Let the Day Begin! / Coyote in Quehanna Wild Area

When we left our intrepid backpackers in the backwoods of the Quehanna Wild Area, things were just starting to perk along on the wildlife front. We'd had a howling owl check in as dusk began to fall; that was followed shortly by the squeals, whistles, and bugles of the elk, and the howling of the coyotes. We typically hear the animals but hardly ever actually see them.

If I had been in the campsite all by myself, I would have been worried. But my husband was there and we had both tents up and LED lanterns and blue Christmas lights lit. We were almost like a tiny city unto ourselves, upon a hill.

It would not be a bad idea, though, to consider your defense strategies: what WOULD you do if a wild animal came too close? There was that one time I threatened to fight off the coyotes with my trusty Boker picnic set, which includes a rather sharp knife, a pretty spiky metal fork, and a teenie-weenie plastic spoon. Clearly, the knife would be the best pick, should push come to shove.

But your other weapons are your lights, and your size, and the sounds that you can make. (No, we do not carry guns or other weapons into the woods.) So my husband and I both keep bright flashlights by our side while camping out. If you shine a bright light into an animal's eyes, that creature won't be able to see you very well.

Standing up to your full height and splaying your arms out and aggressively approaching an animal might be enough to scare some critters, but not others. (An elk, for instance, is huge, and won't be overly impressed.) We both carry whistles that can make a piercing sound. And I imagine that loud rock and roll might do the trick, if applied appropriately. (Stop using Springsteen as a weapon!)

Fortunately, no animals came near enough for us to need to defend ourselves. So we passed a very pleasant evening in the Quehanna back-country, talking and listening to music, with the elk and the coyotes carrying on from time to time, in both the near and far distances.

I managed to stay up until around 11:15, which is nearly a record in the woods. And then I packed all of my stuff into my tent and got into my brand new down sleeping bag. Ah, bliss! I'd brought along two hand warmers and I gave one to my husband and kept the other for myself. If you wake up with chilly hands or feet in the night, they're a nice antidote to the cold. In the new sleeping bag, I was as snug as a bug in a rug.

My husband reported that a small drizzle passed through in the middle of the night. It woke him up and he thought about putting on the tent fly, but in the end, he did not need to. Thank goodness for both of us!

I didn't wake up myself until the very early morning hours, just before dawn. I thought I'd fall back asleep but I'm not sure I really did. Eventually, I got up and got dressed, left my tent to take care of the necessities. I grabbed my camera, just in case. You never know who or what you might run into in the early morning hours.

I walked back through the woods and thought I saw something white in the distance. Was there a house or a cabin nearby? How could that be? As I approached the edge of the pine stand, I realized it was frost mist down in the valley. 

So I went, with camera, post-haste, and checked out the frost mist rising in the Valley of the Elk, which is my shot above. It was magical, and gorgeous, and special, and phantasmagorical. There were thousands of tiny spider webs all through the vegetation, and they were covered with dew, and in the morning light, they shone like sparkling diamonds.

I can't say that I actually ENJOY backpacking, not the actual walking with stuff on my back part of it. In fact, I hate that part! Outdoor humor writer Patrick F. McManus pretty much nails it when he calls camping out "a fine and pleasant misery." But I do love the many wild experiences backpacking affords us way out here, far from the things of man.

My husband and I got up and around, and spent a little morning time on our favorite rock. We took down our tents and aired out our gear, and had a little breakfast. That hard-boiled egg, which we split, made a very nice breakfast sandwich sort of thing when sliced and layered with a Lunchables ham and cheese cracker snack.

By early to mid-afternoon, we were walking out of the Quehanna Wild Area with all of our gear. Back across the moor with the vines grabbing at your boots. The water crossing, no biggie. The slick, muddy path. The huge gravel. Somehow it didn't seem quite as bad on the way out. Going in was harder.

We had time for a few side treks. We stopped to see a new bridge and visit a beaver dam; didn't see any beavers. We walked on the new bridge; I took a bunch of pictures. By the time we were done, we'd put in about eight miles total on our two-day backpack trip.

Our final stop on our big adventure: we strolled over to the shallow water impoundment and looked out through the holes in the duck blind. My husband directed my attention to an animal moving through the field in front of us. "Is that a small elk?" he asked.

I looked too. I saw something sort of orange moving. "Cat?" I said. But then it did that stick-the-nose-down-looking-for-prey-and-jump-in-the-air maneuver. It still looked orange to me. "Fox!" I said. And then the animal turned and looked at me, and I saw its larger, more squarish head: "COYOTE!!!" You may see my best photo in the extras. Then it disappeared into the underbrush. All gone.

My husband saw two snakes. Not rattlers, which Quehanna is famous for. But garters. It had been a cool night (38 degrees) and they were trying to warm up in the sun. And then we were back at the car, and taking off our packs, and putting everything in the car, and getting cold drinks, and sitting down, finally. After a quick tour of the local foliage colors, we began heading home, with our second backpack of fall 2024 under our belts.

I've got two photos so here are two songs: first, for the frost mist scene above, I've got the Call, with Let the Day Begin. For the coyote in the extras, I've got John Hiatt, with Something Wild.

Bonus related link: another coyote sighting and story, this one in the Hammersley Wild Area a few years back.