The Haunting
~ Downey Mtn. - Glacier Peak Wilderness ~

Downey Mountain © Ken James McLeod

You spend 50+ years in the mountains (by year 2000 you account for 535 high lakes visited & 268 trips into the mtns) and just when you think there is no such thing as perhaps Bigfoot, because you'd have seen one in the off-trail obscure remote places you've been, you hear the most god-awful howls, shrieks, shrills, and bellowing-bantering you've ever heard in your life at 2:00 am in the morn. And you swear on a stack of bibles you've heard every NW red-blooded creature that walks the earth and hunted many of them. When the two of you (my son Ken and I) are the only climbing humans on the mountain above 5,500' (no other vehicles parked at the old trailhead) and you are now way off the beaten path where only angels fear to tread and are camped for the night, you wonder what the Hell was that? It then it goes silent, and then 1/2 hour later, you hear one more whoop-howl-shrill. In the morning, you both shrug it off as perhaps a pair of spastic barred-owls? Or Not? The next few days on the mountain climbing higher yet is still void of other humans, and so is the spot where you parked your vehicle many miles back upon return. A haunting perhaps...

Creatures of Hue and Cry...

With the coming of dusk, they come from beyond the smoldering embers liken to coal, Dancing figures of the night betwixt the shimmering shoal, Can't quite hear, They whisper things that generate fear, Oh what fright lurks in forest shadows beyond sight: Goblins, Witches and the like; things that go "eek" in the blue-black night...

KJM

Aug. 16-18, 2003

all rights reserved