Adirondacks

On Sunday evening I had passed through the town of Crown Point, NY, and expected to make it to Westport before nightfall. Cycling along 9N, I noticed Lake Champlain glistening through the trees. I had to get a better look.

Ditching my bike in the grass and ducking into the bushes, I came out onto a large boulder. The scenery was magnificent. Gentle ripples lapped at the rocky shore, which was lined by train tracks. Every so often a speed boat would pass, but other than that, no one was around. My cell phone was out of service, so unfortunately I could not let my Mom know where I was, which I was supposed to do each night.

The rock itself, roughly cubic in shape and about fifteen feet tall, appeared a perfect place to sleep. It had a crease just deep enough to serve as a sort of bed, and it would take a lot of rolling for me to fall off in the middle of the night. The only issue was that I would not be able to sleep in my tent, in case of rain or other hazards that might cause me to slide off the rock.

I decided to be brave and go tent-less. I set up my sleeping arrangements, took some photos, did laundry, and splashed around in the lake. As the full moon rose and I snuggled up in my sleeping bag, I could hardly believe I'd found this ideal spot. Night set in, and the traffic on the road (about thirty feet away) thinned out. I considered the possible risks:

1. Someone could come upon my spot and we might have an unpleasant encounter.

2. A wild animal could smell the food in my panniers, and decide to have a midnight snack, which would scare the shit out of me and cause me to catapult off the rock.

3. I could get hurt somehow, and if I couldn't get help, I could die because no one would know where to look for me.

At first, #3 weighed most heavily on my mind. Besides, I knew my Mom would worry no matter what, as I was supposed to call her and hadn't. I thought more about wild animals. What kinds of things lived around here? I wasn't sure. I assumed black bears, and I can't say I felt comfortable with them, but what really occupied my unfortunately vivid imagination were wolves.

A scene played over and over in my mind: I would awake in the middle of the night to a group of hungry wolves surrounding my sleeping bag. Snarling, they would move in and I'd be forced off the rock. I'd tumble down and land with a splat on the railroad tracks, where they would pounce and eat me alive.

With my headlamp on and pepper spray gripped tightly in hand, I lay there, wide-eyed, considering all of this. Feeling a hot rush of adrenaline every time I heard something move in the bushes, I realized that if I were to stay, I would not be able to get any sleep.

It must have been about ten p.m. when I decided that this was not going to work. I opted to go on foot rather than bike in the dark. I grabbed my hydro pack with my essentials in it, and with my survival knife and pepper spray each in hand, I climbed down from the rock, leaving everything else behind, to search for help.

With my headlamp and a full moon to light the way, I took off north down the railroad tracks. Scared, and with no idea where I was going, I ran until I reached a dirt road. I continued on the dirt road, which luckily led back to 9N. On the road I switched directions, and started running south (intending to stay as close as possible to my rock), and took mental notes on the houses as I ran past them. Most were dingy-looking and unkempt, with paint peeling off the shutters and patches of weeds serving as lawns. When I came upon a piece of property that looked decent by comparison, I decided to investigate. It appeared to be the home of a retired couple. When I knocked on the door a craggy old man in boxer briefs answered.

"I'm really sorry to bother you, but I hoped that I could borrow your telephone to call my mother." He looked skeptical, but went to fetch the phone.

After a short conversation with my Mom, I returned the phone and asked if I could stick around until daylight. Ignoring my request, he directed me to a nearby campground. I thanked him, though I was just as scared as before, and ran back north on 9N. I wasn't confident about the existence of the campground, but I kept going, as my options seemed slim.

I finally came to a campground sign and wandered in. I approached the first person I saw still awake. It was a man, probably about sixty years old.

"Hi, I'm really sorry to bother you, but..." and went on to explain my predicament in the simplest way I could put it.

"Well now I don't quite understand," he started with an eerie southern drawl, all too reminiscent of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. "What are you doing out here all alone?" he asked accusingly.

