My wife, daughter and I had been wanting to get away for a while, and we finally worked it out so we could go camping on a friend's land one weekend. The land is in the Georgia mountains, far away from pretty much everything. There's a few caches relatively nearby, but you have to drive forever on twisting roads to get near them.

This piece of land is used quite a bit by our friends as a camping spot. Once they purchased the land, they improved the river frontage and mowed about ten acres to allow LOTS of people to camp at one time. Plenty of room for 70+ parents and kids to camp, play, and generally get away from it all. As a centerpiece to the campsite, we helped the owner erect a huge tipi, in which he and his family sleep. Raising that tipi was an event in itself. The owner told us that he wanted to put up the tipi as a permanent fixture ever since he had been told the rumor that an Indian chief had been buried on the property.

The weekend we decided to go, we found out we'd be the only ones at the site. Since there wouldn't be anyone else there, our friends told us to use the tipi instead of having to haul our tent to the site. We jumped at the chance since the interior of the tipi is pretty spacious and we figured the less we had to bring out there, the better.

The weather was beautiful that weekend, but the nights were getting cool. We set up everything in the tipi and went to get wood for a fire. We enjoyed the pleasures of cooking camp food over the fire and having a nice, quiet evening with no TV, no lights, and no distractions. Everything was peaceful until we decided to go to bed. I wanted to try to get and early start the next morning since the nearest caches were still tempting. We cleaned up the site, stowed the food in the car, and prepared to go to bed.

Did I mention how dark it gets at night when there's a new moon and no lights anywhere nearby? It's amazing to be able to see so many stars so clearly, but darkness can also mess with your senses when it's so complete.

I decided to take a nighttime shot of the tipi before turning in

That's when things got weird.

After getting ourselves settled in the tipi and turning off the light, we began to hear noises. Don't get me wrong...my wife and I have been campers since before we met and got married. I actually met my wife on a campout. Normal nighttime noises don't bother us and we've become used to them while camping. That's why these noises were unsettling to us. We could swear we heard a large "thing" moving nearby. Not sounds like raccoons or opossums would make...this was different. We could just tell something was out there. We'll never know what it was, whether a bear (possible), wild pig (iffy), deer (unlikely), etc., because the tipi had no windows. The only way to see outside was to look out of the door flap. We weren't that interested, and were just grateful that it was made of a very heavy canvas.

After those noises, the coyotes started in. I hadn't thought much about the state of Georgia having coyotes, but I couldn't help thinking about it that night. They began howling a long way away, but they visited around the campsite for a while that night. We could hear the howls getting closer for a while, then we could just hear them roaming the site a little later. Maybe the smell of our cooking drew them. I had thought that the smell of humans would keep them away, but apparently not. No way to know. We were just glad when it seemed like they moved on. They howled throughout the night, though.

Needless to day, my wife and I didn't get much sleep that night. Our three year old slept through it all, mainly because she wore herself out playing around the site that day. When dawn arrived the next morning, we gathered our stuff and headed out to find a place to eat and then went home. We weren't interested in having a repeat performance the following night. I decided the caches would have to wait until a later time.

After we got home and got some rest, I decided to upload the pictures of the trip to see what they looked like. The one night picture of the tipi that came out caught me by surprise. You can see the condensation from my breath at the left of the picture. However, what can explain the image in front of the tipi?

The night was clear and there was no fog or mist at that time. You can see a couple of different things in that blurry image, depending on how you look at it. I just call it the tipi spirit now.

We have returned to the area since this time, but only when other friends are camping as well. We are NOT interested in visiting this place alone again. I still have to make time to visit the caches in the area, but I'm in no rush.