We did the six and a half hour drive and got to the cabin around 1 pm on Sunday, the 21st. It's a nice little cabin, around 600 square feet, with a bedroom, kitchen, and living room. There's an outhouse, no bathroom. There's a propane stove, heater, fridge, and lights, but no electricity. It sits at about 6,200 feet on a knoll overlooking Oregon and Idaho. The view is awesome.
The first day went as expected. It was hot, the sky was clear, I sat around eating Otter Pops and reading a book. Sometimes I sat outside, sometimes inside. Duncan peed on a lot of things. I grilled a steak and corn on the cob for dinner. Duncan ate bees. Someone left a box of hamburger patties in the freezer, so I cooked one of those up for Duncan. Some people came up to look for a geocache that sits on top of the flagpole. We watched a small herd of cattle pass through a field below us.
When it started to get dark, I closed up all of the curtains and flopped down on the couch with my book, then eventually went to sleep.
Here's a quick sketch of the layout of the cabin.
At about 3:30 a.m., I was woken up by a truck pulling into the driveway. Duncan started barking, so I focused on shutting him up. I figured they were there to use the outhouse, since I couldn't think of any other reason for them to be there. They came up the driveway from the west, passed my car, circled the flagpole, and stopped in front of the shed. I didn't look out the window at that point because I was trying to keep Duncan quiet. I heard a truck door close. Didn't hear anything for a minute, then I heard another truck door close. I figured they'd leave, but they didn't.
I heard voices, then another door close. More voices, some clanking. Duncan had gone back to sleep. I sat for a while, listening. More voices, more clanking. I'm not sure how long this went on, maybe fifteen minutes.
I went into the kitchen to look out the window. It was two guys in a pickup truck. They looked like hunters. They had the hood of the truck up, and they had flashlights. One of them was messing with the engine, the other was just standing there. I went back into the living room, figuring they'd get it worked out eventually. After a few minutes, I looked at the south wall of the cabin and saw that someone was behind the cabin, shining a flashlight through the shutter of the back door.
I was sitting in the living room, completely visible to anyone who might choose to look through the east door or any of the north or east windows. I walked into the kitchen and stood next to the door that someone was trying to shine the flashlight through. I couldn't hear anything but one creak, someone shifting their weight on the back deck. They were being sneaky. They knew I was there, they saw the car.
I could see the truck from that angle, where the other guy was under the truck. I thought maybe the guy not working in the truck was just curious about the cabin. The geocachers had asked me what the place was, maybe this guy was curious, too.
After a few seconds, the light disappeared and the guy walked back to the truck. I continued watching them from as far away from the window as I could get so that they couldn't see me.
I was really uncomfortable with the idea of these guys knowing that the only person in the cabin was me. The cabin would be very easy to break into. One kick to the door, a quick pry bar to a window, and you're in. Maybe they did know I was there alone, maybe the guy with the flashlight looked in the front windows while I was in the living room and I didn't notice. I really don't know. But once I saw him trying to see through the shutter over the back door, I was determined not to be seen.
Henceforth, we shall call Guy Working on Truck "Guy #1" and the other guy "Guy #2."
Guy #2 went back to the truck, stood around. Guy #1 did stuff in the engine, did stuff under the engine, did stuff in the cab. Guy #2 started shining his flashlight around - at the trees, at the cabin, at the kitchen window. I ducked every time the beam swung my way. Then he did something really interesting. He put the flashlight down and walked west, down the driveway.
Have you ever noticed that if someone has a flashlight, you can't see anything outside of the beam because the light distracts your eyes so much that it seems darker than it is? I managed to see him go west without the flashlight because he had a light colored coat. But once he was a few feet away, he disappeared. Then he reappeared, flashlightless, a few feet from the kitchen window.
There's a difference to me between curiously examining a cabin with a flashlight in hand and leaving your flashlight 50 feet away while examining a cabin. Having the flashlight kind of says, "hey, here I am, looking at stuff, no big deal." Coming up to a cabin to look in windows with no flashlight kind of screams, "hey, I'm doing something I shouldn't be doing and I don't want to be noticed doing it. Please keep your eyes on the two lights over there which suggest that there are still two people over there."
So when he suddenly showed up by the window, I ducked so that he couldn't see me. The window is higher than 6 feet off the ground, so you can't just look in. However, you can reach the window to see if it is unlocked, which he did. Then he started around the cabin, checking each of the windows and doors to see if they were unlocked. After he checked the kitchen door, I went into the bedroom, which had the shutters closed and locked from the inside, so he couldn't see me in there. I saw him go to each of the windows all the way around, including a tug on the east screen door of the living room. The door was closed and locked, but the door has windows, so you can see right in. Then he went back to the truck.
At that point, I figured I was kind of screwed if they decided to actually break in. I had no weapons to speak of, just a kitchen knife. I decided to just sit on the couch and wait to see what happened. I figured they were just there to use the outhouse and got curious, especially since Guy #1 was working on the truck this whole time, but it still seemed very suspicious to me.
Another half hour or so later, they started rolling the truck down the driveway, and it started at the bottom of the driveway. I walked over to the east window and saw them driving down the road. I could see both guys in the truck. I waited until I couldn't see them anymore, then tried to go back to sleep. It took a while, because I was afraid they were going to come back. It was just after 4:30 a.m. when they left, and probably almost 5:30 before I went back to sleep.
I spent all day wondering if they were going to come back that night. I read my book, ate breakfast, cleaned stuff, packed things I wouldn't need for the rest of the trip. Duncan ate bees and barked every time a truck went by. I found a flag buried in a box of stuff on the table, so I took it out and ran it up the flagpole. In the early afternoon, a truck going west stopped just out of sight of the cabin and then couldn't start again for about 15 minutes. I could hear them trying to turn the engine over. I don't know if it was the same people. Later in the afternoon, we saw a cowboy with a border collie herding about 20 head of cattle down the road, moving east.
Around 4:30, I went out to take the flag down, folded it correctly, put it in a giant Zip-Loc bag to protect it and put it on a shelf instead of burying it a dusty box of crap. That's when I realized that I was essentially packed to leave. I had it in my mind all day that these guys might come back, and had cleaned up the cabin and gotten ready to leave. It occurred to me that all I was going to do was go to sleep and then get up and leave in the morning, so I wouldn't be missing anything if I just left instead. Around 5:30, I started packing up the car and by 6:30 I was on the road home. Potential crisis avoided.
Maybe I was just being paranoid, but that was some seriously creepy shit. You have to admit that.
