My wife and I recently went to a place in Missouri called Hercules Glades. It's a little State Park south east of Springfield. We stayed in a little cabin on Bull Shoals Lake. It was winter and there were no leaves on the trees, so it was interesting to see the long views.
I have always thought that some of the prettiest parts of the Missouri Ozarks were the ridgelines and forests. Andrea commented that she didn't like the canyons or caves, as they were kind of dark dank and depressing.
I told her about finding some enormous sinkholes when I was stationed at Fort Leonard Woods, and how I haven't been able to figure out since then which ones they were.
I also told her my story about going cave searching and finding a cabin in the woods. I used USGS topographical maps to locate caves. They used an upside down capital Y to mark caves on the topo maps. I would find the little symbols and then try to go find them. This was a region of Missouri that was a patchwork of private land and national forest public land. My motivation was from an old story I had heard that said that Jesse James, when he ran with the Civil War guerillas including Quantril's Raiders, had taken a Federal Army pay wagon. He drove the stolen wagon into the forest, into a cave, where he used dynamite to collapse the mouth of the cave and hide the horse drawn wagon full of gold. So this legend made me think that I would like to see some of the smaller and less known caves. I would try to pick routes where I could park and walk to the caves with a minimum of bushwacking while avoiding any cabins or homes: obvious private property locations.
I would find the caves often, and it was sometimes spooky. The minor spookiness was caused by the tiny creepy nature of the caves. Sometimes they did not go back far enough to really merit being called a cave. Often, they constricted down to a tiny crack where I would not even entertain the thought of going in. Many times, there would be pigeons roosting inside the cave. When you walked in, they would startle and flush out. I never got used to that, it always freaked me out. Add to all that the weird Deliverance vibe I always got in the backwoods in Missouri, and I was usually spooked when I went caving (which was always solo).
One day, I was going out and parked on the side of the road in some out of the way place, and started bushwacking through the woods toward a cave site. If you've ever done Orienteering or been in the military and had to do Land Navigation, you'll understand what it's all about. Pre-GPS, this involved a good topo map and a compass, as well as a lot of time spend figuring the route (both before you went out and while you were there). See, the maps don't show everything, and you can find yourself in thick woods, viney brambles, or in terrain much steeper than it appears on the map and unable to move forward, so you have to traverse around. This one day, I was walking along, engrossed in the map, and I look up and there's a faint clearing, overgrown with grass, but less thickly covered with trees. I looked over and there's a cabin. This was a wood frame house, really, small, completely run-down, but still with curtains in the windows. I can't remember if there were any broken-down cars nearby, I don't think so, but I think there were a couple of small barn or outhouse sized little buildings around. I could not see that there was a good road leading to this place, so my initial perception was that this was an old cabin that was completely abandoned. However, I could not tell for sure. Then I started getting creeped out. What if this was the modern equivalent of a moonshiner, someone either running drugs or just hiding from the law out in the woods? What if it was a mentally deranged hermit and they were watching me through some tiny slit in the filthy curtains? Like when you are a kid and you manage to scare the hell out of yourself with your imagination, I was definitely freaked out.
I went into stealth mode, assuming that someone was there and that they were not yet aware of me. I tried to fade back into the woods, but it was winter, which makes it harder to hide. I simply walked more carefully, trying not to step on any twigs or make any noise. I skirted the cabin and put it behind me, but I was still on track to go to the cave. But now, my heart was not in the hunt. While on one hand, successfully getting away from the creepy house made me start to assume that it was empty and not a real threat, another chilling thought occurred to me. What if the guy saw me and was quietly stalking me? I kept and eye out behind me from that point on, really not able to enjoy my walk in the woods any more at all. I found the cave, which was a tiny one, and not at all worth the effort and started to consider my return trip. I wanted to stay away from the cabin, but steering wide around it had its perils, too. What if I got lost? Not very likely, but it was more likely that detouring wide of the cabin meant more time in the woods and a higher likelihood of being caught, or wandering into someone else's land that wasn't marked on the map, either.
In the end, I never saw anyone, and made it back to the car without incident. But I still remember the spooked feeling that infected me on that day, all to spend 5 minutes at a cave that was little more than a shallow alcove in the woods.
I never did find any gold. Although, if I had, I sure wouldn't be admitting it to anyone, would I?
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