This bizarre misadventure left me with two clear lessons. First, the passenger door of my vintage Jeep Wrangler needed a good spray of WD-40. Second, I should be dead. The fact that I’m still alive reveals my true nature.
Let me explain. I will never forget this experience. As night fell, a white witch with blood dripping from her eyes stalked my campsite. It was the stuff of nightmares. Folklore says such a sighting is a harbinger of death. Was she a banshee that followed Scotch-Irish settlers from the Old Country? The Blair Witch of modern storytelling? An ancient Native American spirit furious at the European invasion? We will find out by the end of my story.
I steered my Jeep onto the exit for the Greenridge State Forest ranger headquarters. Though it was only a short drive from Interstate 68, the place felt strangely isolated. The one-story building looked more like a large cabin than a Maryland state government office. After registering for a backcountry permit inside, I collected my backpack and cellphone from the Jeep’s tailgate.
Large evergreens ringed the parking lot to the north, while the south offered an excellent view of misty Greenridge Mountain. Apart from my Jeep and the ranger’s white Ford F-150, the lot was empty. I used the small restroom building, knowing it would be my last civilized toilet for a couple of days, then tossed the remnants of my McDonald’s breakfast into the dumpster and strolled over to the information board.
Trail maps were available, so I did my best to memorize the labyrinth of color-coded trails and settled on a route linking four of them to my destination. With my memory full, I swung my pack onto my back, clipped the waist belt, adjusted the shoulder straps, and tucked my cellphone into the waterproof pocket on my left shoulder strap. Ready at last, I walked toward the trailhead sign.
Then I realized I had forgotten my trekking poles and hurried back to the Jeep. I spotted them in the passenger footwell and opened the door. To my surprise and annoyance, the hinge ground metal against metal as it swung open. The screech sounded otherworldly, like a screech owl in the middle of a dark, silent forest. It filled the entire parking lot and echoed back from the looming ridge. I sensed a thousand pairs of eyes turning to find me, the noisy intruder, unwelcome among both natural and unnatural hosts of the forest.
“Hmm, that’s weird. When did that hinge decide to give up the ghost?” I asked the dumpster. It turned out to be a prophetic choice of words, given what happened that night.
Shaking off my unease, I adjusted my trekking poles to the right length and headed back to the trailhead. Soon I was alone in the woods. The meandering path was cushioned with golden pine needles, and giant hardwoods towered overhead, their crowns swaying in the gusty wind. My destination that night was a remote Adirondack shelter at the far end of Deep Run Hollow. To get there, I would have to connect a matrix of separate trails.
First, I descended the steep northern bank of Fifteen Mile Creek. The ranger had warned me that the last flood washed the bridge away and that it was never replaced, and she wasn’t kidding. Only the concrete foundations remained on either bank, with broken boards and twisted cable strewn downstream. I slung my boots around my neck by their knotted laces and waded the cold, knee-deep water to the other side. I guessed that too few visitors hiked these trails, and the floods came too often to justify a new bridge.
After putting my boots back on, I scampered over river boulders beneath steep canyon walls, heading back toward the canyon’s steepest stretch. Splashes of paint marked the trail at random. After climbing a steep ridge, I descended again to the confluence of Deep Run and Fifteen Mile Creek, where a weathered wooden trail registry stood like a lonely sentinel.
I twisted the peg and let the hinged door drop. Inside, a water-stained logbook was covered in cobwebs and a few active spiders. The last entry was over a year old: three hikers had scribbled their names and hometowns on a half-empty page. I brushed aside months of dust and wrote my name on the next line. As I closed the cabinet, I wondered whether anyone ever read these entries. Would another year pass before someone saw my name?
Following the next color blaze, a series of blood-red splotches on successive tree trunks, I began the last trail segment. It followed the winding brook called Deep Run for two miles, crossing it a dozen times, until the hollow dead ended. At first, I used strategically placed rocks and fallen logs to stay dry, but that didn’t last. A slick green rock sent my feet flying over my head, and I plunged into a deep pool that soaked me through.
