by Darcy Dean
“Are you ready?” asked my dad as we clambered out of his grey minivan.
“Heck yeah!” I responded enthusiastically.
After that brief exchange, we headed out into the wild wilderness of Virginia.
We were on a mission to locate and document an old cemetery that belonged to my great, great, great, great, great uncle and his family. It was said to be deep inside the ever-changing woods of the Virginian mountains, and we were determined to find it. My dad and I parked the car on the side of the quiet back road and made our way into the imposing fortress of trees.
We wandered around the woods for about thirty minutes over steep inclines and went in what dad called the “right direction,” but I was not as convinced. It was very beautiful, though, so I didn’t mind. There was an array of plant life and all kinds of varying leaves that ranged from very dark mossy green to a bright lime green. The leaves on the ground crunched heavily under our feet when they were stepped on; birds seemed to call on every tree in the bright morning beams of sunlight that shone through the dense canopy and reached the sparse underbrush of the woods.
We walked for another five minutes before we came to a small stream that ran down the side of a majestic mountain and burbled over moss-covered rocks. Dad said that the old homestead should be a little bit further uphill from where we were and that the cemetery would be close to it.
Sure enough, after just a little more hiking we started seeing various rusted objects that might be found in an old home. We saw multiple straw baskets and some old, broken pottery that I assumed was a shattered bowl - but, maybe it was something else. We slowly picked our way through the small shrubs and bushes that littered the forest floor until we reached the remains of the house. It was not very impressive, with a collapsed roof and crumbling walls, but it was very interesting to see either way.
We didn’t see the cemetery right away, so we searched a wider area around it. After another few minutes and still not seeing it, we decided that the best thing to do would be to split up and cover more area. I was investigating a clump of large stones when I heard rapid footfalls echo through the expanse of trees around me and I looked up to see a large brown figure coming toward me.
At first, I thought that it was a horse but then again why would a horse be running around in the woods?
Then I recognized it. It was a bear.
I knew that it hadn’t seen me yet, so I had two options: one was to duck behind a tree and hope that it ran past me, and the other was to make myself big and be loud in an attempt to scare it off. The bear looked like it was young, so I decided to scare it. I started waving my arms around in the air wildly and shouting, “HEY, BEAR!” It immediately saw me and turned the other way and ran away. A little shaken from the encounter, I went back to where Dad was and told him about my bear.
After another quarter of an hour of looking for the cemetery and finding nothing, we decided that it was time to make the long hike back to the car. The hike down the mountain was much less strenuous, but no less beautiful than the hike up. We might have been unsuccessful with our mission, but we were successful with having a good time and gaining new experiences.
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