>>2390620One time I was too late with my maintenance on one spot that is enshrouded by large blackberry bushes and that can only be accessed via a tunnel I cut into the bushes and it was too dark to walk back on the mountain trail so I had to sleep on site. It was May and pretty cold still in the mountains and I only had a completely wet cotton parka jacket from digging deep holes and a small utility tarp that I use to mix soil and no cord. Used my pack and bags with soil conditioners as a pad and the tarp as a blanket. Sleep was bad, and in the middle of the night in absolute darkness I woke up hearing frightening sounds that I had never heard before. They sounded like cries from a huge bird about every 5 seconds but from ground level from behind the blackberry bushes and I could tell that it was screaming at me. I estimated from the sound of it that this animal must have a voicebox at about the size of a pig or dog. You could tell that it was large, and there were also several and they were circeling my sleeping spot. This went on for a good hour. Absolutely terrifying
Another time I hiked to a location I needed to go that night. On my way there, apparently a storm had broken off quite a few large branches from some trees and I had to move them out of the way. They were thick as a leg and difficult to move through the thicket so only an adult or older child would be able to move them. When I was walking back about 2 hours later around dusk I was absolutely sure that nobody else was around. As usual, I could hear the birds' warning cries and still see every spider web overstretching the path that I avoided previously and see the fields of goldenrods I did not step through still untouched, and I'm absolutely sure that there was no living person there. But when I came back to the section of the path the braches were moved back into the middle of the path. There is not even a parking lot or anything at the nearest road and I've never seen a single soul in that area.
