My family was pretty religious growing up, so that meant being dragged to church on Sunday, and being dropped off to attend kids church with my “friends” on Wednesday nights.
I was always an outsider there, never believed, asked too many questions, never fit in, and never had a friend or a partner in any craft or a project that the teacher didn’t assign to me.
So even though, I knew I wouldn’t have a friend to enjoy camping with. I had never been before and was equal parts excited but still pretty terrified of the woods, the year earlier I had a horrible experience out in the woods with a girl, I couldn’t even call an old friend.
So the dark and I were not on the best of terms.
Regardless I brought my $50 and my permission slip back the next week signed with almost no questions asked.
In 2 weeks we’re going to be “camping” with another group of girls from another church.
30 something 8-11-year-old girls a few “teachers” but no one with any actual experience in the woods.
The hike from the parking lot was pretty short about 25 mins, the elevation increased ever so slightly as we made our way up the mountain and the view was amazing birds, and small animals, made the forest seem so alive and inviting. Peaceful in a way the city regardless of how rural couldn’t compete.
I hadn’t had a bad feeling once, and as we made s’mores, and roasted hot dogs that night we heard the camp rules.
No leaving the wagons at night without an adult, even to get water or go pee, no exceptions.
No leaving food out, no candy bars, no empty wrappers everything needed to be put in the food box a few hundred feet away from camp and locked away.
No food in the wagons.
Most importantly we were told to stay together.
They didn’t mention anything about predators, but my love for animal planet told me there were bears in these mountains, mountain lions, and according to my cousin, real-life monsters. I was too little to hear about.
We got situated in our wagons, they were elevated off the ground and covered with fabric on the inside but it was metal on the outside.
I imagine this is what the travelers who weathered the Oregon trail traveled in.
It was interesting the first night. Although we made a group stop to the bathroom which was a short walk up the trail, the wagon doors opened and closed for hours, girls were homesick, wanting to call home, feeling sick after eating s’mores and hot dogs all day and drinking no water and being out in the sun.
The night’s sleep was difficult, the forest sounds don’t stop at night, and the same beautiful and lively sounds we heard on the way in, were sinister and foreign at night.
We all woke up early, the beds weren’t comfortable, the wagons cramped 12 or so beds into a small space, there was only the middle walkway, that gave us any room and the round roof was only about a foot and a half taller than us.
We have a small group hike planned to the popular sites of the area and we go off into our groups, with our assigned teachers, we are paired together within the groups and they urge us to stay within shouting distance and to stay on the trail.
My buddy was a girl from the other church, I was thankful it wasn’t one of the weird stuck-up know it all girls from my church, they were miniature versions of their mothers, little shrews in the making. I swear I heard an 11 year old tell another little girl bless her heart, surely regurgitated from her mom’s script of kindness.
It was such a weird vibe.
We are walking for what seemed like 2 hours, the girls were tired and sore and we finally get to our destination, which was apparently a beautiful lake in the middle of the forest.
Still, we were on clearly marked trails and about as soon as we get to the lake we hear loud thumps like something hitting the ground in the distance, something falling from a great height.
We look at each other and the 20-something-year-old teachers who brought us on our walk.
The forest has been buzzing with life since we got out there.
The younger teacher, I can’t remember her name now, stares back at the way the noise came from and shushes us with a finger to her lips as she orders us to turn around and walk the way we came, no questions, no talking just walking.
She hangs back, looking nervous, making sure we are in a tighter group and all the girls are together.
She turns her back and looks behind her a lot, but says nothing to us.
The other teacher prays silently while we walk through the woods, fear all over her face as well.
We hear something moving and branches breaking as the forest remains eerily quiet, we just came this way 20 or so minutes ago and the difference is so obvious.
It’s like the sound switch was turned off, except for whatever moved heavily in the distance. we only saw trees and green as far as we could see whenever we stopped to look around.
I felt scared and out of place, angry at myself for how I stupidly put myself exactly where I didn’t want to be again, I didn’t know if they could protect us if something happened, and my mind can’t help but go to the place I was last year in the woods. Helpless.
The girls must have felt it too because they didn’t argue, sing, no more skipping or going slightly of path to follow birds, or have a better look at the flowers.
The sounds stopped for a while, and the forest sound turned back on. We however still felt that strange feeling in the air, and made our way quickly back to camp.
As tired as we were, we were energized by fear.
Hamburgers on a grill grate thing over the fire was dinner and I was scared to drink, scared to eat, scared that I’d have to walk in the woods in the dark to the bathroom.
I could tell the girls who were in my hiking group even if I didn’t know all of them, because they looked over their shoulders constantly, peering into the dark woods around us, not talking, distracted by fear.
I kept looking behind me too, the fire so loud living and breathing crackling warmth, I took the s’mores I was offered but it cooled in my hand leaving a sticky mess because my attention was behind me, it sounded like something was walking in the woods behind us. All around us, I tried to sit close to an adult, close to the fire, and right beside the wagon, I slept in, anything to feel safer.
The teacher who took us hiking wasn’t eating either, looking around her, no doubt thinking the same thing I was. If something was out there how on earth we were supposed to do something.
Her hiking partner chews her nails nervously across the fire.
I saw the teachers talking after dinner them all sharing the look the teachers who accompanied us now had.
Miss Shannon our church’s Missionette leader went to our wagon and pulled out a shotgun, loaded it, and set it beside her, she never said a word, we all stared at the gun.
