Seems like hikers are always the ones finding bodies in the woods, which all the sudden triggers my morbid curiosity: I’ve only been at this a few years so my probability of making such a find is fairly small, but some of you who’ve been at this for years might’ve had different luck.
So, how about it? (If you can talk about it.)
Or, failing that, what’s the oddest/strangest/most bizarre thing you’ve seen while walking in the woods?
Never seen anything as morbid as a body (other than animals), but the strangest thing I have found is a full box of wine, labeled ‘Free’, about 15 miles from the nearest trailhead in the middle of the Sierra. Just what I wanted in the middle of my 12 mile, 3000 ft day – a refreshing glass of warm cabernet.
Let’s see, in the course of my gambolin’ peregrinations, I’ve found owl boluses (boli?), geo-caching stashes, voodoo shrines, the head of a vole skull in wildcat poop, a dollar bill, two watches, sunglasses, an anvil from the 1800s, a deer carcass strung up in a tree, and the trash and detritus of a marijuana growing operation . . but not a single dead human body, imagine that!
My friend Warren Long was leading a canoeing group very close to town, Saskatoon, Canada.
They came upon a corpse.
Fellow had drowned.
I’ve never found a body, but I thought this was fairly unusual. If anyone knows what it is feel free to clue me in. I figure it’s some Blair Witch thing.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/44/155197509_c674cfcc93_o.jpg
http://www.fedak.net/photos/BigPineMountain/PA045132-standard.html
http://www.fedak.net/photos/DrippingSprings/P4041676-standard.html
My wife and I went on a trip to India in 2003. While on a boat tour on the Ganges near Varanasi, we did see a human corpse on the riverbank. Even worse, a dog was gnawing on its heel.
Found a brassiere hanging next to Butte Creek, and a coral snake in a bottle of water in Arizona. A old friend, who was an entomologist found a corpse on a ridge in Marin County many years back. It was a murder victim, a young woman wearing only buckskin moccasins, and the sight of it haunted him the rest of his life.
No one’s gonna believe me when I say I came upon a headless stallion in a meadow in Kaua’i! But it’s true!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9848439@N07/872521909/in/set-72157600957094073/
Tom, can you fix that link any way? Thanks, G.M.