At 9:30, the canyon was behind me. I was relieved to be out in the open again, but I was experiencing tremendous strain, particularly in my thighs, which were beginning to cramp. At that point, I estimated I had at least three hours of hard hiking ahead of me. One blessing I was afforded that night: a full moon and a clear sky. I didn’t mind the dramatic drop in temperature that accompanied the clear moonlit air. I was generating more than enough internal heat from my brisk pace and elevated stress level.
Though my eyes were adjusting to the dark and the moonlight was illuminating certain features in the landscape, I was struggling to make sense of objects on the road ahead, particularly those off in the distance.
My mind was constantly playing tricks on me as I surveyed the surrounding terrain. On at least a dozen occasions I thought I detected a dark shape in motion along the edge of a treeline, or at the top of a rock bluff. Though they were all false alarms, I had the uneasy feeling that I was being watched.
I came upon two additional junctions over the next forty-five minutes. At the first, I was reasonably certain that the trucks had turned right, and so I followed. I wasn’t nearly as confident at the second junction. It was a Y in the road and both forks appeared to be equally well travelled. Guessing, I chose the path to the right. After only a few minutes, I had a nagging suspicion that I had made the wrong choice. After fifteen minutes, I knew I had taken the wrong fork. By then, the moon was much higher on the horizon and I could clearly see that the road led to the top of a distant ridge. There was no such ridge on the drive in earlier that day—that much I was certain of. I glanced at my watch. It was 10:30 p.m.
The logical move was to simply turn around, hike back to the last junction and take the left fork. Continuing to press ahead, following the road to the top of the ridge, also had its merits. There, a view might open up, exposing the valley on the other side. I suspected that our camp was tucked away in there, somewhere deep in the valley on the other side of the ridge. I chose to push forward and attempt to gain the height of land.
It was an exhausting climb, but it was worth the effort. A filtered view of the valley below began to open up through a thin line of conifers that were sporadically spaced along the top of the ridge. It was breezy. The atmosphere was unsettling, eerie. I felt the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stand on end as I approached the edge of the precipice. Walking along the rim, carefully negotiating each step forward, I managed to find a ledge that offered an unobstructed 180-degree view of the valley below.
Though shrouded in darkness, shadows, thin layers of cloud and patches of fog, the moonlight infiltrated the landscape below, revealing a vague outline of its rolling contours. As I began scanning the area, I was suddenly struck by an odd vibration. It was only for the briefest of moments, but it sounded like distant drumming. I heard it again seconds later, but a gust of wind immediately displaced it. As I scoured the landscape for the source of the sound, something caught my eye to my extreme left. Nestled between a large black void and a series of small hills, perhaps ten kilometres away, was a faint undulating glow. It was my camp. It had to be my camp. There was no other explanation for the mysterious source of light. My mind raced as I attempted to carve out a mental map that would lead me there. I knew that I needed to hike back to the last junction and take the left fork. From that point on, I resolved to stay left whenever in doubt.
Checking my watch as I descended the steep road back toward the last junction, I was shocked when the digits lit up and I saw 11:30 p.m. I was at least ten kilometres from camp. I still had a long, difficult hike ahead of me. I had already worked through two major leg cramps and felt a third one coming on. I was also feeling a hunger unlike anything I had ever experienced. I knew the emptiness was exacerbating the cramping in my muscles, not to mention my ability to think straight. I then remembered the apple in my backpack and quickly devoured it, tossing the core behind my shoulder. Then, just as I was approaching the junction, I detected the sound of tumbling rocks approximately fifty metres behind me. Though it wasn’t necessarily an unusual sound—the cutbanks on both sides of the road were steep and in a constant state of erosion—I suspected the disturbance was created by something other than mere gravity. I scolded myself for having discarded my apple core so carelessly.
Debbie’s anxiety over the number of bear sightings reported in and around camp suddenly began to weigh heavily on my mind. As I pressed on, limping, attempting to stave off a third muscle cramp, I continued to sense movement on the road behind me. It was difficult to separate the sound of my own footsteps, heavy and irregular, from the other vibrations around me. Heightening my anxiety, the moonlit landscape I had been trekking through all evening appeared to end abruptly farther up the road at a solid black wall. It was inevitable. I was approaching a dense stand of timber, the canopy of which would block out the moonlight I was relying upon to navigate.
As I approached the edge of the forest, it was like peering into a lightless tunnel. The path behind me was bathed in moonlight, the path ahead plunged into a pitch-black void. Pausing to take one last look behind me, I entered the forest and immediately hastened my pace. My visibility was nearly nil. I was able to make out only the basic contours of the road ahead. After one or two minutes of being enveloped in near total darkness, I launched into a spontaneous jog. Panic began to set in. The tension ratcheted higher when I heard a knock deep within the forest to my left. My jog turned into a full-out sprint when I thought I heard another knock directly behind me. I lost track of both time and space. I remember the sensations all too well though: dread, terror, a grave reckoning that I was drawing my last few gulps of air. I was in both fight and flight mode, ready to stop, turn and savagely swing my shovel at whatever was behind me.
The threat that seemed so real, so immediate, failed to materialize in physical form. Eventually, after rounding a sharp bend in the road, I spotted a breach in the blackness several hundred metres ahead. I was coming back into the light.
I reached the edge of the timber. The stretch of road that broke through on the other side was drenched in moonlight. The transition between light and dark—the margin separating the two deeply conflicting elements—was astonishing. It was a glorious moment. My panic-stricken charge quickly deteriorated into a series of limps and staggers as my exhaustion triggered yet another severe leg cramp. This last stitch did some damage to the muscle in my right thigh. The pain was excruciating.
As I attempted to settle into a steady, consistent stride, I continued to hear sounds emanating from the dark corridor behind me. This time they were clear—heavy scrapes in the gravel. I was being followed.
Pressing ahead, looking over my shoulder every few seconds, I fixated on the road leading out of the dark wall of trees behind me. After advancing another two hundred metres or so, something caught my eye—a shape began to emerge slowly from the edge of the corridor. At first, I thought it was my imagination—a large rock, a stump perhaps. Then my worst fear materialized as the dark shape began to shift and take form, slowly pulling away and separating from the black wall.
I began shouting obscenities at the top of my lungs, hoping it would back off and blend back into the dark depths from which it emerged. My protests didn’t seem to faze it, though. It advanced, slowly but steadily closing the gap between us. It was a bear—a large bear. An apex predator. Its unwavering swagger suggested that it was fully aware of its position at the very top of the food chain.
After another fifteen minutes of staggering and lurching forward, of constantly looking over my shoulder and attempting to maintain a safe distance between me and my stalker, I saw that the road ahead was in the direct path of yet another dark forest corridor. I began scouring the road berm for a long heavy stick. I was looking for another weapon to augment the shovel I was gripping tightly with my bloody right hand. I also began loading my pockets with sharp flat stones. I had a good throwing arm.
It’s unsettling how different the woods appear at night. Any semblance of familiarity is lost or concealed in the absence of light. Individual trees that appear grand and majestic during daylight hours suddenly become menacing, threatening. I was experiencing a whole new set of negative emotions at this point. I had no idea that fear had so many layers, that it could probe so deep into one’s psyche.
It