I write this story now because what happened to me up on the mountain is relevant to current goings on.
There’s a trailhead in Washington that rarely has any cars apart from mine. Nice and private. 8 miles round trip through backcountry that’s gorgeous in spring. I go there alone, and often. It is not accessible in winter. It is a moderate hike. The path climbs to just under the tree line, where underbrush and the evergreen canopy thin out. There’s still some snow on the ground in spring. Plenty of birdsong, and chipmunks, and the occassional deer or bear encounter.
Apple trees in Wenatchee had begun to flower by the time I made it up there for my first hike of the season. Slight dismay at seeing a big white Ford pickup already parked. It dwarfed my Mini Cooper. Made the Ford look intimidating.
I gathered my water, snacks, and hiking gear. Threw on my pack, tied my boots. Breathing the fresh air, I started the hike.
The trail starts in the thick of the woods, and you can still hear cars nearby on highway 2. The sound fades slowly on a straight shot through a dense forest of tall trees. It was a bright clear day, sunbeams looked like spotlights piercing through branches, splotching a collage of UV rorschachs among ferns and needles on the ground.
Eventually all you hear are the animals, insects, and your own huffing.
When the trail starts to climb is when I drink most of my water. I carry a purifier pump because there are a number of streams I siphon from along the way. After about an hour there is more sky than canopy, and while it’s cold at that elevation, the sun feels hot.
It was at this change that I heard it. A muffled bang. It was muffled by a ridge in front of me, but I could hear its echo return a few seconds later from a cliffface across the valley to my left. A gunshot? I thought, initially. There weren’t supposed to be hunters here, but I wouldn’t put it past them.
I kept walking.
A little while later, say 15 minutes or so, I heard another bang, only this time I had crested the ridge and so I heard it crystal. Loud as a firework. Caused my heart to miss a beat. I even stumbled into a stance to preserve my balance. The echo returned immediately, raw and coursing, bang!
Then I saw it–smoke in the near distance, rising between two red cedars. Not too far in front of me, but higher toward the tree line.
What had it been? Birds went flying in fear. I’d ducked impulsively. For a minute my overfunctioning imagination suggested maybe it was miners exploding dynamite. This was protected land, but also, miners? This isn’t the 19th century. I quieted my mind and pushed on in spite of my misgivings.
Having followed the smoke like a signal, I had to go off trail for the last hundred feet or so. I came to a short plateau in a clearing, and smelled something I didn’t like. It was a stink, mixed with burning. And then I saw the deer. Or, what was left of it.
Still steaming, its rib cage exposed and dripping rosy blood, entrails splattered in the high grass. I approached. It was missing an eye, and the other was quite dead. Multiple wounds sliced into the carcass seemingly at random. A land mine? Here? No.
Then I heard it. A buzzing, like a distant powertool. No, like an electric bee. It didn’t take long for the noise to grow loud enough to identify what it was. A drone. A second later it was hovering above the clearing.
I waved at it, and gestured my disbelief and incredulity, motioning at the dead deer body, torn and broken. Pointless. Tragic. All the words you can describe something that died when it didn’t have to, and in so violent a way, as if its life was a game.
“You piece of shit!” I yelled. I don’t know if drones have audio input. I screamed regardless.
Of course it had to be the driver of that white Ford pickup piloting the thing. No one else was around. Sick bastard. Was he going to collect the meat at least? I didn’t care–this was not only inhumane, it was psychotic. I’m shy and quiet but I was going to read this person the riot act when I got back down, and then I would call the Rangers to report the incident.
It took me longer than I care to admit to realize the danger I was in.
I had retrieved my phone and started to take photos of the dead deer. Only when I began snapping zoomed-in shots of the drone did it dawn on me that a little round object was dangling from its belly, 50 feet in the air. It had moved, and now hovered directly above me. My heart seized. It had moved, and was above me. It carried a grenade.
All this happened within a minute of discovering the drone. Seconds later, a clink sound, pounding ears, birdsong, rustling dry needles beneath my feet as I pivoted, and dove.
BANG!
I was deaf for a moment, only ringing in my ears. Dirt fell everywhere. Metal smell, smoke from the explosion behind me.
I checked my body, expecting to be missing a limb. All intact. I had dove over the edge of the plateau just in time, and so the fragments were absorbed by ground. I was breathing frantically. I scanned the sky–no drone.
