Close encounters of the 4-legged kind

...glowing eyes and sleepless nights on the trail.

Dear Kula Diaries,

In preparation for next week’s share of our Animal Encounters Trail Register (P.S. there is still time to sign the register — and I’ll personally send you a gift and a note if yours is selected!) … I thought I’d share a few ‘animal encounter’ stories of my own. I had so much fun reflecting on these moments in the wilderness, because they reminded me of one thing that being outside does: it wakes UP our senses. As we navigate the wild, we remember something that is easily forgotten from the comfort of our homes: I am a part of the mysterious and wonderful happening of all of this.

As most of you know, I go on a walk every single morning. I live in a remote area, and most of this walk involves going up and down a private gravel road. The only ‘company’ that I have on my morning walks is usually an occasional deer or a rabbit. For the majority of the year, these walks start in darkness. With my headlamp shining, I walk up and down the hill alone — listening to the sound of my feet crunching on the ground.

My first lap of the hill is usually a bit of a blur — I’m still trying to wake up, and often I’m just going through the motions of putting one foot in front of the other. My senses are slowly waking up as I become alert to the world around me. Last week, I was on one of these walks and, with sleepiness still heavy in my legs, I trudged up the hill — not noticing anything out of the ordinary. After making it to the top of my route, I turned around for the descent and as my headlamp bobbed up and down on the gravel road — I caught something strange in my field of vision. I slowly approached this thing, which was lying unnaturally in the middle of the gravel road… and my eyes widened as I realized what it was: a decapitated rabbit.

The road I walk everyday — the rabbit was located in the middle of this section, directly in the middle of the dirt road.

Even in my semi-stupor, I’d like to think that I would have noticed a decapitated rabbit lying in the middle of the road on the way up the hill. I’m typically looking down at my foot placement on the road, since it’s a bit uneven — and I definitely didn’t see a headless rabbit on my path. My brain did the calculation, and quickly realized that the following must be true: some type of carnivore must have dragged this rabbit onto the road within the 7 minutes that I left this spot and then walked back down… which also means that I startled aforementioned carnivore with my headlamp on my way back down… which also means that said carnivore is probably sitting in the weeds right now, waiting for me to leave so that they can continue their breakfast.

I made a very calculated decision that equated to this: LEAVE NOW, ANASTASIA.

I’ve seen many bobcats during my time living on the mountain, and I am fairly certain that I’ve seen one cougar. I know that cougars live in my neighborhood, because the folks who own the property next to our house have a game camera that frequently catches photos of our friendly neighborhood mountain lion — wandering around a mere few hundred yards from our driveway. On the day that I saw the cougar, I was walking down the hill with my headlamp on, and I saw a pair of glowing eyes down the road from me. I see enough deer to know what a pair of glowing deer eyes looks like — and this was not a pair of glowing deer eyes. The creature quickly and soundlessly disappeared into the bushes, and as I rounded the corner (after waiting for some time and making some noise to scare it off), I could see it in the distance — running away. It was definitely cat-like… and definitely way too big to be a bobcat.

Meet Phoebe, our neighborhood cougar. This photo was taken just a few hundred yards from my driveway at 7:44 am (which means it was going for a stroll at the same time I was arriving back down to my house after dancing up at the cell tower - lol!)

Many years ago, Aaron and I went on a backpacking trip in a very remote part of Canyonlands National Park. This trip required a significant amount of planning because we needed to leave our car at the Needles parking area… and then pay $400 to have a shuttle take us down a precarious dirt road to a random trailhead in the middle of nowhere. Our goal? Well, it was simple: walk back to the car.

In Canyonlands National Park — note the green microfiber pee cloth hanging from my pack - ha!

On the first night of the trip, we arrived at our assigned campsite and set up our tent amidst red canyon rocks. After setting up camp, I started to wander around a little bit and explore the area, when I noticed some strange ‘tracks’ on the ground.

“Hey, look at this!”, I called to Aaron, “It looks like bicycle tracks… but who would have a bicycle here?”

Aaron walked over to look, and we both started following the ‘bicycle’ tracks as they moved further away from our campsite. At one point, the tracks appeared to go up and over a small shrub — and that’s when I saw some snags of fur on the shrub. “Uh oh”, I said, as I started to realize what we might have discovered. We broadened our perspective away from just the obvious tracks, and started looking in the peripheral areas, and that’s when we noticed the other tracks: cougar tracks. And, not just big cougar tracks… but baby cougar tracks too. In this particular situation, we did what any other normal person might do, but probably shouldn’t do — we continued to follow the tracks. Eventually, they led to a small divot in the canyon, where we were able to peer down into a rocky depression and observe a deceased deer that had been very-well devoured. The previously mentioned ‘bicycle’ tracks had obviously not been from a bike tire — they had been the drag marks of the deer’s hooves on the ground.

