The road was mostly deserted, and the area alongside it so overgrown with vegetation that it was impassable. The welding together of trees, shrubs, and vines was so thick that if you wanted to venture farther than fifteen feet away from the road you’d need a machete to penetrate the wall of greenery. It reminded me of a region in East Texas called The Big Thicket. 

That made camping difficult since I couldn’t just slip off the road to stealth camp. However, I knew I’d find a place if I kept looking.

Periodically, there would be a small dirt side road, and I took one of those.  About fifty yards off the main route I walked around for a few minutes until I found a hidden niche. The side road I had taken seemed completely deserted and I suspected I’d have the evening to myself. 

However, shortly after I pitched my bright yellow tent I heard the sound of an engine. I climbed out of my tent and watched a truck park less than a hundred yard away on a road that I hadn’t known was there. Just to be safe, I pulled the slipknots on my tent and let it settle to the ground. 

Once it was a bit darker I’d put it up again. In the meantime, I sat down on the section of groundcloth in front of the tent and wrote in my journal.

As I sat there scanning the countryside, the beauty of the place and its accompanying peacefulness slipped over me like a warm blanket in winter. Other than a dragonfly insistent on periodically dive bombing me, it was idyllic.

I started getting very sleepy very fast, but wasn’t quite ready to go to bed yet so I pulled out Marcia’s card. You’re probably very interested in what it said…

...and so am I. There’s nothing in my journal referencing anything in it, and I suspect it was very banal.

At this point, looking at my journal and determining where I am, I get a little confused. I started near Tallulah, Louisiana. Now, I’m talking about camping near Pitkin? That’s 177 miles, but I have a sneaking suspicion that I didn’t do even half of that, especially considering that my notes say 37 miles. I wondered if maybe I’d missed one of those tiny pages when I was transcribing it onto a google doc, but no, I went back and looked at the original tiny pieces of paper. The dates are successive, going from 7/27/82 to 7/28/82, and there’s no break in the notations. The size is the same, the ink color is the same.  

Maybe I did a Rip Van Winkle when I fell asleep in that store, waking up a day later, except in my case I was also transported more than a hundred miles away. 

Maybe it was aliens, or a Twilight Zone episode I'm not yet aware of.

Maybe I sustained a head injury in Alexandria, you know, because of all the crime, and developed  amnesia.

We’ll never know.