A night visitor.

Inside the tent was pure darkness the kind you only find in the wilds of your mind or the wilderness. My heart stopped when I heard the noise again, that had woken me from a deep high altitude sleep.. It was faint at first like a whisper on the wind. It was a cry I was certain, but from what I did not know. I gazed into the darkness listening . Was it an animal or a child? Was it the wind playing tricks as it was blowing through the trees? I could feel it’s presence as it came closer and I began to worry in earnest for my safety.  I tried to rationalize the sound, I tried in vain to wake from what certainly had to be a dream, brought on by the dinner of pepper and sausage I had eaten just a couple of hours before. Perhaps it was the extra glass of the lovely wine I drank by the campfire before retiring to the safety of my tent causing my mind to play tricks on me.

Then I heard the cry again only closer to me, I knew I was awake for certain. I also knew we had company. It was on the right side of the tent and it sounded like a wounded animal. I quietly fumbled for the flashlight, my fingers were shaking and I could not take hold of it properly. There was condensation on the flashlight  and it slipped from my clumsy grasp. I tried to awaken my husband, who was  sound asleep inside his sleeping bag. I nudged him gently and then with some force covering his mouth as to not startle our midnight guest. With my fingers pressed to my lips in the still of the night we listened. It slowly made its way around the edge bumping into the tent with its body, breathing and sighing heavily into crisp night air. I could hear the blood rushing in my ears as my heart tried not to leap from my chest, as we waited in silence, for the night visitor to make its next move.

I had found the flash light and we debated a plan in hushed whispers. We heard a crunching noise, just beyond the front of the tent out near the extinguished fire pit.  We thought we heard a muffled cry once more and then nothing. The noises began to fade away. What ever it was had decided to move on. Perhaps the rocks around the fire pit had grown cold and it went in search of something else entirely. We lay awake starring into each others eyes until we eventually fell asleep once again gripping each others hands like we were holding on to the edge of a cliff, willing the dawn to come quickly.

When we awoke the next morning to calm crisp mountain air. The fresh dew was shimmering like diamonds in the morning light, and we were scarred again in an instant. The dawn revealed  our nightmare with such clarity as to the “who” of our late night guest, that it left me trembling. There were large tracks circling our tent and a clear area where our guest had laid down near the fire pit and had its midnight snack. Like crumbs the feathers were left as a calling card giving us a new insight to our guests identity.  We took photos of the tracks and the feathered evidence so we could get a positive identification on our murderous guest.

I almost wished we had not had confirmation of the who, who was creeping around our tent in the night. The ranger said it was a mountain lion and from the looks of it he was hungry and big. I was thankful that our guest has brought his own meal and enjoyed it by the warm rocks and moved on. Even now the thought of that big cat circling our tent makes my hair stand on end. I decided then that our next camping trip we would spend the night in our car. I even suggested perhaps we camped in our back yard under the street light filled night sky. I knew for sure I was not sleeping in a tent the rest of the summer.  We have children and pets after all, and that was as close to the wild side as I need to be.