Creepy experiences in the backcountry

[freezerfull]

So green, yellow, orange, or red. I guess if it’s any color but green no it’s not a deer for sure?

And deer and elk eyes can often shine almost white at times. I think distance apart, height above the ground and what the animal is doing is a better predictor of what you’re encountering.

 

[freezerfull]

20 years ago one of my best friends from high school and I were out walking logging roads looking for grouse. We had a habit of peeling off up or down hill to follow game trails just to explore. On this day we noticed what looked like an old road grade sweeping off up hill with a decent game trail following it. Now I’m not talking a 20 year ago decommissioned grade but a grade covered with old second growth firs and cedars. Well we started up the game trail as it circled around the finger of the mountain. We had probably gone 3/4 of a mile and gained a steady 500’ as we progressed. The overgrown grade leveled off on a bench that had a pinnacle like knob maybe 20’ higher than the surrounding terrain. Naturally we had to go up there to see how suitable an ambush location for blacktails this would be.

Upon reaching the top we see a sight we were not expecting. There in front of us was the remains of a cabin. Old split cedar logs squared up and fitted together with a collapsed roof that had fallen to the ground. Old square nails, some clearly individually forged were sticking out of the roof shakes.

As we continued to explored the ruins my buddy became eerily quiet. It took a few minutes for his silence to catch my attention. When I finally look over at him he says “do you hear that?” Stopping all movement I immediately picked up on what he was referring to. A very faint music could be heard.

Initially it was so faint it was hard to determine exactly what we were hearing. Then as we stood silent for the next few minutes the music continued to get louder, to the point where it sounded as if were in the room with whoever was playing it. It surrounded us, with no discernible direction of the source. The best way I can describe it was old time player piano music. We each were perched on opposite sides of the remaining footprint of the cabin, staring down into the alders and ferns below looking for whatever it could be. As I turned back to look at my buddy, his back up against the remnants of a door jamb from long ago I see a flicker of something moving through the trees down below, near the overgrown road we’d come up. Could have been in my mind at that point, either way I’d had my fill.

I said “let’s get out of here”. We both bailed off the side of the knob and down the mountain, joining the old grade roughly half way back to the logging road. As we continued down we stopped to listen. The further we had gone from the cabin the fainter the music had become. As we approached the last 100 yards to the road it had completely faded.

That day was one of those few that I have no explanation for. Since that time I’ve passed by that cabin many times with no strange events. In fact my wife killed a buck in 2016 not 200 yards from the cabin.

Sadly Sierra Pacific logged the cabin site about 7 years ago. Not only changing the dynamics of the blacktails in the area but also wiping out any sign that the cabin ever existed. The forest will regrow, the blacktails will be back, but the history is gone forever.

 

[Pharmseller]

The history will remain for those tuned to hear it.