Incident at Government Hill
This late in the season, Barkerville is mostly deserted. Government Hill campground is right beside the cemetery. Our campsite, in the top section, overlooks an expanse of empty tent and trailer sites.
Arriving at dusk, we set up a simple camp. By the campfire, in the darkening sky, while my husband prepares salad and bread for our dinner, I finish reading my daughter her Nancy Drew story. We have been taking turns reading as we travelled, and are all three of us are curious about the ending. As soon as the book is finished, we crawl into our little tent, the little one’s sleeping bag snuggled between us.
We have camped a lot, and slept out many nights, but, for no reason I can think of, I feel restless and strange tonight. Just as I begin to fall asleep, I suddenly imagine a bear. How fast its nails could rip the flimsy cloth of the tent, with us still zipped inside it. I lie very still, start deep breathing to slow my imagination down. Damn! I have to pee. I procrastinate for ages, but eventually I have to get up. In the thick blackness, I stumble blindly to the outhouse. The moonless darkness is completely opaque, even with the myriad stars. It is so dark that on returning, I nearly step right on the tent, even though I know where it is.
Again, I shift restlessly, hearing small, unfamiliar sounds. The next campsite is empty, I remember, and the one beyond that has an RV parked on it. I have never liked RVs, but at this moment, the thought of having one has sudden, incredible appeal, because they’re made of metal, and you can lock the door. New sounds now, gusts of wind, and then the pinging of rain drops, sounding unnaturallly loud on the fabric of the tent. After fifteen minutes, the rain passes off, and the silence gradually deepens.
A light breeze brings a new crop of unfamiliar noises. Trying not to move too much, and wake the others, I roll my eyes backward to see through the tiny half-unzipped tent window. The clouds are thinning, and a few stars are visible, but there is still no moon.
Beside me, my daughter stirs and wakes. "Mommy, I can't sleep. I had a bad dream! A man came to our campsite..."
"What man?"
"A bad man! To do something bad to us!"
Strangely, on this night the oft-used words of reassurance, denial of danger, usually so natural and easy, do not rise to my lips. Instead, I snuggle up to her, say irrelevantly "It rained! But it's stopped now." Soon I feel her relaxing again. As children do, she had awakened only briefly. But as she drops back into sleep, her fear passes into my body. I feel adrenalin seeping into every cell, the hair bristles on the back of my neck.,and all my senses are on screaming alert.
On the other side of my daughter, my husband sleeps deeply, emitting an occasional light snore. Straining my ears, I hear absolutely no other sound. This is the strangest thing of all: in this night that was formerly so full of subtle noises, there is now complete and total silence. My nose itches and I scratch it. There is a draft on my back and I fiddle with my sleeping bag. Time crawls by. With a minimum of movement, I reach into the tent pocket and find my flashlight. With agonizing slowness, I ease it under the blanket where the light will be invisible, shine it on my watch face. Only 2:30. Will this night never end? This late in September the darkness will last at least until five. More than two hours of black darkness still to be got through. But the body cannot remain alert indefinitely. Gradually tiredness reasserts itself, and I feel the encroaching immobility of sleep.
But before the drowsiness claims me, I feel the tent is moving. I must have been one of us, I tell myself, pushing in our sleep against the tent wall. But no. Disturbed by a stealthy step outside, the tent wall moves again, right beside my head. Inwardly I want to shriek with terror, but I do not move. Instead, I force myself to breathe, slowly and calmly as I consider the possibilities. A bear? No, the movement is too small and subtle. There's no animal breathing, no snuffling. Only deliberate silence, human stealth. If it were a bear, I could cover my daughter with my body, play dead. But this intruder is human.
Should I wake my husband? I could reach over and shake him, but then he would move and speak. The foolishness of this course of action forbids it immediately. If I wake him, he will ask what’s wrong. When he realizes there's someone there, what can he do? Unzip the tent, go out defenceless in his underwear, crawling on all fours in pitch darkness, to face this unknown danger? Our little one will wake up, and when she feels our fear, she will likely begin crying. This noise and fuss might incite the intruder into violence.
No, I must force myself to lie absolutely still. I must control my fear, keep calm, keep breathing. It's our only chance. Avoid confronting this enemy. Because it is definitely an enemy, a stealthy nocturnal invader on two silent feet. He has invaded my personal bubble of space, and I feel his evil vibrations moving beside me. The movement that woke me already seems an eternity ago when I feel another movement by my hip. After what seems like forever, I feel his strong vibrations gradually lessening. Then, with a final tug at the foot of the tent, the presence is gone, walking silently away from the campsite.
In a flash, I picture what has occurred: the intruder stepped on the elastic guywires that anchor the fly of the tiny tent, first one, and then the second, without seeing them in the dark. Perhaps, like me earlier, he didn't even see the tent.
Another thought occurs now: the car!.It is locked, but the unzipped roofrack cargo holder is open. But no, his direction of departure was away from the car. I feel certain that he has moved off. Whatever he came to see, he has seen. Whatever he was going to do, he has done. I think back, remembering our care to leave nothing out last night, to put the dirty dishes into the car, knowing that this is bear country. The lady at the store had been telling us about a grizzly that’s been seen a few times around Horsefly.
Just as I knew unmistakeably when he was here, I now feel certain that the intruder has gone. For a long time I lie rigid with tension, but eventually, I begin to relax once again. When I wake this time, thankfully, it is day. In the light of morning, the events of the night seem unreal. I watch my daughter climb sleepily out of the tent and debate whether to tell my husband. Could I have dreamed it or imagined it?
But I did not dream it. First out of the tent this morning, I looked for and found evidence: Two clear prints of large running shoes, just where the feet had stepped on the guy wires. One tent peg disturbed, another lifted out of the ground.
While the little one is busy setting breakfast, I take my husband aside, show him the tracks, and tell him what happened. He does not doubt my word, and asks, "Why didn't you wake me?"
"I thought about it," I say, "but I was afraid of making noise and alerting him. We were in a completely helpless position to confront someone. What if he had been armed?"
He nods thoughtfully, saying nothing, and we look at each other, thankful for our lucky escape from we know not what.