Let’s see…

One time? I took my parent’s dachshund, tootsie: camping- this was when they first got her; she was maybe a few months old.

It was bear country in WI. Specifically, what’s called “primitive” camping where you can park at a state forest walk in and just set up camp.

Right by a beautiful trout stream. I was waiting for the sun to come up, enjoying some coffee, before going off to wet my line and get breakfast.

She was laying next to me, (an aggressive snuggler.) when this big ole bear comes up the stream.

When she saw it, she started trying to pick a fight. Barking.

Fortunately the bear was incredulous and possibly faintly amused. It looked at the puppy. Looked at me. Back at the puppy. It’s expression said “you realize you’re a snack, right?”

Fortunately, it moved off down the stream.

Yeah, she’s a dachshund to her core- sass, class and won’t hesitate to pick a fight with anything and then run behind you when it starts.

Years ago, I was into Geocaching. For the uninitiated, users hide small caches around the world, and the cache usually includes at least a log where people who find the cache can mark their visit. The coordinates of the cache are marked on the Geocaching website and people use GPS to locate it.

I thought it was finally time I’d put one of my own caches out for people to find, so I went to scout out possible locations for it. It was late autumn and was still light out. I knew that I wanted to put it on a nature trail I liked to walk so I went there.

One thing to know about late autumn up here in the Nordics is that it gets really dark really fast, meaning I was enveloped by a dark forest pretty quickly after making it to the trail. No matter, I thought, I had my phone and it had a flashlight, so I kept going, despite it having low battery (which, in hindsight, was a mistake).

I found a spot for the cache at about the halfway point of the trail and made a mental note of it, planning to come put it there during the limited daylight hours.

And soon after… Lights out. Phone was dead and I was in total darkness. Ambient light was close to non-existent due to how cloudy it was. I felt a bit panicked about the situation but kept going, feeling around with my feet to make sure I wouldn’t walk off the trail.

Lucky for me, I was quite familiar with the trail and eventually managed to come out the other end on a gravel road that was also unlit but at least easier to traverse and eventually got back home.

Not the scariest possible experience, but you can imagine how it feels to walk through a silent, damp forest in pitch black darkness while trying to feel your way out. Not sure I would have fared this well if the trail was unfamiliar.

I did get the Geocache out there the next day, and it remained there until I moved out of the area.

As a cyclist I lost count on the number of times I was almost ran over by some vehicle at 100+ km/h

Getting caught in a large rainstorm in the evening while on a mountain trail with 3 more hours of rocky descent to go.

I was visiting some family in Transylvania, Romania and in the afternoon we decided to go for a small hike, in the mountainous woods. It was my wife and I, her local cousin and a dog. We head off into the woods on a path leading up a mountain.

At some point we passed a smallish stream and when we later returned to go back it had flooded and we couldn’t cross so had to take a detour. No phones/gps but the cousin claimed both he and the dog knew the way, so we followed them. Not long after we were in the middle of the forest in pitch black darkness as the sun went down fast, no longer following a path, but climbing up steep slopes on our hands and knees. At one point my wife put her hand down and touched something she claims was a mouse, she nearly started crying at that point. I was more worried about bears, but hoped the dog could scare them away if we met one.

Took us a few hours, but eventually we found a road and was able to follow it back. Though with Romanian traffic, I’m not sure if being lost in the woods wasn’t safer than walking a busy road at night with no lights.