That was when I remembered the ranger’s stark warning as I left her station: if it started to rain heavily, I must not stay at the shelter, because it would flood. I would have to hike to higher ground, and nobody would be coming to get me out. Deep Run Hollow had taken lives before and would again.
Then I heard a rumble overhead. Looking up, I grimaced at the darkening sky and a flash of lightning. Holy shit. This was not in the forecast. I sloshed up the bank and hurried down the trail, wondering what qualified as heavy rainfall.
My feet throbbed inside my wet boots, and I could feel blisters forming. I couldn’t wait to stop hiking. Maybe the shelter had been washed away like the bridge. Still, the trail kept going, fording the stream so many times that I lost count.
I pushed on through thick, overgrown brush. At one point, I glanced at my forearm and was horrified to see dozens of small ticks crawling up my sleeve.
This place was trying to kill me. I had no idea how true that would prove to be.
Finally, the trail straightened out. I could sense the faint trace of an old wagon road. I couldn’t imagine why anyone would come this far up a narrowing hollow. To my great relief, a small wood-paneled shelter emerged from a grove of evergreens. I can’t lie: relief gave way to disappointment. It looked not only disused but forgotten. Birds had built several nests inside. Perched on a small rise overlooking Deep Run, it at least had a view of the hollow. I half expected to find gardening tools and a lawnmower inside. It was more tool shed than shelter for human beings.
A fire pit of circular stacked stones sat out front and to the left, not in direct line of sight from inside, which I found an odd choice. That would prove important as the woods darkened.
I dropped my pack and brushed the leaves and debris out of the shelter as best I could. I set up my sleeping pad and started unpacking my gear. Checking my watch, I decided it was time to collect firewood. That took over an hour and produced a medium-size pile, which proved not enough for my visitor.
It was a relief to see flames creep through the sticks in the fire pit. Nothing is more reassuring in the woods than the snap, crackle, and pop of a growing fire. My boots were soon drying on the surrounding stones, with socks steaming on sticks. I took a moment to breathe and relax. Everything seemed under control.
Examining my bare feet, I grimaced at the thought of hiking out tomorrow. There was no way my thick leather boots would dry out, though maybe my socks would. Worst case, I could spend another day resting my feet before hiking back to my Jeep. That turned out not to be an option I would desire. Painful feet would be the least of my problems.
Darkness usually creeps in slowly in a forest, but deep in the hollow it caught me off guard. The last light slipped behind the ridgeline, and I watched its final glimmers fade. Before I was ready, shadows became my only company. Instinctively, I tossed a couple more logs on the fire. The flames leaped higher, warming me and throwing a wide circle of light. I felt safe in that warmth, as I always do beside a campfire, especially alone in a hollow with darkness pressing in on the woods. The comfort is temporary, of course, because firewood eventually runs out.
I ate a quick dinner of freeze-dried REI food. Some brands are better than others, and this was not one of them. Then I went to fetch a beer from the four-pack I had chilling in the stream. It was gone. Weird.
I returned to camp for my headlamp, figuring the pack had drifted a little downstream and couldn’t have gone far. I followed the bank until the campfire’s glow disappeared behind me. The current didn’t seem strong enough to carry four full cans, linked by a plastic tab, very far. Nothing.
“Impossible,” I said aloud, and heard my voice echo back. Or at least I thought it was my voice. Suddenly I felt isolated and unsafe. Was someone else in these woods? A hermit with a taste for alcohol, living in Deep Run Hollow? Or was something luring me deeper into the darkness?
I began scanning the woods with my headlamp. Bad idea. At the edge of the beam, I caught a glimpse of a shadow, but this one was white, not dark. Was it just my light reflecting off a fallen birch? The hair on the back of my neck stood up. I felt eyes watching me, something taking a great interest in me. Not an animal. Maybe a person, but not a living one.
