Adventure is going out of the way to make trouble for yourself so you’ll have a good story to tell later. My story is that last night I slept in a cave.

Katie White, Aaron, Lou and I made plans to trek out Point Bridget and use the Camping Cove cabin yesterday. I was busy responding to a flood of email generated after the copyleft pin contest got posted on bOING bOING so when everyone was ready to leave I told them I couldn’t go yet and would just hike out when I was done …and there better be some Elk Tacos ready for me. I hadn’t been to that particular cabin before but I knew the area and had been to the Blue Mussel Cabin so I was comfortable hiking out alone even if it was going to be after dark.

I never really got lost but I also never found the cabin. I ended up trying to hike down the beach from Blue Mussel Cabin and the shore line was all cliffs and boulders. It was pretty stupid to keep going since Blue Mussel Cabin was empty and I could have slept there but I was led on by the fantasy of a warm cabin filled with Elk Tacos and beautiful women. After a couple hours I was ready for a lukewarm cabin filled with Lou and one leftover taco. After a couple more hours I was exhausted from climbing boulders so I decided to take a midnight nap under a tree.

It gets kind of spooky hiking alone in the woods at night. You can only see just ahead of you with your flashlight and the shadows move everywhere as you walk. On the beach I kept coming across these logs that looked like they had been attacked by a rabid 8 foot long Beringian beaver. They just looked that way from getting smashed on the barnacles and rocks but it still gives the imagination something to play with. I about had a heart attack when a big fat porcupine started climbing and clawing up a tree I walked past.

My nap in the woods lasted about an hour because I got cold, kept hearing noises and decided I needed to get moving again. I hiked up into the woods a ways hoping to find a trail but all I found was heavy brush and animal paths. No fresh bear sign, so that was a plus. I went back down to the beach and decided to just go back to Blue Mussel Cabin. Of course the tide had come in and made my beach route even more impossible. At this point I had decided that I wasn’t too keen on hiking in the woods but if I was going to get anywhere that’s where I had to be.

I climbed another cliff and just as I was starting to wade into some thick underbrush I fell through the low tree branches into a cave that was about six feet tall and three feet wide. I guess it was more of a crevasse than a cave but with the trees and bushes growing over the top it felt like a cave. The floor of the cave was flat and covered with small tree branches and pine needles so I just took out my sleeping bag and crashed.

I hiked out at about 6:30 am after putting on some dry socks and made it back to the car by 10:15am to find a note from Lou, Katie, and Aaron.

“We got lost… and slept in the woods. We hope you are o.k. If we don’t hear from you by 1 or 2 we will do something (it is 10am now) So… don’t just get this note and run off and do something w/o calling, which I’m sure you would do… will talk to you soon.”

I drove fast and met them for breakfast at the waffle place. It couldn’t have ended better.

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 13th, 2005 at 3:23 am and is filed under Adventure, Juneauite. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.