Periwinkle's account of a solo night hike up Bondcliff way, in which she is quite upfront about being scared of the dark, brings up an interesting subject, which one might call atavistic fears. Forests and darkness are in fact scary, and I think really that it is rooted in evolutionary considerations: we're diurnal animals, our sensory equipment doesn't work that well at night, and we are (were) easy prey for nocturnal predators. It's also clear that being alone, as opposed to accompanied, makes one about ten times as susceptible to these fears. Of course examined dispassionately the risk of being attacked and eaten at night is infinitesimally small in most of the places we recreate. So why not just get over it? I think in fact that this "getting over it" does happen. Probably twenty-five years ago, when I was into exploring simplicity, I decided to experiment with leaving behind tent, sleeping bag, pad, and just lie down on the ground where darkness found me. This was somewhere near Zealand notch, I could probably even name the trail if I had a map. As it turned out, I couldn't hack it, it was too scary, and I ended up stumbling out three or four miles in the dark back to the trailhead, to avoid sleeping with the terrors of being alone in the dark. About five years ago, after twenty years of intervening experience, I had my one and only unplanned bivvy in the woods, in the North Cascades: an overly long cross-country day trip route where I came down on a cliff band just after dark and I couldn't find my way down through it in the dark. So I just found a level spot, the uphill side of a big old-growth red cedar, and slept the night away on the duff. I was a bit cold, and hungry, but psychologically perfectly comfortable. Resigned. The way one might feel about being marooned for the night in an airport terminal. Perhaps the red cedar had a calming influence, the big old ones do have great presence.
Interestingly, I have also since discovered another atavistic fear, having to do with really brushy, restricted-visibility travel. This was another solo travel experience, through an old burn, on the Fraser plateau in British Columbia. Really featureless terrain, brushy lodgepole forest, and I had been following a compass course all day, without anything in the way of intermediate reference points. About noon I crossed into an old burn, very brushy, more than head-high, couldn't see more than ten or fifteen feet in any direction, and walked for about three or four hours in that stuff. It really spooked me. At one point I climbed up a remnant tree, just so I could see more, and breathe a little easier. I pressed on to get to the other side of the burn, I absolutely did not want to spend the night in that scary place. Just at dusk I reached the other side of the burn, and breathed a great sigh of relief. I think this could also be explained as a "predator" thing, we like to be able to see around a bit, and definitely seem to have an esthetic preference for opener woods and more parklike landscapes, where our good vision is not rendered useless.
Interestingly, I have also since discovered another atavistic fear, having to do with really brushy, restricted-visibility travel. This was another solo travel experience, through an old burn, on the Fraser plateau in British Columbia. Really featureless terrain, brushy lodgepole forest, and I had been following a compass course all day, without anything in the way of intermediate reference points. About noon I crossed into an old burn, very brushy, more than head-high, couldn't see more than ten or fifteen feet in any direction, and walked for about three or four hours in that stuff. It really spooked me. At one point I climbed up a remnant tree, just so I could see more, and breathe a little easier. I pressed on to get to the other side of the burn, I absolutely did not want to spend the night in that scary place. Just at dusk I reached the other side of the burn, and breathed a great sigh of relief. I think this could also be explained as a "predator" thing, we like to be able to see around a bit, and definitely seem to have an esthetic preference for opener woods and more parklike landscapes, where our good vision is not rendered useless.
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