We went to the bathroom in 2 large groups and no one bothered asking for a shower, a quiet fear buzzed through the group, we didn’t know why but the atmosphere of the outing had changed and the moodiness in the inky black night was contagious.
As we walk the trail in the dark, the loud dropping happens again, the sound is the same. A heavy thump onto the group, like something falling from the trees or the sky, we all look around, shining lights in all directions, walking quickly back to the wagons.
The older teacher who led us on our walk was biting her nails, looking around impatiently as she took her girls and disappeared into one of the wagons, we heard the door lock and bolt and we wall started getting our group together and we settled into bed.
No one complained that it was almost an hour and a half earlier than when we went to bed yesterday.
No one complained about the smell of stale sweat as we soaked our beds.
Hyper-vigilance is so hard on the body, not being able to relax for even a moment, with your imagination reeling and possible real danger just outside.
A scream woke us all up a few hours later, and one of the teachers in our wagon and Miss Sharon shot up out of the bed, Miss Sharon grabbed the gun and shot out of the wagon doors. We were so scared, a teacher stood behind Miss Sharon telling us to go back to our beds, and she disappeared too.
A girl is crying and begging to be taken home outside, she said she had a dream that something was trying to get in the back of the wagon and when she woke up she said she saw a shadow and something big and dark at the small viewing window in the back of the wagon
Red eyes looked in at her from the darkness.
She pleaded to be let home, to have her mom called.
The teachers whispered as we all panicked, little girls unsure of what to do.
I kept quiet, still angry at myself for putting myself through another nightmare in the woods.
Miss Sharon said it was too late to go back now, that we had no transportation, the wagons couldn’t be left out here alone, excuse after excuse, but the bottom line was we were not getting out of there tonight.
She settled for calling her husband, he was 2 hours away still at work, and would come and meet us up here as soon as he could.
We were told to go back to bed, and absolutely no bathroom breaks or leaving the wagons until he got there or morning came.
We lie in bed for a while, the girls in the last bed sleeping beside the back of our wagon, covered the window with a pillowcase at first but after a while and asked to sleep in bed with someone else.
Silence, when you’re scared, is time-altering, and every sound is so loud and foreign.
It felt like ages until we heard something, but as we listened to the weird animal sounds, we hear grunts and low growls, ripping, and the dying screams of something, maybe being eating. I hide under my blanket. I hear crying, and praying in the beds around me.
Miss Sharon stands beside the door, talking with one of the teachers and she begs her not to open the door.
She tells the woman it’s just an animal and it we have nothing to be scared of.
She held her gun in her hand, eyes wide. She didn’t even believe her own lie.
A little girl with a T name begs her not to go outside, that something bad is out there.
The look on her face makes Miss Sharon reconsider. She backs away from the door, for some reason she calls for her husband in a whispering plea.
We wait for his answer, but whatever is out there isn’t her husband.
The sound of heavy breathing is easily recognizable, and I’m crying silently.
We hear heavy walking around the wagons and then loud running getting quieter and quieter, then nothing. Miss Sharon peeks out of the small window in the back and she shakes her head, it’s so dark, I can’t see anything, I don’t hear anything.
She still holds the gun in her hands and we sit there and wait for whatever it is to come back or try to get inside, while we’re sitting blind in this tin can. Eventually, the sounds of something being eaten stop playing over and over in my head stops and for a moment I space out and forget what’s happening.
After a while, we hear light footsteps outside.
Sharon! Which one of these things are you in, Sharon where are you?
We hear a man’s voice outside
She opens the door and she jumps from the steps into his arms. He tells her to get inside and close the door.
Sharon’s husband is a big burly man, the large wagon is dwarfed with him inside.
I think of the lightfoot steps we barely heard him coming until he was right here almost at the door.
He says he felt this wave of nausea and anxiety as he drove closer to the woods and couldn’t explain how odd he felt. Once he was out of the car and on the trail, he doubled back and grabbed another gun and ammo from the truck.
He said he heard rummaging and heaving breathing up ahead on the trail and when he got to the food storage chest, it was ripped open, food everywhere, cans ripped open, most of the food uneaten, but all the meat was gone from the packages.
The lock just broken on the floor. He said he heard heavy running ni the dark on either side of the trail and the sounds of branches hitting each other and the dense bushes shook when he shined his light over there he ran against his better judgment up the trail and he finally saw the wagons.
The blood was what scared him, and the trail led right behind one of the wagons and off into the thick woods.
There was a bloody mess outside, grass smushed flat, and blood and fur everywhere. He whispered to his wife and the teachers.
Still, he stayed out there all night, which was only about 3 or so hours, waiting with his gun in hand with his back to the wagons protecting us.
The trip had another day and a bit, but we were all rounded up in the morning as soon as the sun came up and led out of the woods, all of our things were gathered in bags and we had to sort through them once we got back to the church.
The area behind the 3rd wagon was covered with tarps and we never got to see what was under there, but we let our imaginations do the rest.
The drive back was scary, because the roads that we took to get out here, were the same woods were stuck in with whatever was out there.
We were given a refund when we got back to the church and I made it clear to my parents that I was never going back to that church.
My parents never asked why.
When I got home, I went straight to my room and I sat there for a very long time staring out the window into the darkness of the woods wondering if there is something out there now, watching me.