New Adventures In Daywalking

We parked in a small turnaround and got out of Adam's car. "Look! That is the trail we are going on," he said. It didn't look like much of one but none the less it was the only one. The first few feet were covered with thorny bushes which should have given me an indication of things to come. We ascended the hill at a moderate pace for a few minutes than stopped to admire the view.


This place reminded me of somewhere I had been before but couldn't place it.


We were headed to some caves at the top of a large hill. Soon we arrived at a meadow that was almost completely overgrown by blackberries. The trail vanished into the thorns. So we did the only thing adventurous souls would do: made or own trail. Making our way through the woods in an attempt to avoid the sea of thorns that populated the area proved to be a challenge, then over one ridge,
to where we faced the incline of another. It had been a long time since I had been in a place that untouched, or at least not recently touched. Here and there we found overgrown skitter trails and old stumps of trees logged decades ago. Along the damp forest floor the dead wood was just the top phase of the soil. There were several logs that I stepped on that turned to dust under my feet. At the top of the next ridge were huge steep rocks. This is where Adam had remembered the caves.

Adam

We made our way up a winding trail to the rocks. I was ill equipped for the expedition in my treadless Dr. Martins but made it up a steep rock on the second attempt despite my now aching ribs. The caves were more like canals that led down through the rocks from one open space to another. I didn't want to take pictures because I just wanted to be in the moment. I figured I might internally use them as an excuse to not go there again. I had sweat the toxins out of my body. It felt great. We made our way down between two rocks to a ledge where Adam had lost his machete on a previous expedition. It was about six feet wide and led to the entrance of another cave. We climbed inside. There was some red spray paint on the walls. In large letters "LARRY AND ELLEN" and below that "ELLEN AND JOHNNY". "Man, Ellen is a whore," Adam said. I didn't trust this "Ellen". I wondered about the bones that we had come across at the bottom of the ledge.


"We better leave before Ellen gets back," I grinned.

South of the cliffs we jumped a barbed wire fence and walked into a meadow. All the thorny bushes had been flattened. I still had my walking stick. We made our way down a road and eventually arrived at what first appeared to be a crooked shelter. Then to our right there were several others spaced out at the bottom of a rock face some fifty feet high. After review we came to the realization that they were once used for feeding cows.


Eventually we made in down through the meadow to the road where Adam used my walking stick to prop a gap in the barbed wire so we could get through. Night had fallen and we made or way back to Adam's car. It was a hell of a time in all its peculiarity and eeriness. And totally worth it.