Back on the road, I pedaled for another five hours and reached Hartsville that evening. Upon entering, it seemed like there were more liquor stores than grocery stores. After getting some groceries (the nonalcoholic kind seemed less prevalent here) I rode slowly out of town, keeping an eye out for a place to stealth camp. 

Two or three miles down the road I came upon a nuclear power plant. Surrounded by the beautiful scenery,  it looked surreal, as if aliens had dropped it there as an impenetrable monitoring station. 

I found a road nearby and pedaled down it, then found an old gate falling off its hinges which allowed me access past the wooden fence. From there I rolled my bike to a clearing and pitched my tent.

My plan was to camp one more night, then ride to Cookeville to stay with Larry Nelson, a man who used to work with my mom at NASA. He had moved back to Tennessee and was now teaching at Tennessee Tech. I’d never met him, but when he found out I was going to be in the area he offered his place for me to stay and my mom passed along his information. 

At dusk, I pitched my tent and climbed inside. The area I had selected was idyllic, as many of my stealth campsites were. The sunset, with its fingers of pastel splayed across the western sky, siphoned away any urgency I’d previously felt in setting up camp, and I just sat on my ground cloth to watch it slip away. The field was ALIVE with lightning bugs, writing their mating songs in splashes of light. A calf wandered over, curious about the stranger in its field, or perhaps wondering if I had any food.

A bit later, after the sun had set, I climbed into my tent and started writing in my journal when I heard something… voices?   It was at that point that some of the previous conversations came back to me, about the moonshiners and how they protect the secrecy of their stills at ALL costs, and I remembered the motorcyclists I met who whispered, “It’s like Deliverance, man.”

I turned off my flashlight and strained my ears to hear what they were saying. I couldn’t quite tell, but thought I heard swearing, and it sounded like they were drunk. The moon was about three quarters full, casting plenty of light on the field and my bright yellow tent, so I was pretty sure if they glanced my way they’d see me.

“I saw a light!” someone drunkenly yelled. Again, it was difficult to tell, but it sounded like one of the group wanted to go and the other didn’t. It was muffled and clear at the same time. There was definitely some arguing. Or maybe it was just loud talking.

“Let’s get him!”

or maybe he said something else.

I slipped outside and pulled on the slipknots of my tent, then climbed back in. It deflated slowly on top of me like a parachute on a paratrooper, my head the only thing sticking out. I lay there as unmoving as a corpse for more than twenty minutes, wide-eyed, drenched with sweat, the mosquitoes buzzing around my face. I felt around inside the tent until I found my Swiss army knife, but it offered little comfort in my grasp knowing it wouldn’t be much help against a group of drunken hillbillies. 

A car door slammed. The voices seemed closer.

I scanned my options:

I could continue to lay there all night, hoping that they HADN’T actually noticed me, and that they wouldn’t. 

I could gather up my gear and pack it onto the bike, then leave, pretty much ensuring that someone would take notice. 

Or, I could just take off. Leave everything here and get to a phone booth to call Larry, a man I’d never met, to come pick me up.

I felt like a mouse in a field, frozen, as the hawk perched on a branch above me just stared. 

Waiting. 

This couldn’t continue.

I crawled out of my tent and crouched beside it, listening. It didn’t appear anyone had heard me, so I bearcrawled to my bike, which was about twenty yards away and leaning against a tree. Once there, I realized that my wallet was in the tent, which had my collection of phone numbers in it. I was mortified that I’d have to go back to retrieve it, but steadied myself and crawled back. 

Once I had my bike under me, unladen with gear and energized with adrenaline, I sprinted back towards the highway. Never in my life have I traveled that fast on a bike. I was pedaling so fast that once I reached the highway intersection I shot out into the middle of it because, not realizing how far I’d gone, I had arrived in about a third of the time it should’ve taken. I was fortunate there were no cars coming.

I rode to the first phone booth I saw and called Larry. I explained what had happened, and, without a word of “Don’t you KNOW what TIME it is?” (it was after midnight) or “Are you SURE you were in danger?” he said,

“I’ll get there as fast as I can.”

I waited in the shadows on the side of Hartsville’s QuickMart. My brain was fuzzy with fatigue, and I alternated between sitting and standing, then mostly sitting, and finally only sitting. I remember lifting my head off my knees as I was awakened from a dizzying sleep when a truck pulled up.

Larry apologized for taking so long - his Land Cruiser was misfiring. We drove back to the campsite and collected my gear, then spent a very long hour driving back to his place. I could tell he was struggling to stay awake and I tried to help by keeping the conversation going.

He asked me more about what happened, and after I told him he added,

“So you never really saw anyone?”

“No, I just heard them.”

I could see the intimation, even if it wasn’t judgmental, and resented it a bit. He added, “It doesn’t matter if you were in danger or not. The fact that you perceived you were in danger is enough.”

Hmph. It was getting harder to keep THIS conversation going.

We arrived at his house at 2:25 AM. 

<><><>

Honestly, it’s a bit embarrassing to relate a story like this. I was really afraid at the time, but there was never any real danger.

It was quite an experience, but those events need some context. The two contextual items are about me, and will help you to better understand what happened.

The first is that I don’t really get hungry. Heather has teased me about this for years. When someone asks me if I’m hungry, I surreptitiously glance at my watch to see what time it is, then calculate how long it’s been since my last meal....    I don't even realize I do it.

Then, “Oh, yeah, I’m STARVING,” or  perhaps, "Not so much. I just ate."

The second item took me a long time to learn, and it wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I finally figured it out. As you can imagine, while I don’t feel hungry, my sugar still gets low. I know what the clinical signs of hypoglycemia are, and have treated it, but mine are more subtle, more insidious, and less severe:  my emotions start becoming... "darker" for lack of a better word. It’s a gradual transformation, and one that I didn’t recognize as a 23-year-old. 

I had ridden 93 miles that day, and my journal made little mention of eating. It appears that using the “glance-at-the-watch” technique for determining whether I should eat isn’t a good idea in general, and a TERRIBLE idea on a bike trip since the number of calories you burn is enormous, and not eating can be catastrophic. That night was the worst consequence I've ever experienced, although there were times later where I felt something similar. Later in this trip, even. 

Like I said, it’s embarrassing to relate a story like this. My fears were simply a result of not eating. The reason I am sharing it is that I hope people who read it will be more self-aware of their own similar reactions. It may be even more subtle, but keep in mind that if you feel a little "off," try eating something.

Understandably, sometimes we just shove into our mouth whatever's available in the tiny convenience store, but if there's an option, consider eating foods that aren't sugary. They offer a quick bounce in energy, but can cause a "rebound effect" in the opposite direction after they wear off just as quickly. 

This might seem like common sense to many of you, but remember that the title of this journal isn't "Stories of the Old and Wise."