Scurrying to my feet, I stumbled. Noticed that part of the sole of my boot heel had been sheered clean off. I ran down 100 feet back to the trail, tripping as I went. I was a hour from the trailhead. I began a brisk walk-run back.
My mind at this point was coming to terms with the incident, but it was unlike any trauma I’d ever experienced before. Thoughts were stunted. Came like slaps in the face. Dead deer. Drone. Grenade. Explosion. Attempted murder. Murder. Why? Killing animals. Pointless. Psychotic. Psychotic. Psycho. Fucking psycho!
I hustled for 10 minutes, trying to adapt and balance a missing heel by jogging on toes. My ankles were killing me. Then I stopped in my tracks.
A faint buzz. I was still close to the tree line. More sky than canopy. Then I saw the drone zip overhead. An involuntary scream escaped me.
“No!” I remember saying aloud. “No, no, no!”
It drew a great U shape in the distance, circling back toward me. No, no! No place to hide!
I didn’t need to squint to know its belly cargo was another grenade. Dark and menacing, dangling as if thinking itself a gift that I want to receive. My God!
It hovered overhead as I sprinted down the trail. It took no effort to keep up. I could see it above, leading me, like a sniper leads its moving target. I stopped. It stopped. I began running back the way I’d come, and again it matched me, leading me 50 feet in the air, ten in front of me. I stopped again, panting, trying to catch my breath. It made no difference. This was my angel of death, here to deliver me to oblivion.
At no point in that moment did I think of the pilot. It was me against the drone. The machine. The technology and violent concussive power that would take my life in this meaningless way. Like a game. A story with no plot. Just erased from existence.
As I stood, hands on knees panting, I did not let the drone out of my sight. Then it lowered itself down. 40 feet, 30. I looked to my right at a tree, the thickest and closest, and in that instant the drone careened at high speed on an angle directly at me. The buzz was defeaning, and just as it reached me, and as I dashed toward the tree, I heard a click sound, a plop, then the drone banked hard into an ascent, and I ate the dirt on the opposite side of my chosen trunk.
BANG!
Falling dirt, drizzling fern and common yarrow, like plant rain. It fell onto the back of my head and back. Pattering. My hands were dug into earth, grasping loose dirt like a shield. My face as well, smashed into the dirt, as if just touching it would put me safely beneath it. I was breathing it even. Tears wet my cheeks, and when the ringing stopped I heard my own voice, screaming.
But the grenade miraculously missed. I was alive. I got to my knees. No buzzing. The tree trunk was ripped of bark and riddled with shrapnel. I touched it. I might have even thanked it.
Was this the day I die?
It is difficult to recall what happened after this. I think I achieved runner’s high. Already the high altitude makes oxygen scarcer. Add to that my mortal dread; endless screaming and crying for help as I went; knees feeling like they would implode. The forest gave me countless gashes as I tripped, fell, got up and kept running down the trail until I was again obscured by canopy.
I heard the drone buzzing overhead. I couldn’t keep track of it, and just ran. I heard a loud bang again, but I just kept running. Snot and dirt and tears clogged my senses. I screamed, my body burned. The buzzing grew again ten minutes later, and looking back over my shoulder I saw it navigating the thick branches of my evergreen protectors. I saw it clip one, and its gimbal stabalisers saving it from falling.
That was the last I saw of it.
Unable to continue running, I limped for the last 20 minutes through the forest, emerging at an abandoned trailhead. The white pickup was gone. My Mini Cooper sat shining under a rorschach sunbeam. Heavenly glints. Glints of success. You made it. I sat against a tire, catched my breath. Ringing ears calmed, pulse slowed. I listened to the birdsong around me, and nearby cars on highway 2.
This all happened only two days ago. I’m writing this all down because while I’ve already made a police report, something else has happened. A girl went missing while hiking. They found her car. Not my trailhead, but another one I know of. It’s in local news, hasn’t made national yet. I know her, went to high school with her. They’re looking for a white Ford F-150 in connection.
Rescue crews are heading up there now. I can’t stop thinking about that drone, about how weak and out of my control my life felt, how its buzzing pursuit rang like a deafening demand: submit, submit to me now. I can’t stop thinking about the deer carcass. My God. What are they going to find?