| Part 1 | Part 2 |
Sorry about the delay in getting this second entry posted, I’ve had a ton of grading to catch up on, nothing makes for better weekend leisure reading than half-baked high school history reports. Thank you to anyone who reached out with leads/potential explanations, I’ve looked a little deeper into some of them. Someone mentioned that chronic wasting disease could be the culprit for the odd behavior of the deer. After my encounter and some brief research early on, I was inclined to believe the same thing. Further developments have, however, challenged this theory…
After my first night on the trail and my encounter with the “deer,” I cut the trip short and had a, thankfully, uneventful morning hike back to my car. I started packing up my gear at the break of dawn and moved out as soon as there was enough light to reasonably hike. The stark contrast of my peaceful morning stroll compared to the bizarre occurrences of the day before made me almost laugh. Was it really all just nothing? I heard a weird noise, found a variation of a Schuylkill note, and saw a sick deer. Something in the back of my mind remained unsettled. After a couple of hours on the trail I found my car and drove home. Life, once again, was normal. At least until I returned to the Appalachian Trail.
Night Two: Despite the rationalizations I had made to calm my nerves, some of you might still be wondering why I would go back to the Appalachian Trail after such a harrowing experience. Surely nothing about that previous trip was enjoyable? Backpacking is essentially my favorite thing to do in life. I go almost every weekend and try to take day hikes on any odd days off. Nothing was going to scare me away from hiking and backpacking, it would require me to completely uproot my routine and lifestyle of about 15 years. The Appalachian was familiar to me, I knew it well and it was convenient. I did, however, drive an extra hour and a half to reach a portion of the trail further south in PA, far from the section I had just visited.
I was sort of playing hooky on this particular day. We had a teacher in service at school, so no students would be there, just teachers and whoever admin brought in to lecture us about the new bullshit pedagogy that was trendy nowadays. I wasn’t missing much. The trail I was on to enter the Appalachian forked off as I arrived at the sign marked
AT <–>
I turned left and headed south. There was a decent lookout point not too far. A few miles later I took out my water for the first time and sipped a bit off the top. I almost dropped it and spilled some in reaction to the sound of an unmistakably distant whack whack whack. How could it possibly be happening again? I was miles and miles from the other section of the trail. Coupled with the chill that ran down my spine I became exceedingly curious. My mind raced for a potentially solid explanation, until suddenly it came to me. This had to be some kind of animal. I knew bucks sometimes rubbed their antlers against trees in the fall. The purpose of this was to remove the velvet that had accumulated on them and prepare them to spar with other males for dominance. The time of year when this occurred was called the “rut” and it was just around the corner in PA. What I was hearing must have been deer sparing or hitting their antlers against trees. Armed with a rational explanation and an abundance of daylight left, my curiosity overpowered my fear.
Breaking Joe’s first rule, I trudged off the path in the direction of the noise. I wanted to put my mind at ease and solve this mystery. I walked for what had to have been a quarter mile, pushing past brush and uneven terrain. Luckily the ground did not decline too steeply here. Ensuring that I stayed straight and could easily turn back directly back to the path, I listened for the noise closely. The strangest thing was that no matter how far I walked it was still completely distant. Whack Whack Whack. The same volume I had been hearing it. I got the distinct impression that as I moved closer to the source of the noise, whatever was making this noise was making a very calculated effort to move away from me. I eventually came to a steep drop off and heard the whacking again. Peering down the cliffside I concluded there was no way anything could have descended this and survived. I kept looking out trying to identify the culprit of the noise. There was a slight clearing in the trees farther out beyond the cliff, and squinting my eyes I could just barely see something. Standing in the clearing was what seemed to be a nude human figure. Even at a distance, the stark paleness of the figure’s skin was evident. I could make out the faint traces of what appeared to be a beard.
My heart began thumping. Was this person just fucking with me? I turned around and quickly made my way up to the path, shoving any branches or foliage in my way. I was officially noping out of this day hike. There was a shelter and another exiting path from the Appalachian Trail about a mile further south. I was getting the hell off the trail and ubering back to my car at this point. The whacking sound followed me as I traveled. Just as the distant noise had ratcheted up to 5 whacks in a row I arrived at the shelter and to my immediate relief found another backpacker sitting by a moderately sized fire. He looked up.
“Hey, another cold weather hiker! Come warm up if you’d like.”
I walked over to the older man. He wore a bowl hat and a button down. A large classic looking tent was pitched behind him.
“Sir, I don’t think its entirely safe here…”
He cut me off with a raised hand and a knowing smile.
“Calm down, calm down. Have a seat and relax. You can call me, Earl. Tell me what’s going on. I’m through hiking for what feels like the millionth time so I’ve seen it all.”
I thought to myself ‘Through hiking in late fall?’ He would be going through some of the toughest parts of the trail in the dead of Winter if he was heading NOBO. I immediately returned my thoughts to the more pressing matter.
“There’s something out in the woods. I saw it about a mile back, I’m pretty sure he was following me. Some pale naked man I think.”
Earl laughed. “Oh you saw one of them. You’ll be mostly fine, don’t worry.”
“Who are the they”
“Some people say they’ve been in Appalachia for hundreds of years. Others know they’ve been here much longer.”
I started to step away from the fire. The shadows of the trees elongated as the sun had miraculously began to set.
Earl stood up and waved “you best head off now Alex. Wouldn’t want to get caught in the dark.”
I ran as fast as I could, quickly found the exiting path from the Appalachian Trail and bolted down. It was now pitch black but I couldn’t stop. I tripped on a rock and bruised my knee pretty bad. I got up quickly, fumbled through my bag and strapped on my headlamp. I was now zooming through the trail. There was no possible way enough time had passed for it to be getting dark let alone be pitch black. Finally I came to the trail head entrance and found myself on a pretty deserted rural road I pulled out my phone. It was 2:30 AM. Luckily, my phone still had service and I called an uber to my car. There was a small town and a bar a few miles up the road, and thankfully available drivers. The wait for the uber felt like hours but it showed up and I got to my car safely. I had a long drive home and a lot to process.