Week 2 Story: The Girl in the Backcountry

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The Girl in the Backcountry 

Backpacking alone through a forest may sound like a scary task for many, but for the young girl, it was something she enjoyed. She loved the silence and solitude that the forest provided. She thrived in the ultimate freedom of being alone and she loved that she did not have to adhere to anyone’s schedule but her own. This was her ideal weekend trip. 

This was not the young girl’s first time going on a solo trip like this. She had spent many nights alone in nature and had never encountered anything more than the occasional mouse or raccoon getting into her food bag. She had a very reliable GPS system with her and she had spent many hours learning basic first aid and how to identify edible and dangerous plant life.  Although she had never encountered an issue, this does not mean she had not heard about all the frightening things that can happen to someone alone in the forest. Of course, bears were always a threat, as was the occasional hunter, but even though the young girl had read many horrifying stories online, she remained unafraid. 

This trip started out like all the others. The young girl prepared her food and gear, expertly packed her backpack, programmed her GPS, and set out for another adventure in an area she had never been before. She always enjoyed the preparation for a trip. Picking out her meals and gear always made her more and more anxious to get out of the house and explore. She packed her can of bear spray and plenty of rope to hang her food bag away from her tent in case of bears. It only took a few days to prepare all of this, and soon she was off. 

It did not take long for the young girl to realize that this trip was going to be different than the others. Upon getting to her trailhead, the young girl came across a man who was sitting just a few feet onto the trail. She found it odd that he had no backpack or gear of his own but regardless she smiled at him politely as she passed by and the man smiled back almost immediately. Her smile quickly faded when the odd man spoke up. 

“Hope you are more clever than you look, young lady, it’s easy to get lost out here. And once you’re lost, you ain’t never going to find your way back out.” the man said. 

The girl assured him politely that this wasn’t her first trip and she hurried along the path, eager to put as much distance between her and the unsettling man as quickly as she could. She soon realized that she should have listened to this man more carefully. It took her a mere 4 hours of hiking to lose her GPS, something that she had never done on any trip before. She was almost positive it was in the left hip pocket of her backpack; the place she always kept it. The moment she arrived at her first junction, however, it wasn’t there. 

The young girl tried to not let this ruin her trip and went right at the junction. Even though she used her GPS on her trips, she still researched the trails and knew the names of the trails and their markers. She would just have to rely on that to navigate during this trip. 

She hiked for a few more hours until she decided it was time to set up camp. She quickly assembled her tent and began to pull out and make her meal for the night. It didn’t take long for her to hang her food bag and shortly after she was fast asleep. 

The next morning, she packed up and continued on her way, following the trail markers on the trees and alongside the dirt trail. Again, after a few hours of hiking, she came upon another junction. This one she was much less sure about and it did not take long for the worry to set in. She knew that the smart choice would be to hike to the way she came. She had a limited amount of food with her and there were not many places for her to filter water for her to drink. She promptly turned around and hiked right back the way she came. 

Again, after hours of hiking, she came to yet another junction. The young girl assumed this was the one she first encountered the previous day but when looking at the markers she did not recognize any of them. Now she was panicking. The young girl had no exact way of knowing where to go so she just picked the direction that she thought was best and set off along the trail. 

After a few miles, she stumbled upon another hikers campsite. The young girl was so excited that she had run into someone else and hoped they could show her the way back to the trailhead. She slowly approached the tent but as she got closer she realized how dated all of the gear was and began to feel the fear creeping in again. The tent had massive rips and tears in it and everything inside was thrown about but that wasn’t what made the young girl so afraid. Lying there in the tent was that odd man she encountered previously. Except, in this state, looked much thinner and it was clear that he had been dead for some time. It looked as if he lived in this campsite until he slowly ran out of food and eventually died of hunger. 

It was then that the young girl realized she really should have listened to that odd man at the trailhead. Some say that you should always listen to what a ghost tells you because the ghost is always right. 

Authors Note: 

This story was inspired by The Indian Who Wrestled with a Ghost. I really liked the idea of someone encountering something supernatural while alone in nature. I wanted to change it a bit and make it a little more modern by making it about a girl on a backpacking trip. I loved the overall theme that “ghost are always right” and I knew that it was something I wanted to carry over into my retelling of this story. I also wanted to maintain that constant feeling of unease throughout the story. While the original story does this with the presence of multiple ghosts, I wanted to do this by making the readers question how prepared the young girl was. Although she has taken many trips like this before and prepared greatly, the moment the odd man warns her that she better have experience, I wanted the audience to begin to question her. 

Original Story Souce:  Myths and Legends of the Great Plains by Katharine Berry Judson (1913).

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