Legend

It was ten years ago that my life would be changed forever. My wife and I set out the the ozark mountains for our normal camping trip, that at the time we did once a year. My wife name was Angela. She was such a sweetheart. Her smile always brightened my day no matter how bad it was. She loved camping out and around June every year we would hike the mountain terrain. Before we leave, we’d always pack our rock climbing gear, so that way we could climb some of the steeper parts of the mountain. We camped up there for several days and head back home after the week was over. This routine was one of the best way to get out of the house and immerse yourself into a world that we are not used to as far as modern man is concerned, but we always enjoyed the nature and abundance of wildlife in these parts. However, on this particular trip, my life would be changed forever. On this trip. My wife would end up getting killed by something that me and her thought never existed. I know this may sound a little bit crazy but, we encounter something in the woods that would later take the life of my beloved wife. It has changed my very reason of existence and has haunted me for the past ten years since that incident happened. This particular year we planned our annual camping trip for the Ozark St. Francis National Forest area. It was about a fifteen mile hike into the woods to our normal spot in that area. We put up x’s on a trees to let us know where our trail we walked was. We found this area a long time ago on a camping trip into the Ozark’s. We walked for miles in one day until we came across this lake in the middle of the mountains that wasn’t on any of our maps at all. We made our own trail up that way and made it our normal trek for years. We would do this annually like I said and we would plan ahead by at least a whole month. That would give us enough time to get our food and snacks and everything gathered together for the hike out there. We would grab brats and ribeyes, stuff like that for meals. Occasionally we would grab burgers, fries, chips, and drinks of all kinds so we would be good to go. We also grabbed a grate from the grill so we could put it over top of the fire and cook over the fire. That was the type of thing my wife and I loved doing together. There is a spring also on our hike that we found and we would make stops at that spring to fill our canteens for the trip as well. We planned this specific trip in June. Just before my wife’s birthday. I thought that would be special to her. We used to do it around my birthday but this year I wanted to do something different for my wife. She was excited for it and we told her mother and father about it. They were ecstatic about it as well, but reminded us to be careful like usual. We had a lot to do still as far as getting things ready. The night before we grabbed our tent and sleeping bags and put them in our Jeep Grand Cherokee. When morning comes around we would grab the food and snacks and everything else we needed for the journey and start off to the Ozark’s. It’s about a six hour drive from where we live to the spot we stop at in the Ozark’s. We would leave the Jeep on a back road and grab our stuff and head to our first camping spot for the night. We would do our hikes in sections. Three and a half miles the first run, four miles the second, and so on. When we got to the spot I noticed that I forgot to grab my sleeping bag the night before. I was ok with it but my wife worried that I might not be able to get sleep. We were set though other than that. “Babe did you at least grab the snacks and food?” My wife asked me while grabbing her sleeping bag and a bag of snacks. “Yep I did babe. Just grabbing it out of the back now.” I said grabbing the bags from the back. “Alright we don’t have much time babe so we got to get a going if we are going to make our first spot on time.” She said after closing the passenger side back door and walking to the back of the Jeep. I grabbed the keys from the ignition, seems how I forgot them of all things, and we started off into the woods. Following the x’s into the woods along our trail. The birds and bees chirping and buzzing around gave us a calm feel to the day. The smell of fresh pine trees and oaks made me feel at home. I always felt one with the woods, I could get lost and still feel ok about it. I never got lost in the woods though, I knew my way around this area well. We got to our spot and started setting up. We looked for fire wood first because it was starting to get dark. Then we used the light from the fire to setup our tent. I decided to grill some burger on this particular night. My wife loved them and suggested I make another for her. We than cuddled together in the tent and went to sleep after a bit. The crickets chirping and frogs croaking made it easy to fall asleep this night. We were really at one with the woods.