Wandering....

I've mentioned quite a few times that when I backpack I like to go off trail and wander. I've found some pretty cool stuff by following my nose. More than once I've stood in the forest and looked around and thought, "If I were hunting here it'd be best to stand up there and take my shot over there", and then I walk over there and see a arrowhead. It's kind of eerie when that happens.

Once, when I was about 22 years old, I was hiking along a river bank with a buddy and it was hot and he was whining about not have any beer and I said something like, "Well there's probably a cooler full floating against those boulders there and when we find it I'll have one with you". Well, you guessed it, we got there and there it was. It still had ice in it too. Someone must've flipped a canoe upstream and floated down past it and decided not to try and find it, but there is was, floating between two big boulders and no one was anywhere around. We were both honestly amazed, but the guy I was with thought I was some kind of wizard. (I didn't try too hard to convince him otherwise )

I've known, and been with, others that have had this sort of thing happen too. I'm fine with chocking them up to coincidence, but I'm curious if any others here have a story about things you've encountered in an unexpected or strange way while wandering about.

Bigfoot sightings would, of course, fit in with this thread too

I went down to Oregon once for a hike and had one of those.. it was wearing a kilt too for gosh's sake.. I don't think these creatures realize that it's hard for our species to un-see something like that...

I was there too, so can attest to the "bigfoot" sighting!

Okay, I have one for you. My neighbor, Randy, and I camped out the night before last and he told me this story:

I have to set it up a bit so to keep it short here the gist of it; About 3 years ago Randy's mother passed away. Last year his father remarried a woman that had just moved here and joined his church. Five years ago that women's daughter's purse was stolen. Two weeks ago Randy and his father were walking the shoreline on the lake below our homes and Randy spotted a small leather bag on the shoreline and picked it up and opened it. Inside was a driver's license and a few other personal items. After reading the name on the license, and commenting that he didn't know the person, his dad took the license and realized it belonged to his new wife's daughter.

PerryMK shared a great story a few weeks ago.

I've heard of Bigfoots wearing kilts from other's out there too. JimShaw swears to it. I don't know what they wear here, but I have heard that this is a "very Squatchy area".

I find that, as I get older, my mind tends to wander and I often follow it - with some interesting results.

Yeah, mine too, and apparently some of the places it goes only interests me

In 2010, I went backpacking in Dinkey Wilderness. While hiking one of the many trails I saw far away in a meadow a pink object. I hiked over and found a pink 32 oz Nalgene with stickers on it, one of which said "Katie".

I hike with a Platy Big Zip and usually don't use Nalgenes. In 2011 when I went back out there to Dinkey, on a whim I picked up the pink one - on a day hike from base camp at one of the lakes, I threw on the Flash pack and had the pink Nalgene in hand as we climbed up the hill toward Dogtooth Peak. Coming down all in a line were a bunch of teenagers. At the back of the line was a woman in shorts. She stopped dead and pointed at the Nalgene and yelled "where did you find that???" to which I replied, "Are you Katie?"

We took pictures of each other and she let me keep the Nalgene. She takes groups of kids to Dinkey every year like clockwork, from Orange County.

Cool story Lori! And what a nice way to meet someone.

It does seem to me that there is more to some of these kinds of things than coincidence. So many things have to line up for them to happen, and so many little things, choices we make, could have altered or prevented the outcome.

For me, wandering around has led me to some wonderful places, and to meeting some great people, and the opportunity to share something with them.

Sometimes I get vague premonitions of what I might find when I'm out bushwhacking. Nothing like in the movies, but more of a general feeling, or line of thought. Sometimes I don't find anything that fulfills those, but other times I do.

I would think that on SAR missions one might encounter this a lot. A feeling or urge to go look someplace, or what you might find while searching, perhaps an increased sense of urgency.

It's probably best described as intuition, and how it works. and the results we can attribute to it, are a hard thing to relate and discuss. We all have it though, and we all act on it, many times a day in fact. But it's hard to talk about, at least in our culture it's not discussed much on a personal basis.

I think that like other gifts, or skills, one can get better at it with practice. And I think that it is an important skill for backpackers to have and hone.