A year ago I bought my first house. I was so proud and excited, as a millennial I never thought I’d be able to make this happen. It’s on the very north end of our city and 10 minutes from work! My house is on the outside edge of the neighborhood, and only one neighbor separates my house from an incredible huge forest. Before I even went to closing, I scoped out google maps. The house to the north of mine is much older and larger than all the houses in the neighborhood, and apparently was the original landowners house from before the neighborhood was built in the 1950s. Beyond that is a forest that goes all the way to the state line, with nothing but the railroad tracks going through it. I’m really into foraging and bush-craft, so the idea that this potentially unexplored wilderness was right on my doorstep made me delirious with excitement.
Thanks to my procrastination and general laziness, I didn’t actually find time to go into the forest until yesterday. It is incredible. The outside edge has no trespassing signs and private property signs on almost every tree, and it’s kind of a long rectangle that narrows toward the neighborhood and widens out as you go deeper. I walked along the edge until I found a deer trail, and made my way inside. I love the feeling of the forest, you can actually feel the temperature and humidity change once you’re under the canopy. It’s so much more alive than a field or a park. The birds in this part of the forest began chirping and singing their “stranger in the woods” warning songs. I listened to them while I kept an eye out for mushrooms and wild fruit trees. I was hoping to find some paw paws or maybe even a chicken of the woods mushroom to take home and cook for dinner.
I came across a few sleeping bags and blankets on the ground and started to wonder if I was in danger of coming across a homeless person. If there was a homeless person, it was probably going to be an addict. My city has the county jail and also a million recovery programs that get their charges sober just to release them right back into the streets. That’s why I was so excited to find this little oasis of quiet right down the street from my house. After I passed the sleeping bags I found a bunch of large stone structures that looked like the remnants of an entire city street, Three basements in a row with broken steps leading to nothing, and what looked like it might be a sidewalk in between them. Very interesting. I wonder why the railroad owns this piece of property now if it used to have houses on it? I assumed the railroad had owned this piece of property for hundreds of years, I know that they own lots of property along the lines dating all the way back to the original construction.
As I kept wandering deeper into the woods I saw what looked like it might be a spring house. A large stone square filled with scummy water and a creek running out of it. It was so beautiful, the stone was covered in moss and the water was full of algae. I decided to get off the deer trail and follow the back end of the creek, to see if I could find the end of the stream, and maybe an actual natural spring. I tramped deeper and deeper into the woods following this stream along the hillside, and the blankets and beer bottles started to get less and less common, until I felt like I was finally away from people.
I love that feeling, deep in the woods with only the sounds of the birds and squirrels for company. I noticed deep muddy deer prints in the trail and stopped, I was close to the spring! I could see light through the trees and a clearing up ahead, I carefully picked my way through the swampy soil and got into the clearing. Straight ahead, I saw the spring, but it wasn’t a normal looking spring full of water plants and bugs everywhere. A circle of dead grass surrounded the spring and within the dead grass right on the water line was a circle of completely dead trees. I got goosebumps and stood completely still while I tried to figure out why it would be dead like that. That’s when I noticed no animal noises at all. The gnats that had been flying around my face until that point weren’t bothering me anymore either. Was the spring toxic? That wouldn’t make sense because the creek leading away from the spring had a normal amount of plants and creatures, and the old spring house was full of algae and other growing things. It just doesn’t make any sense that the source of the creek would look poisoned but the rest of the creek looks totally normal.
To the left of the spring there was another opening in the forest. It looked like another deer trail, and above it was a piece of red rope tied to a branch, almost like a marker. Interestingly, it was the first indication of humans I had seen in at least a quarter mile. I carefully picked my way around the spring making sure to keep my boots as dry as possible and went up to the trail. The path looked a little easier than most other deer trails I’d been down, and led straight back into the deepest part of the forest. I really wanted to get all the way back there and just finish exploring what I had decided was my own personal forest. As soon as I stepped into the shade of the trees I could hear birds again, and the damn gnats came back and buzzed around the sweat on my forehead.
I kept going, carefully eying the tree trunks for any hope of mushrooms. It got a little darker and I noticed clouds rolling in. I stopped to check my weather app to see if it was going to rain. No service back here I guess. I kept going for a few minutes, peering up into the sky every so often to see if these were just clouds or if it was actually going to start raining on me, and of course, a big fat raindrop hit me on the shoulder. I turned back the way I came and headed home as fast as I possibly could.
I skirted around the creepy still spring, and I could see something bright pink that definitely wasn’t there before. A tiny hot pink Dora the Explorer sandal was floating right in the middle of the water, slowly spinning in a circle. I stopped immediately. That shoe was definitely not there the first time around and definitely should not have been floating on the top of the water like that. I inched closer so I could peer into the murky grey spring water, The shoe didn’t seem to be attached to anything, but the spring was much deeper than I thought it should be. Lots of half rotted white logs and the bottom was mucky mud and dead leaves.
It started to rain harder, so hard I could barely see, and then I saw what might have been long hair under the water? I couldn’t go any closer without getting too deep in the mud, and I didn’t want to get closer anyway, because I was starting to get really scared.
I got home late last night and now I’m at work and can’t stop thinking about it. Did I just find a body or something? Should I go back when I get home?