Legend

Day One In the Ozarks

Woke up this morning to birds chirping and the winds gently blowing a breeze against the tent. I sat up inside and adjusted my eyes to the incoming light. I looked around the tent after stretching and stood up. Since I didn’t have my sleeping bag, it was fairly easy to stand. I went outside to answer the call of nature and start breakfast. I did this for my wife as she was never up before me, she loved her beauty sleep. As I cooked breakfast I started to take in the scenery. So breathtaking up there in the mountainous terrain. The sunlight just cresting above the top of the mountains, bringing the sun itself and all its beauty to the sky above.

My wife started to stir as I finished breakfast. She looked out at me from the tent flap that I left open and smiled.

“Good morning babe,” she said as she got up and ready to go.

“Good morning hun. Did you sleep well?” I asked her as I loaded her paper plate with eggs, bacon, and sausage.

“I sure did, this place is very peaceful and quiet. Very easy to sleep here. We heading up to the spring at the top of this part of the mountain to fill our canteens?” She asked me from inside the tent.

“Yep, just up at the top like normal. Why did you have something different in mind?” I asked her back after a sat the paper plate down by her feet after she got out of the tent.

“Well, no not really. I did find another trail that I haven’t seen before in this area. Didn’t know if you wanted to check it out or not.” She said before she started eating the sausage and bacon.

“You didn’t tell me about this new trail. Where is it at?” I asked her.

“Just back down the trail a little bit. Not to far, just a few clicks back when we had our first stop yesterday.” She told me after she finished a bit of the sausage. “Could be a new adventure for us to check out later if you’d like on the way back.”

“I don’t know, maybe. You know how much I love a new adventure.” I said after finishing my plate full.

“I thought you might be interested.” She said enthusiastically as she finished her plate as well.

As we started up the mountain, beginning that long climb up to the spring. We each started to look out for signs of wildlife. One of our favorite parts of the hiking experience was seeing the abundance of wildlife in the area. It was always booming with animals and lush vegetation. Even the smell of the pines and oaks as they swayed in the breeze. On this trek, however, there wasn’t as much wildlife as normal for the area. I shrugged it off as there was a storm brewing a lot earlier than what we anticipated. They must be hiding from the storm. There were still your normal squirrel barking and birds chirping, but not much else besides that. Odd I know, but we kept going. It was about noon when we got to the pond. I looked down at my phone to see the time. No service obviously, but I didn’t mind. I only needed it for time anyway. We filled out canteens and started back on our journey. Our goal was to reach our next spot by at least dusk. That way we could put our tent up while still having enough light to see what we were doing.

While along the walk up the mountain, passing a few more of our trail markers on the way up. We stopped a few times along the way and started finding things we had never seen before on our way up before. The first weird thing we found was very peculiar to me. On our third stop we made I looked just down off to the right of the trail and saw a branch snapped and twisted towards the center of it. However, the middle of it would’ve been at least ten feet up on the tree.

“Hey honey, look at that.” I pointed it out to her as I started walking that way. I almost tripped on a log on the way down to it.

“Whoops!” I said grabbing a tree close by.

“Be careful.” She said laughing until she looked up and saw what I was seeing.

“Wow! Why is that branch snapped and twisted?” She said looking upon the snapped branch in awe.

“Exactly what I was saying. That branch is not small either. If I were to guess about two to three inches in diameter?” I said while trying to guesstimate the size of the branch.

“I’d say, that is one pretty big branch!” My wife said excitedly while also being stumped at the same time.

“Look on the top of the branch. It looks like a bit of a claw mark as well towards the top of the branch.” I said pointing at the claw mark I found.

“Yeah. I wonder what could’ve made that?” My wife wondered putting her hand on top of her head in wonder.

“Probably other people that have been around this area lately.” I said quickly while trying to satisfy my wife’s paranoid feeling. She seemed to accept that theory as many different groups of people loved hiking these parts of the woods, or at least we thought.

“It’s getting pretty late babe. Why don’t we just setup here and call it good?” I asked her as I put our stuff on the ground.

“Yeah, I’m getting pretty tired as well you know so. Oh shoot babe! We forgot to go back down the trail to see that other spot! That one trail looks I found! Remember?” She said dropping what she was carrying onto the ground.

“It’s ok babe. We can always walk it when we get back from the hike.” I told her as I sat my stuff on the ground.

We setup camp for the night and started making a fire. We had split up to cover more ground to find some more firewood. When we got back to the camp we stoked up the fire and began to cook some brats I brought with us on this camping trip. We liked brats over a campfire, just a very unique way to cook brats. It is very good to, the way the juice falls off into the fire as it sizzles over the fire always gets my stomach a rumbling. It was dark by now and we had started talking about what we were going to do tomorrow. Mainly just involving us going to the top of the mountain and camping at the very top and than going back down the other side the next day to start our trip along the Cedar Creek.

“Well babe, I’m going to head to bed. I’m getting tired.” My wife said giving me a goodnight kiss before she retired to her sleeping bag. “I’ll see you in the morning babe!” She said before zipping up the tent.

“Goodnight honey, I’ll see you in the morning as well.” I said while she closed the flap to the tent. Now I was outside all alone. I didn’t mind that at all. The woods at night was my safe place. The owls hooting in the moonlight as the silent chirps of grasshoppers sang across the land. Never once breaking beat, and than the tree frogs joining in making a night tune for those to hear. It was my favorite thing about the woods. Everything felt at one with each other. Nothing but peace throughout the land and a nice calm breeze whispering through the trees. Almost hypnotizing, if you listen long enough. It was a very nice night indeed, so nice that I forgot to check the time for awhile. Around midnight I started for the tent after the fire dwindled out. I placed our stuff on the outside of the tent. We did this mainly because of no room in the tent for all the stuff. Plus we didn’t want the animals trying to get into the tent and disturb our sleep while trying. I climbed into the tent and zipped the flap back up and fell to sleep beside my wife. Tomorrow would start our hike to the very top of the mountain.