The nice thing about darkness is it gives you a perfectly good reason to go walking around at night wearing a headlamp without having to worry about providing an explanation to anyone for why there's a flashlight strapped to your face. Let's say if you went out into public attired as such during the day, well then you'd likely get quite a few odd glances and perhaps one or two questions posed regarding the presence or absence of your sanity. At night however, nobody would give it a second or really even a first thought at all, because darkness. And I think that's nice.
Now in my case all of this is kind of a moot point at the moment because it's 3am and there aren't any other people out here in these woods for miles around, at least as far as I can tell. But if for some reason there were people out here, they'd know exactly what this thing on my forehead is for, which is great. Maybe they'd even stop to help me figure out where I am.
I've been 100% uncertain about my exact location and probably only about 50% certain about my general location for no less than an indeterminate number of hours now. In that time I've managed to narrow down my position on the map to an area about the size of a quarter, but keep in mind this map I'm using is drawn to a 1:250,000 scale and I'm feeling pretty mentally fatigued. At this point I'd probably be better off navigating by tossing the map and flipping the quarter. Does the ridgeline split? Leave it to fate, heads or tails. Does the drainage fork? Heads or tails. Do two roads diverge? Heads, tails, who cares. I doubt it would make all that much difference either way.
The other nice thing about darkness is it lets me see everything out here in these woods that's watching me right now, because my headlamp catches their eyes and makes it impossible for anything to hide. I can immediately spot all creatures great and small out here, from the little barkin' spiders to the medium jumpin' goats to the big ol' bleepin' yetis, thanks to my headlamp and the darkness. If it was daytime I'd never have any idea about what all sorts of nonsense was out here watching me right now. Well, I mean maybe I'd catch some of the common stuff like deer, elk, and marmots staring at me in awe as if they'd never seen such an outstanding human specimen in their lives before, but that happens all the time especially with the females. I'm talking about less common stuff here.
Mountain lions, for instance, are notoriously stealthy and naturally gifted in the art of remaining unseen. Even highly experienced and chronically adventurous career outdoorsmen such as myself can live their entire lives without getting the chance to see a cougar in her natural habitat, which is why despite my fatigue and complete lack of hope for ever self-extracting from wherever the hell I am right now, I'm nothing short of captivated by the lovely set of eyes reflecting at me from behind that patch of deadfall down in the drainage about 100 feet away. Even from a distance of about 80 feet I can tell she's feline by the way she moves up through the darkness onto the ridge and into the beam of my headlamp. Thanks to the darkness and my headlamp, I'm 100% certain that the great freakin' creature coming at me here where I've been sitting in the intersection of two old roads studying my map for god knows how long now is now about 60 feet away and closing fast. What should I do when she arrives in however long it takes her to cover the next 40 or so feet? Guess I'll leave it to fate. Heads is crack a joke, tails is ask her out. Call it—
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
⛰ 😺
※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※ ※
4-18-22. That was nice.
