat Mountain years before when working at a group home that took the kids to a camp during winter. It’s a comfortable mountain full of trails and a cable bridge across a creek, bluffs, and many places to hide out, along with a huge open field. I camped there for a month in the late 80s.

My first night, I found a spot off one of the side trails, certain I wouldn’t be seen or heard. I had a secondhand tent that smelled of mold no matter what I did to it, but I’d gotten used to, if not happy with the smell. After setup I sat on a bluff over the field and watched the shadows from the trees behind me lengthen and then take over.

I was awake for a while after dark, reading Gary Snyder’s The Old Ways by battery lamp. I fell into a dreamy sleep involving Neil Young (I’d sung “After the Gold Rush” to myself while on the bluff). I was wakened by a noise. I couldn’t place it but I sat up, listening for another.

Not long to wait. Another, nearer sound came from just outside the tent. The scant moonlight allowed me to see one edge of the tent buckle, like a finger or a fist was pushing it in slowly, then suddenly withdraw. Then another sound I still couldn’t identify, and another part of the tent buckled, then just as quickly returned to place.

I didn’t dare turn on the light. I didn’t know who might have found my camp or what reason they might have to bother me, but in my imagination, it was any number of dangerous killers high on coke who happened across me and wanted, if just for fun, to frighten me.

Beside me on the floor was a survival knife I’d been given, one of those long-bladed monstrosities with which you could fillet a fish, tell the direction you were facing, unscrew the handle to access the small sawblade and fishing line, crack open a beer, and presumably fight off nefarious attackers. I slid it silently as I could from its sheath and crept slowly to the front of the tent. Other spots on the tent continued those sounds and their pushing in and letting out.

Experiences like this led me later to conclude that if you have a weapon, you’ll find a reason to use it. I unzipped the tent door, screamed as loudly as I could, and, brandishing my knife, flailed into the open,. In my mind, I was Conan facing a squadron of cannibalistic enemies. Realistically, I was a naked, shivering man with wild hair watching the fast-retreating white tails of several deer in the dim light. The noise had been their sniffing at the moldy smell and their snorting challenges at my invasion of their trail to the creek.