It was a semi-interesting ride on the south shore train where one of the conductors who recognized me from last week tried to hook a young lady up with, “a handsome young man who’s going camping.” No chemistry. Upon exiting the train I headed south accompanied by the frequent short buzzes of Common Nighthawks (Chordeiles minor). It was impossible to see the generally high flying birds, not even the white flashes near the wing tips, but in some ways I found the familiar calls a comfort in the darkness of the night. It was cloudy so star gazing wasn’t really an option. The moon was not out so like last time I stumbled down a nearly invisible road. Sure, I had a head lamp and a secondary light but I wanted to keep things as natural as possible. The second reason is that you can actually see farther when you don’t have lights on. Obviously that visibility is lacking in color but the distance to which you can see individual objects is significantly farther than when you have lights shining and glaring out everything beyond ten feet from you. If you give yourself a few moments of adjustment, the fear you initially experience goes away when you turn the lights out.
I found a suitable sight to plop down in behind a ridge and zonk out for the night. The calls of the nighthawks died away as they glided toward the distant lake hunting for insects. Once the tent was up and I had zipped myself in, a chipmunk twittered suddenly, paused, and began to squeak at regular intervals of every 5 seconds no farther than 10 feet from me. At first this was interesting color to the night but pretty soon it became mildly annoying as it seemed there was no particular end in sight. It seems though I may have been rescued by another predator of the night, owls. The chipmunk suddenly stopped, creating a sound vacuum moments later filled by the faint chirping of what sounded suspiciously like begging chicks. This was only a momentary intrusion to the omnipresent silence. Sleep, dancing with the distant sound of Coyotes, soon took hold.
I woke up thinking, “crap it rained so much my tent couldn’t resist it all,” as I moved quickly to move my sleeping bag away from droplets hanging on the tent roof. As it turns out, not rain, but a heavy mist. And let me emphasize the heavy.
This made seeing things at a distance at lower elevations farily difficult, but being that the stuff immediately in front of you was still visible the mist was hardly a nuisance but an unexpected and quite awesome twist to the day. Little did I know the day would be soaking wet in just about every way, starting with the mist on my tent and sleeping bag. My curiosity about the possible owlets from last night had to remain unsatisfied as a brief scoping of the area’s evergreens turned up nothing leaving me no way to confirm that it was indeed the activity of owls that I was hearing. There was a handful of birds calling, primarily Tufted Titmouse (Baeolophus bicolor), Robins (Turdus migratorius), and Red-bellied Woodpeckers (Melanerpes carolinus).
To Be Continued
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