It was a warm night, unusually warm for the high country of Virginia, and there was no chance of rain, so I had chosen not to pitch my tent. I simply laid my groundcloth on a bed of pine needles, nailed it down, and unrolled my sleeping bag under the open air.
Truth is, I was too worn out to fool with the tent. I was not quite halfway toward achieving my dream of hiking the Appalachian Trail, and I was beginning to despair that I wouldn't make it.
I have been a hiker all of my life, since I was in Boy Scouts as a youngster, and I thought I was someone who could tackle the Trail, some 2,100 miles of well-worn paths that wind from Georgia to Maine across the spine of the eastern United States.
Hell, I'd hiked the Cimarron Trail at the Philmont Scout Ranch in New Mexico when I was 15, and that's a difficult task that carries you above 11,000 feet in the Rocky Mountains.
Since then, I've hiked all of the trails around my home state, done the Boundary Waters trip in northern Minnesota and Canada, backpacked in Yosemite and camped in hundreds of places across North America.
So I thought I was prepared for the Appalachian Trail, but the relentless terrain, mountains on top of mountains, had about sapped me.
I thought I'd passed a major hurdle by getting past Clingman's Dome in the Smoky Mountain National Park without it affecting me, only to discover more mountains through western Virginia.
Now I was in the Blue Ridge Mountains, and I knew I still had a brush with the Poconos in Pennsylvania, the White Mountains in New Hampshire and the difficult landscape near the end in Maine.
I had gotten off the trail back at Roanoke, several days earlier, to rest and regather my strength, but after the second day back on the trail the fatigue and aching muscles returned with a vengeance. My feet were sore, and my back ached constantly.
I now realized that allowing myself two days of sleeping in a real bed, rather than on the ground, as I had been doing while on the trail, had been a mistake.
I had hardly slept the first night after I resumed my hike, tossing and turning from some little root that was sticking up from the ground, or from a ridge of earth itself.
That day's hike had been particularly arduous, with a lot of hilly, rocky climbs through some thick woods. It was still mid-afternoon when I saw the clearing off the side of the trail. I checked it out and decided it would be good for my campsite.
There was shade all around, but the clearing itself was open to the air. There was a small creek nearby where I could get water for cooking, plus the sound of the flowing stream over the rocks was quite soothing.
The area where I laid out my pallet was grassy, and I'd found plenty of pine straw to make a reasonably soft place to lay down. As the sun dipped into the west, I'd laid down for a nap, and had actually gotten a nice bit of rest.
As I lay back on top of my sleeping bag, my head on the small camp pillow, I had some intensely erotic thoughts.
When I was home, I had no trouble finding girlfriends, but I'd ended a potentially promising relationship right before I'd left for Georgia to start my hike. There was no sense keeping her on the line when I was going to be gone for several months.
I'd encountered a few women on the trail, but nothing had happened with them, and I had been too beat in Roanoke to try to pick up anybody. I had jacked off a couple of times while I was there, and that had helped me relax some, but I hadn't done anything since I'd been back out.
After getting back up, I'd built a small fire, then I'd gotten my small camp stove set up and fixed me something to eat.
I had some freeze-dried vegetables that I fixed in the small pot, and I boiled some water in my larger pot over the fire to cook some pasta. I had a small rack/grill that I could set the pot on to heat my water, once I got the fire banked down to hot coals.
Once my meal was finished, dusk was fast approaching, so I hurriedly went to the creek to draw some water to clean my things before complete darkness fell.
After I had everything cleaned and put away, I sat back and listened to the small radio I'd brought along. It was extra weight that I probably could have done without, but I felt like I needed some tenuous link to civilization, so I'd brought it along, and I was glad I did.
In this remote area, deep in the Shenandoah National Park, however, there wasn't much to choose from. The musical selections were mostly country or pop, neither of which I can stand, so I opted for a baseball game.
It wasn't until I heard the announcer talk about it that I realized that it was the first day of summer, and I also noticed that the moon had come up right at sunset. It rose over the nearby mountain fat and orange, a huge perfect circle.
As the cold orb slowly climbed in the sky, I thought about how odd it was that the summer solstice should also be the night of a full moon.
I've been around the outdoors enough to know the cycles of the sun, moon and earth, and I knew that it was only by a quirk of timing that the full moon and the solstice should fall on the same day.
I chuckled, then, when the intro to one of the innings in the baseball game, coming out of the commercial break, was Creedence's "Bad Moon Rising."
My fire had about played out, and I could feel weariness seeping into my bones, so I shut off the radio, turned out the small lantern and crawled into my sleeping bag.
Sleep was elusive, however, and I was kicking myself for not setting up the tent, because the bright light of the moon in the cloudless sky was making it hard to fall asleep. But it was too late for that, so I tried to will myself to sleep, and I guess I succeeded.
I'm not sure what woke me up. I just got a sense of ... not dread so much, but more a feeling of oddness. I looked up at the moon, and noticed that it was still not quite on top of me, so it was probably a little before midnight.
As my senses became more alert, I thought I heard sounds coming from the surrounding woods, almost like an insistent whispering. And even as I did, I saw a strange cloud pass over the moon, and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
I quickly noticed that there seemed to be a weird fog surrounding my campsite. It wasn't a heavy fog, but it was almost wispy, like tendrils of smoke from a fire that was some distance away.
I felt a sense of panic, because the weather had been very dry in recent days, and there was the threat of forest fires. I had been very cognizant of that fact when I'd built my small fire, making sure I kept it small and kept it inside the ring of rocks I'd set up.
I looked over at the fire, but the coals were almost completely ashen, and I couldn't smell wood smoke, so I was puzzled at this strange vapor that seemed to have enveloped the area.
Suddenly, I got a real sense that I wasn't alone, and sure enough, out of the mist a figure emerged. My mouth went dry as it stepped into the clearing, just as the clouds dissipated and the moon shone brightly.
The figure was a woman, and not just any woman, either. She was tall and slender, with long raven hair that fell almost to her waist. She had piercing blue eyes, an unobtrusive nose and full, red lips, all set perfectly in the face that could have been looking out from a fashion magazine.
