It's Not Paranoia If Someone Really Is After You

Paranoia: A mental disorder characterized by systematized delusions.

While I was in Oregon I drove out to the coast for a couple of days. I stopped about halfway to hike in the Tillamook National Forest. The trail head was several hundred yards off the highway, down a creepy gravel lane hemmed in with overgrown vegetation. It was raining steadily when I arrived, the trees cloaked with fog and mist, and parked in a deserted clearing, next to a swollen mountain river. I'm not a guy who would survive very long in the wilderness, so I was a little nervous as I contemplated disappearing into the dripping thicket. I needed a blanket or a wubbie or a big bodyguard dressed in a black turtleneck and mirrored sunglasses, even though it was raining. Those bodyguards can pull off the sunglasses anywhere.

As I started down the narrow trail, the stream thundering by on my right, I started to hallucinate up all kinds of nightmarish scenarios. I started with animals, wild animals, rabid with blood lust, stalking what was clearly a sick and weakened animal. I was watching out of the corner of my eye for the grizzly bear rearing up out of her den, listening for the scream of the mountain lion as it pounced and sank its fangs into my neck.

Because this seemed so implausible I let my imagination begin to work on the crazed mankind scenarios that I generally prefer over the crazed wildlife ones. I worried about stumbling on some backwoods marijuana patch where ten foot high sin semilla plants were guarded by Uzi-toting villains. They would shoot first, ask questions later. My body could easily be buried in a shallow grave in the rotting humus. Or maybe some inbred mountain crackers looking for some fun would toy with me for a while.

The great thing about hiking for a few hours is that my body requires so much attention that it begins to distract me from the wildlife and crackers living in my brain. I walked along the river for about a mile, then climbed steadily for an hour or so. It was hard work. Every now and then I stopped and listened to the rain pattering down. I couldn't hear anything else. About half way I passed another dude and his dog, which reassured me somewhat. I figured the grizzlies would have gotten him first. We chatted for a minute, sharing that weird bond between two guys stupid enough to walk in the woods in the pouring rain all alone.