I explained it all again, getting agitated that he couldn't understand what I was asking. "I hoped I could stay around this campsite where there are people until daylight when I can go back to my stuff and continue on." I knew it was an odd thing to ask.

"You see now, around here, people don't do things like that. Where are you from? How old are you?"

Realizing this was a waste of energy, I said goodbye and walked away.

I noticed a group of six people, thirty-somethings, sitting around a campfire. I approached them, delivered my story, and waited in awkward silence for a response. When they finally said yes, I burst into tears, embarrassed at how silly I must have sounded when I said, "I had a nice camp spot by the lake, but I got scared of wild animals and came here instead." They agreed to let me sleep in the back of their car. I was utterly relieved.

I was holding their flashlight as they cleared a place for me when a tall man approached from the side. "Hello there," he said, his face only half visible from my flashlight.

"Hi," I said, with a sinking feeling in my gut.

"My name is Officer —, K-9 unit, how are you doing tonight?" he said with a detectable Bronx accent. I noticed the creepy chainsaw guy standing at bit back from us. 

"Would you like to go for a walk?" he said. By this point I was so screwed up in the head I believed he might not be an officer at all, but actually a murderer working for the chainsaw guy, who had killed a real cop and was wearing his uniform.

The first man I spoke to turned out to be the campground caretaker, and he had called the police. From the information I'd given him, I appeared to be a "runaway." After a load of questions from the officer and a phone call to my Mom, this proved untrue, though it left me bitter and wondering what the difference was, according to them, between myself and a runaway.

After a teary-eyed phone conversation with my mom in the campground office, in which I told her all the scary details I'd left out in our conversation earlier, the police officer asked if I'd like him to help me go search for my stuff back at the rock. Then the chainsaw guy said I could set up camp there at no charge when I got back. The night was beginning to turn around.

When the officer asked how far from we were from my stuff, I estimated it to be about a mile. We hopped into his K-9 SUV with German Shepard on guard in the rear, and took off down the road in search of my rock. I directed him onto the dirt road, we drove for maybe half a mile, and parked when we couldn't go any further because we'd met the tracks. "Ready to go for a walk?" he asked.

"Yeah!" I said, too enthusiastically. We started south down the tracks.

It turned out the officer knew a little bit about bikes. So we talked about that, among other insignificant things while we trudged through the darkness, unacknowledging the present ridiculous task.

"Are we getting close?" he asked. It turned out that I had run further than originally estimated.

"Almost there," I said less than confidently.

When we came to the general area, I must have led him back and forth five times, each way getting more frustrated that I could not locate my rock. Everything looked different in the dark, and aside from the moon, all we had to light the way was the weak flashlight I had accidentally taken from the folks who were about to put me up for the night in their car. Why didn't he have a flashlight of his own? I didn't ask.

I suggested that we climb up to the road to search from there, because with a flashlight shining into the woods, it would be easier to spot the reflectors on my bicycle, which I'd locked to a tree. He agreed, and we ascended haphazardly upward through the darkness of rocks and trees.

Walking along the dark road, it wasn't long before we spotted my bike. We hurried over, and when we came out onto the rock, he looked around and said, "Wow...you've got quite a spot here." The fact I had planned to camp illegally didn't seem to be an issue. I didn't mention that either.

Once I'd collected my stuff, we set off walking down 9N toward the car, him lighting the way with the flashlight, and me wheeling my bike behind. He called a friend, who met us on the road in a small sedan. The officer thought I could put my bike inside so we could get back to the K-9 vehicle quickly. I told him my bike wasn't going to fit. He was anxious to get back to his vehicle as soon as possible for some reason, so we decided that I would cycle the rest of the way while he drove back with his friend. They took off, and I was left alone again pedaling in the darkness, thinking this night couldn't get any more bizarre.

As the night came to end, I relaxed inside of my tent in the campground, grateful for a safe place to lay my head, at least for one night.