Should I Be In This Forest ?
It is another parallel route although a bit eerie at 7 AM on a rainy morning. Weary of the thick woods, I secure my bear spray and head up the narrow unpaved, muddy road through the National Forest east of Superior, Montana. At a rest are I notice a camper and late model automobile parked silently in the morning mist. I wonder why campers aren’t enjoying the wet splendor of an early morning in the woods.
After two hours, still uncomfortable with my silent surroundings, I return to my support vehicle. A middle age woman approaches. “You shouldn’t go off into the woods without telling someone where you are going”, she admonishes me. As we get acquainted she tells me she and her family are volunteers who stay in the camper I noticed. They are volunteers who look after the park. “We just had a murder here”. I recall then that a Superior woman had been found dead within a mile of where we stood. Her former husband has been accused of the crime. Now friends, I ask the woman and her husband who is repairing a flooded drainage ditch if they will take a photo of me celebrating my reaching, just minutes earlier, the 3000 mile mark since my journey began in Alaska.
