I stayed solo at the Vandeventer Shelter last Fall. It was a beautiful night and sunrise. Middle of the night, I got up and felt like I needed to play something on my Native American Flute. I had never heard the story of the murder.
This is a quotation from the book I will soon publish. In "A Wildly Successful 200-Mile Hike" I was writing about an experience at Vandeventer shelter:
A Song for the Moon: One AM and all is well… My hammock hangs next to the drop-off at the Vandeventer shelter, and the October night sky is beautifully lighted by the nearly full hunter’s moon.
I’ve gotten up for my middle-of-the-night pee, and I am entranced by the stillness. The night is so clear that I could reach out and touch the hills on the far side of the valley. It will be a long night, with many more hours of darkness than I need to sleep, so I walk around the silent walls to the front of the shelter.
Turning the corner, mice scurry about in their nocturnal searching for food, but this night there are no other hikers from which to gain sustenance with a trifle stolen from their pack. My own food is outside the shelter, back near my hammock, and they will not find it before the sun and daylight makes them less frisky.
I sit on the edge of the shelter floor and listen into the darkness. The woods are much quieter than in mid summer, but I can still hear the occasional night creature as it creates a rustling scurry in the dry leaves.
A great horned owl calls from across a ravine. Hearing no answer, I do my best to imitate his call. It must not be good enough, because he does not come closer. Instead he calls out again and again, probably laughing under his breath at the sound of the city-slicker, pseudo owl that has wandered into his forest.
Back near my hammock, I pull the Native American flute from the side pouch of my pack. Settling my back against a chilly rock, a low and mournful song emerges from my mind and is transmitted through my fingers and the flute into the night vapors. My breath propels the rising melody arrhythmically through the naked branches and toward the moon.
I feel one with the woods, my spirit feasting in this October forest, bathed by the hunter’s light. For an hour I sit suspended between earth and sky, looking over the valley of mortals entombed in their square plastic boxes, fitfully sleeping their way through the night.
Finally, refreshed by my spiritual night walk, I lean back in my hammock, pull the quilt over my chilled shoulders, and in my rocking bed, I fall asleep.
Much of my experience in the woods is mental and spiritual. The more time and experience I have in the forest, the less it feels like wilderness and the more it feels like home.