An Unsettling End to an Afternoon Hike

     We had beautiful weather on Tuesday, so when I finished my work by noon, I decided to take an afternoon's ramble up Bolt Mountain, in Fish Hatchery Park, just outside of Grants Pass. 

    The trail is a good, brisk six-and-a-half-mile hike up Bold Mountain and down. It's a great spring wildflower hike. Not so good for autumn color, but I enjoyed being in the woods, seeing the views, and taking strenuous exercise.

    Just as I was coming to the top of the mountain, I passed a man with a dog coming down. On the way down I passed another man with a dog, a single man, three or four single women, each with a dog, and a group of three hikers together. I was surprised at how late people were starting up the mountain.

    As I approached the parking lot at the end of my hike, a park ranger in a pick-up was just pulling up. "Checking on parking passes," I thought smugly, mine all in order, but that's not what she was interested in. She asked if I had met a tall man in a red shirt, without a dog.

    No, I didn't think so, I said. The only man without a dog I had met was in a black jacket ("Could it have been covering a red shirt?" she asked), and I didn't think he was especially tall. "But," I added, laughing, "almost everyone looks tall to me."

    She continued looking grim. This man, she said, had become so irritated with a woman whose dog was off leash that he had threatened her with a knife. 

    I hike alone in these hills all the time. I carry a personal locator beacon (a PLB) in case of emergency, which I have always thought of in terms of injury—breaking an ankle on slippery rocks, for instance, or some other fall. I have not been concerned about violence on the trail. 

    Until now. 

    Maybe I could think that that danger would only be on trails close to town except for remembering that the first year I lived here a family went missing on the Cook and Green trail, in the Red Buttes Wilderness. Rumors of UFOs flew around, but the perpetrator—the murderer—was caught a few years later. 

    I often hike with friends, but I also enjoy hiking alone. I like the solitude, the communion with the trees and flowers, with the earth and sky and the mountain itself, in a way that doesn't happen when I'm with other people. I like conversation, but I also like the way my own thoughts wander and, especially, the way I enter a meditative, empty-minded, in-the-moment state. I like the spontaneity of taking off for a hike at the spur of the moment, when the moment is right, not having to make plans.

    I don't want unreasonable fear to rule my life. But I don't want to be naive, either. Can I keep pursuing my favorite solo activity? Or should I be grateful for safety up to now and not push my luck? 

    I don't know. I just don't know.