As we looked at the deer, I think our stomachs did a few somersaults as we tried to reassure ourselves that everything was going to be ok:

“It looks pretty well eaten… doesn’t it?”, I asked Aaron hesitantly.

“Ummm… I think so?”, he said with a question mark, even though neither of us wanted that to be a question we were asking.

We decided to stay in our campsite that night, because we didn’t have a permit for another location — and the next destination was a significant walk. We decided we’d just make a ton of noise, and hope that things went well. That night, I laid in my sleeping bag in the tent, unable to sleep, and the only thing that I could think of was this: I am a burrito. I am an actual burrito.

Eventually, I realized that this wasn’t helpful, and I decided to change my mantra from, I am a burrito, to I am OK in this moment. Lo and behold, it helped. I started to calm my breathing and I realized the truth: I was OK. Nothing was happening. The cougar who was ‘hurting’ me… was not a cougar at all … in fact, it was me. I was the one creating the story in my mind about what could happen — when, indeed, it had not happened at all. And, guess what? It didn’t happen. At our next campsite the following night, we followed more cougar tracks into the campsite. This time, though, I was better equipped to sleep and I settled in with my new mantra: I am OK. I am OK right now. Again, I drifted off to sleep.

On our second to last day in the canyon, we woke up early from our last campsite and headed out in the dark for a hike to Angel Arch — we wanted to arrive at sunrise to eat our breakfast near the arch. As we hiked along the last stretch through the dark, the entire canyon was quiet and still. My headlamp bobbed along uneventfully, when suddenly I caught a glint of two eyes staring at me — I let out a shriek that would be embarrassing and impossible to replicate with the human alphabet. My heart stopped and I waited for the crouching animal — clearly a vicious person-devouring cougar — to pounce… but it didn’t. In fact, it did nothing at all. What the…??? I mused as I slowly and cautiously approached. Suddenly, Aaron and I burst out in simultaneous laughter at the ridiculousness of what we discovered: attached to a tree in the canyon were two ‘reflective eyes’ made of some type of reflective tape. There was no animal at all — it was just two pieces of tape.

Aaron and I at Angel Arch for breakfast.

Now, clearly the person who attached the fake eyes to the tree has a somewhat distorted sense of humor — but also, how often do folks hike that stretch of trail in the dark? And what are the odds that the two hikers who stumbled across a pair of fake reflective eyes were already slightly on edge about cougar encounters? Either way — I took the joke well, because it once again pointed out the painfully obvious truth to me: the scariest animals are the ones that I create in my mind.

We never saw a cougar on that hike through Canyonlands — in fact, I don’t think we saw a ton of wildlife. That being said, I obviously tread through the wilderness with a great deal of respect and preparation for handling possible wildlife encounters — but I no longer spend time worrying about them if they aren’t real. I trust that, given my skill and experience, I’ll be able to handle a situation in the moment — should it occur. In my countless days spent in the wilderness, I’ve encountered dozens of bears and other wildlife — and in those moments, I’ve not necessarily felt a sense of fear — but, rather, a focused hyper vigilance and an intense sense of presence, awe and wonder. I keep a very healthy distance away from other creatures and make sure that I let my presence be known far in advance — so that they have the chance to leave before our paths get too close. I estimate that I’ve hiked over 10,000 miles in my own neighborhood in the past four years, and I am absolutely positive that many animals have seen me. And yet, we seem to have a bit of an understanding: I hike up and down the road… and they leave me alone. People ask me if I get scared hiking alone in the dark, and I don’t — in fact, it’s one of the places where I feel the safest and most comfortable, because it’s a place that always reminds me that the only real thing is simply my next step… and my next breath.

On a knoll above our 3rd campsite in Salt Creek Canyon.

Friends — thank you so much for being here! If you have an animal encounter story of any kind that you want to share, I would LOVE to hear it! You can submit your Trail Register entry right here:

I look forward to sharing our collective writing next week — and until then, please remember that you are all loved so very much, and that the greatest ‘fears’ you will ever face are the ones we each create in our own minds. Once you understand that truth, all things become possible.

Sending you all so much love!