The Boundary

It’s mid-October and on the impossibly beautiful Appalachian trail that traces the Tennessee and North Carolina border. Already miles past Hot Springs. This is difficult going. The rolling vistas of Southern Virginia are breathtaking, but here…there is something about the Great Smokeys that settles hard on your mind. 

It will be cold tonight. 

I’m told the Appalachians are the oldest mountains on Earth, second only to a range in South Africa. They have worn down from heights once greater than the Rockies. They’ve survived countless cataclysms, the great floods and polar shifts, the killing ice. You feel their immense age. 

These mountains have also been home to people and species long forgotten. And as the light begins to fade, the mind can’t help but pull at that thread you’d rather not pick…what if those forgotten and gone people and species are not forgotten and gone at all, but merely hidden, somehow surviving in these most ancient of mountains?   

It’s a fair question, as I wonder if it’s their spirits or their flesh itself that shadows me now from the ridge. 

Over 1,600 folks go missing in America’s forests each year. Well over 100 in the Smokies alone since they unofficially started counting. Who really knows though? Inexplicably these are not figures kept by the government. At least, that’s their story (I think they’re counting).

Regarding those 1,600 missing souls, I’m not talking about deaths by misadventure, which is a soberingly large number, but people who just…poof…vanish. 

One of the go-to answers for all these people just being forever lost is that the mountains are eating them.  

Take Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. It is the largest cave system in North America and not yet fully explored. The same geology extends into Tennessee and Alabama. The Southern states are honeycombed with caves and caverns. And when you look at where people vanish, they are clustered around two things: national parks and cave systems. 

We’re told the logical conclusion is that people go exploring, grossly misunderstanding how disorienting and dangerous it is to descend and they just get lost or stuck and then panic, slowly starving while madness overtakes them. Some posit they fall into crevices. Either way, animals do the rest in lonely dark corners.  

While no doubt this is the fate for some, none of that is a satisfying answer because animals leave remains, clothing and gear among them. And remains are never found. 

David Paulides of Missing 411 has spent years chronicling stories of the missing and the frankly bizarre circumstances surrounding their disappearances. His analysis convincingly rules out the logical and rational answers; he’s not a death by misadventure kind of guy. While he’s careful not to say aliens and Bigfoot, that’s where it all seems to be pointing (and with disturbing evidence to back it up). 

I was told once by someone who declared himself to be a woodsman that if you don’t want to get spooked, then don’t. Resist the urge to look over your shoulder and stare too long into the deep because sure as night follows day, you’ll eventually convince yourself something is staring back. 

I practice this advice. But I don’t need to look over my shoulder to catch the silhouette on the ridge again. 

The more upsetting ideas about where the people are going have nothing to do with Bigfoot and cave systems but rather other people. 

I made the mistake of researching the cases of the insane, cults and covens, and the serial killers who stalk the forests and rural areas on the edge of the vastness. Grizzly and weird stories. I don’t recommend looking. But facts are what they are and a man prepares accordingly. Federal HST and tritium sites are more comforting out here than a new pair of insoles.

And speaking of Grizzlies, while that particular monster isn’t in the Appalachians, the Black Bears sure are and they’re no joke. I heard a story of a Montana man who drove a bear off by shoving his arm down its throat. Not sure I’d have the presence of mind to try that one, but we’ll file it away just in case. 

These were all the idle thoughts going through my head as I set up camp and settled in as twilight descended. It was my last campsite. I’ve not been back to my beloved woods since.

A sound. A breath.

Laying still and I feel the pulse rush into my palette and my tongue go thick.  Eyes are wide searching for light in the blackness. 

Again. A short snort next to my head with a millimeter of tent between me and… a snout? 

A weak command, “Go away, bear…” 

And then what I fear the most…not a grunt or another snort but the same word repeated back to me, low…thick…slow and slurred by an accent as ancient as these mountains, the warmth of its breath on my ear…

”BEAR…” 

My hand flies to the pistol as I move in a tangled fight and flight, tumble and turn to the other end of the small tent. 

Flat on my back with knees bent and spread, the gun pointing between them and the small green tritium sites vibrating in the blackness. 

A muffled giggle and BEAR is moving away. 

I hear it. Slow long heavy steps retreating and then…

Tap. Tap…tap, tap, tap… 

Small stones are hitting the tent. 

Then a cascade of what must be twigs and leaves thrown against the side…then silence. 

Moments before it happens, there’s a heaving groan and the far end of the tent is jerked up and I’m rolled to the back into a ball, like being at the bottom of a sack yanked by a giant. 

Impossible to move and now being dragged by something too strong, too fast. It hurts, slamming, careening, bumping.  

Then I’m off the ground and feeling an arc beginning with fluids quickly collecting at the back of my head as the speed increases in a wide swing. 

A crushing impact. Immediately taste blood. Dear God Almighty…

The dragging starts again and I know I won’t survive another smashing. 

It’s still in my hand. I pull the trigger with my arm pinned to the side and pray no part of me is in line with the muzzle.  

Again and again and again until the slide locks back. 

The dragging stops and there is silence. 

Covered in the collapsed tent like an animal in a net. It’s claustrophobic. No sounds, no light, no motion. I lay still, waiting. And waiting. Just waiting. 

Slowly I move to sit up, the tent shushing across my face sounding like a hand brushing a raincoat. Snap! I freeze on an elbow.  

Heavy steps are advancing quickly with no time to curl as a bubbling throat clearing rasp punctuates the delivery blow that finishes the breaks to the ribs already on fire from the collision with the tree. Blinding pain… but blissful unconsciousness. Dear God Almighty…

I came to…

…but far away from the campsite, stretched out near the trail and numb from the cold. I couldn’t find the site had I wanted to. And I surely didn’t. 

After an hours long shuffle and wheezing with every yard, I finally encountered a pair hiking.  

“So glad you found me. Nasty slip off the trail…almost a death by misadventure…”

You think you’d want to talk about an encounter like this, but the reality is you can’t. What do you say? You’re reluctant to engage in the conversation and endure all the rational explanations that will try and dismiss what you know damn well is the truth. 

There is a boundary between our world and a wild, more ancient and unforgiving one. Most are lucky and able to cross it and return not aware they’ve been trespassing in unwelcome territory. Over 1,600 unlucky people vanish each year crossing this boundary.