I rushed back along the trail into the firelight. Footsteps echoed from the forest. Were they mine, or did something follow me? I heaped on firewood until the flames climbed nearly above my head. Night had fully fallen, and the forest was pitch black. I couldn’t tell the far ridgeline from the sky; a black wall had closed around me.
I climbed into the shelter and pressed my back against the rear wall while the roaring fire bathed the interior in warm light. For half an hour I wondered what I had seen, certain something was stalking the edge of camp. The fire sank to red coals and a few stray flames. Summoning my courage, I crept to the shelter opening. Without more wood, the fire would die. I dropped down, hurried the few steps to the woodpile without looking around, and laid the last big branches over the coals. The flames burst up and the fire roared again, if less fiercely.
That was when I made my mistake: I looked past the fire. At the edge of its glow stood a lone woman in white. Not just her dress, but all of her was milky white, from her skin and hair to her gown. Only her face had color, where streaks of blood ran from her eyes. Drifting smoke hid her for a moment, and I jumped back and to the left to keep her in view. This was no trick of light and shadow. She stood motionless at the campfire’s edge, long white hair veiling part of her face, her expression serene rather than ferocious despite the blood.
I sensed something ancient, as though she had risen from the forest itself and walked these hills before any European set foot in Western Maryland. It was obvious she resented my presence. This was her forest, and she was the last of the old native spirits left to guard it. I was trespassing in more ways than one. She saw something in me that other hikers lacked, a threat to her hold on this sacred ground, and she meant to punish me for crossing into her territory. My life was at stake, and so was something that had intruded on her domain: the spirit world.
She clearly bore a grudge and was keeping an old oath. Europeans had blasted a chasm through Sidling Hill and driven Interstate 68 across Greenridge Mountain. Centuries of aggression had followed: industrial clear-cutting, hills replanted with apple trees, everything of value scratched out. She had lived long enough to watch every other supernatural being vanish. Now she alone, the last spirit of old Maryland, would have her vengeance. I had dared to spend the night here, and I doubt she would have granted permission had I asked. It was personal. My vulnerability was what drew her.
She had been waiting for me ever since hearing my jeep door screech all the way ban in the parking lot at the ranger station. She sensed my approach for miles. Each of my steps enraged her. The terminus of Deep Run Hollow was her last refuge. She had no other place to retreat to.
She glided closer with each dying flame, her eyes locked on me as she weighed how best to take me. My fire sputtered, and I cursed myself for not gathering more wood. When it shrank to smoking embers, she reached the shelter opening, her smile stretching wider. I closed my eyes and called for protection. My own shamanic power caught her off guard.
A high-pitched sound came roaring toward us, faint at first, then painfully loud as it tore down the mountainside. I amazed myself with this spell: it was the scream of a truck engine revving in its highest gear. No road ran that way, only Deep Run winding between two steep ridgelines. The roar grew angrier as it neared, the engine sounding ready to burst. I half expected a truck to crash into my clearing.
Something far more astonishing came instead. A tremendous gust blew through the opening, shoved past the witch, and swirled inside the shelter, scattering my gear and the leaves on the floor. Then, to my astonishment, a face emerged: the outline of a great beast. The howling wind became a snarling mouth of fangs, and it turned and roared at the white witch. She fled in shocked disbelief, and the invisible beast pounced after her.
Later it returned to the shelter but did not rest. It prowled back and forth before the open side for the rest of the night, its roars echoing up and down the hollow and off the flanks of Greenridge Mountain. A new god of the forest had claimed its dominion.
I settled into my sleeping bag as distant screeches drifted from deep in the woods. An owl, nothing more. I had shown her who was boss tonight. I sat up and growled loudly. The forest went silent. The next morning, I hiked out to my Jeep. The door screeched but no forest eyes looked my way.