A Snapshot and The Scoop: That One Time I Noped Out

I take a lot of pride in travelling, hiking, and camping. Especially alone. However, in order for me to be able to continue enjoying myself there are a couple of ground rules I stick to that allow me to sleep soundly at night when I'm by myself in the backcountry of who-knows-where, and the number one rule is to avoid scary things. Mainly, this means I avoid scary movies like the plague. If someone turns on a scary movie, I leave the room, and if I can't leave the room I put in headphones or go to sleep. I definitely do not need the mental images of the main actors getting chased down by some creepy guy in a mask in the middle of a dark forest. Can you blame me? Another rule I have is to not go poking around creepy abandoned places, like an old farmstead or a random cemetery right off the side of the trail. Like the one in the picture above. Torrey and I came across this cemetery on our final day of hiking the Buffalo River Trail in northern Arkansas, shortly after we began the day's trek. Torrey likes historic sites like this, so I humored her by checking out the gravestones overgrown by the flora of the forest. That is, I went with her until I took a step and felt the ground shift under my feet. In all reality it is likely a grave cover had become overgrown with grass and hidden by the fallen leaves, and my weight shifted it just enough to make it wobble, but one thing led to another and then I was imagining zombies popping up out of the ground and chasing Torrey and I through the backwoods of Arkansas where we hadn't seen a single person on the trail since we'd began two days before and nobody would be around to witness our gruesome deaths. Yeah, I might have let my imagination and my minimal experience with scary movies get the better of me, but I was out of that cemetery so fast I'm pretty sure I left a puff of Natasha-shaped dust in my wake. I was doing that thing I do when I get scared where I tear up and giggle madly as I retreated to a distance that was by no means safe but at least gave me a headstart over Torrey if my nightmares came to life. At least her and I have been friends long enough for her to not hold it against me. It wasn't long before I convinced her I needed to move along for my sanity's sake, and we left the little cemetery behind. I may or may not have been keeping an ear out for the groans and rustling leaves that would signal we were being followed.