2012-02-29 59 17

Location

In a pine forest with very old and tall trees near Skokloster.

Participants

Carl-Johan

Plans

Carl-Johan needs to work on the 29th so a midnight hash before bed maybe.

Expedition

I started walking to the car around 2300 and got all the gear ready and started driving to the E4 after a quick splash and dash at the gas station. Almost no cars on the E4 or E18, but it was really dark. Now that the snow has melted away everything is just brown so very little contrast. High beam ON!

Turned off towards Sigtuna at Bro and followed this road to Skokloster. Got off on a smaller road and this one was actually on that was hard to drive at the speed limit, 70 km/h, and narrow and twisty. And no street lights. Eventually I got on the gravel road to the hash. Past some farms and this road was actually still covered with snow and ice. Past the lst farm the road turned into a logging/farm road but ok to drive. I stopped at the edge of a field and the forest and got out. It was completely cloudless and lots of stars with absolutely no light pollution.

I walked across the snowy field towards the edge of the forest south of me. The snow was crusty because of thaw-freeze cycles lately. I saw some old tracks leading to a clear cut path in the forest. I looked at the satellite images and there was two clear cuts between me and the hash, around 300 m walking distance. Entered the first clear cut and the snow here was looser so the crust cracked and my foot fell through and kinda got a bit stuck between lots of cut branches.

Got myself loose and found some machine tracks that I could follow. It was kinda spooky since it was so dark and no sounds at all except me. Followed the tracks over to the other clearing and had to climb over a tree that had fallen in the latest storm. Walked across the second clearing and into the woods and got to the hash. There was no snow on the ground inside the forest and the trees were old and the underbrush had been cleared. I was out of Orange™ so I started making a marker out of branches that I was snapping with my feet.

All of a sudden I drop my flashlight out of the light and then I see something...

Blair Witch, or what went through my mind

I see a light turn on between the trees 50 m SW of me! It is hard to make out but it looks like someone turned on an incandescent bulb in a window in some kind of cottage. Has someone build a cottage here in the woods? With no roads? Did I wake them with my snapping of branches? Is it Hunters? Or Poachers? I don't see any flashlights. I don't hear anyone searching for me. I hear no dogs. I freeze. And just stand there for a few minutes in the dark completely still just listening, to nothing. I hear nothing. After a few minutes the light turns off. Maybe they have gone back to sleep.

Reality check, or what really happened in the real world

My eyes had by the time I dropped the flash light adjusted to the dark so by now I was seeing a lot more than before. The light from the cottage window was no light from a window, it was the moon just over the horizon visible through the trees to the West. That the light turned off was just it moving over the sky and passing behind a tree so I couldn't see it. It was just the right shade of yellow since it was so low in the sky that it had the same color as a light bulb.

As I started moving about again I could see that it was the moon and I continued my building of the marker and snapped some pics and headed back to the car. Then back to civilization.

Midnight hashes in complete Blair Witch country can scare even grown men.