No sooner than we started hiking up this creek from the single lane paved road below, did we hear a loud bellowing that carried on as one big breath had been exhailing this throat gurgling noise. We were only a few minutes from the road below and most of the cabins are built across the street like ours and we knew this property was remote. It is over 1400 acres of rugged terrain but one can see around very well because it had been clear cut of redwoods back in the mid – late 1800′s and had burned before more than once.
I had brought our Dalmation for the hike and she looked left just like we did for the source of this noise. Nothing was there, not a boulder or redwood stump, deer, just nothing! We looked to the right and it was very still and quiet. My collarbones were still aware that the sound we just heard was unlike anything I have ever heard before. It was a low growling rumble that finished in a throaty gurgle. It made us feel like the intruders we were being on this private property. I asked him, “did you hear that?” but it was shrugged off & we continued hiking up the creek but never spoke about the incident. It felt creepy because it does not take long to gain altitude away from homes along the main creek below and everything is so quiet that all you hear is the Pacific wind. This ridge we were climbing was too steep for houses to be built upon so it was primarily forgotten about, the land always left alone.
We often stopped to use the metal detector inside old stumps and we were feeling library quiet ourselves, my husband kept his headphones on so the detector would not scan beeping noises. There was a group of redwood trees at the view straight up the hill ahead that were blackened by a previous forest fire and we felt scared of them. We did make it to the ring of standing trees and looked inside a few that were burned through vertically. Nothing was unusual but we just felt nervous and we were whispering.

We left those trees and found a flatter section of land to walk on across the thread creek and came upon an old logging grade road. It was overgrown with bushes and at times and we had to go above or below the graded road to get around the plant life. One time I just crawled through a portion of some of the overgrowth and I found a tunnel about the height of a wild boar. It made me worry I might stir one awake from a midday nap. So i suggested we walk below the graded road on the ridge parallel to it and we could not believe our eyes when we came upon a redwood tree with branches leaning against it. THese were no ordinary branches! They were tree limbs so heavy you could not possibly budge them out of place. They had been purposely stacked against a lower limb of the redwood tree by something. It was a lean to shelter which faced south.

We never told our neighbors or landlord about what we heard and saw that day. In fact, my husband would never answer me if I directly asked him, “What do you think hollered at us that time we went metal detecting?” He would make a whimper sound and that was as far as I would bother him because he had been in the military before, Army and he endured plenty more than just hearing a holler. I am intuitive and can only admit that what I heard was warning us to stay away from it’s hunting grounds. I felt bad for it and intruding it’s silent land. We never went back there again.
Sincerely, RD