Dawn, Day Two on the Whites Creek Trail

I was up with the sunrise, not that sunrise is particularly early at the moment 🙂 The evening and night had not been without incident.

Setting up my hammock, I noticed it was close to a big rock. I was checking that the very pointy rock wasn’t right under my back when I managed to, once more, fall out of the hammock. Okay, so that’s just amusing to any bystanders — I’m sure the squirrels were chuckling at my expense, except I landed on the rock, fortunately, not right in the middle of my back, but on my shoulder. It was quite tender and probably bruised, though I never checked.
Later in the evening, I was lying in the hammock reading when I heard something approaching. For some unknown reason, I froze. That’s not happened before. Previously I’ve either shouted at or got out and shooed off any encroaching critters. In the dusk and dead of night, I’ve been nose-to-nose with deer and shouted at bumbling razor-back hogs and feral hogs. Freezing quite disconcerted me.

On reflection, I felt better when I remembered the posts of solo backpackers on the forums who wear earplugs at night so that they are oblivious to nearby critters. That’s something I don’t do. And then there are the people who flat-out refuse to go out solo backpacking for fear of the forest creatures.
Finally, in the middle of the night, some alpha doe took exception to my camp and started huffing (barking is the proper term) and stomping around in a failed attempt to drive me away. That amused me, they always seem to do this during the deer hunting season!

It was 41°F when I set up camp, and it dropped to 37°F overnight. I was nice and warm with my summer quilts.

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December 13, 2024 6:57.Dawn, Day Two on the Whites Creek Trail