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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. 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 gotten hurt or lost on a trip, 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, 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 excited 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.

Upon getting to her trailhead, the young girl came across a man who was sitting on ground right at the trailhead. 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. 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. After a few miles of hiking she stopped to doublecheck her GPS and make sure she was going the right way. As she looked down at her device, she quickly noticed that it was not working. The digital map wouldn't even pinpoint her location.

The young girl was confused and slightly worried but she wasn't going to let this stop her. 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.

The next morning, she packed up and continued on her way, following the trail markers on the trees and alongside the trail. After a few hours of hiking, she came upon a junction that had no markings. Without her GPS she was not 100% sure which way she needed to go. She knew that the smart choice would be to hike back the way she came. She had a limited amount of food with her and there were not many places for her to filter water 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 was confused because she had not come upon any junctions the previous day. 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 hiker's 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 noticed the poor condition that the gear was in. 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, he looked much thinner and she could tell that he had been dead for some time. Based on the condition of the tent and they way his gear was thrown about, the man had been living in this campsite for some time until he eventually ran out of food and starved to death.

The young girl recalled that she had heard somewhere that you should always take a ghost's warning seriously because they are never wrong.

Author's Note:

This story was inspired by The Indian Who Wrestled with a Ghost. In that story, a man is making a trek near a forest and encounters spirits every night of his journey. One night an old man approaches him and tells him that if they wrestle and he wins then then he must stay there forever but if they young man wins then he will be free to leave and will encounter some great luck. I really liked the idea of someone encountering something supernatural while alone in nature. I wanted it to be more modern by making it about a girl on a backpacking trip. I loved the overall theme that “a ghost is always right” and I knew that it was something I wanted to carry over into my retelling of this story. I also wanted to create and maintain that constant feeling of unease throughout the story. I started this off with the selection of a more ominous imagery because I wanted the readers to know that this was going to be a more spooky/ghost story from the beginning. 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. I attempted to create this feeling of uncertainty with the main character by emphasizing the importance of preparedness in the beginning and then mentioning it again throughout the story. 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. Originally, I had a longer ending on this story although it was still ambiguous I decided to make it a little more so because I want the readers to come to their own conclusions about how the story ends. I also changed a few details about her GPS and the environment she was in. I really love it when a reader can apply their own interpretations to someone else's story it can sometimes make it resonate with them even more.

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

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