When we bought our house over a decade ago, it came with several acres of forest. Unfortunately, hunters stalked the woods in autumn and coyotes prowled at night. So… not entirely safe for a walk with the puppies. But it’s my land, and I’ll be damned if I won’t walk my dogs there.
I don’t object to hunting, especially since our yard is literally overrun by wild turkeys at certain times of year and I see deer everywhere around here. But I still don’t want people walking around my yard with loaded guns, possibly mistaking my foxhound for a deer.
It’s legal to hunt in any forest in NH, no matter who owns it, as long as there aren’t “No Hunting” signs posted. This is what the local police informed me, after I noticed a hunter literally parking on the side of the road and walking directly into my woods with a gun strapped to his shoulder.
I gave in and posted signs. That hunter moved on to a more hunter-friendly forest (I assume). I haven’t noticed any others since then. The dogs and I do wear orange vests in the fall, just in case. (Although you’ll notice I forgot them on the day I took these pictures.)
Orange vests don’t deter coyotes, but they generally won’t bother a human with two large dogs. I haven’t seen any directly, but I’ve seen pieces of dead animals, including the severed head of a deer, so I know they’re there. (I just bought a couple of game cameras, so I’m hoping I’ll be able to catch some pictures.)
I discovered The Campsite when we first moved in, so it’s not a recent thing. That was thirteen years ago, and it was clearly old then. (These photos were taken last fall, I believe, just before Kumar passed away.) It was probably in use sometime in the mid 2000s, but abandoned before the property was sold to us.
It still creeps me out.
Here’s what I found:
Upon entering the forest from the public dirt road, we’re greeted by a tripod of sticks. This could be caused by branches falling and landing like this—it does happen—but I suspect it was erected as a marker, because just up over that hill is The Campsite.
It looks like an empty patch of woods, at first… except for a ruined gas grill. It’s mostly fallen apart, but that much metal will take decades, if not centuries, to completely rot away. My first thought was to get the damned thing out of there, but it will take some lugging. It’s at least a couple of acres from the house. In the opposite direction, the public road is a a bit closer, but you have to go down a steep hill and cross a shallow ravine filled with a murky pond and poison ivy.
A little searching around, when I first found the site, turned up several beer cans with bullet holes in them. In fact, I find these throughout the forest, which gives me pause. Drinking and shooting practice aren’t a great combo.
Then… I discovered this. It’s the top of a tent. Maybe it was completely buried, at one point, but over time weather eroded the soil and exposed it. Or maybe the tent just collapsed and was covered by debris. Maybe the campers left the tent set up there for a while, thinking they’d keep using it, but it eventually collapsed. Perhaps over the winter snow crushed it.
But seriously, it’s really dug in there. And I don’t think it’s a simple matter of a collapsed tent. That’s not mere speculation…
I now present Exhibit A:
What are we looking at? It’s the actual nylon body of the tent, which the pups (Kumar was still with us, at the time I took the photos) and I found almost completely buried several feet away. I pulled it up, which is why we can now see so much of it. If the tent had simply collapsed, this wouldn’t be the case, obviously. It would be where the frame is. So why bury the two separately?
Exhibit B is something else I found just poking up out of the ground a bit further into the woods: clothing. A pair of black cargo pants and a black jacket. Both are pretty rotted, but still intact.
I seriously expected a skeleton to come up with these when I pulled them out of the ground. Fortunately, that didn’t happen. But why bury them out there? Did someone change clothes and decide they didn’t need their pants and jacket anymore? Was someone murdered and stripped naked? If so, what happened to the body?
People are weird and do weird things. Especially out in the boonies. But my writer brain can’t help but wonder at all this…
…and plot.
Jamie Fessenden's Blog 
Definitely the opening reel to a murder mystery. Maybe there were some hunters out there killed by a giant coyote spirit who devoured the bodies whole. I just had my annual viewing of “The Sacrifice.” Since I have been forced to move to Florida, the scenes of NH Autumn were particularly poignant, as was the scene at Weiser Antiquarian Books. I hope that next year you will have a 20th annversary production party for the remaining cast and crew members.
You’re in Florida?!
Yes, I was forced to move the domain of DeSantis. When my landlady died in 2022, I had to leave New Hampshire after 36 years. In early 2023, I was shuttling my belonging from NH to the family home in Connecticut. My father and sister were in Florida for the Winter, and would not be coming North until May. My thought was that I could care for my father during the Spring and Summer, and in the Fall he and my sister would go to FL. However, in April my sister got a sweetheart deal on the house across the street. The owner had bought the house for his elderly girlfriend, and then she died. The owner just wanted to get rid of the house as quickly as possible. He sold the house to my sister for $20,000, and the land underneath it for $30,000. It is a prefab home in a retirement community. My sister thought I could move to Florida and help care for my father there. Personally, I wanted to stay in New England, but I could not financially maintain the CT home. What forced me to move to FL was that my father had a fall and broke his femur. He had to have a rod put in his leg, and then he spent 100 days in a rehab facility. Since he could not travel North, I would be needed in FL to help care for him. I spent the summer getting rid of a lot of belongings. I had to donate hundreds of books to the local library because my sister did not want the expense of shipping them to FL. On August 27, I walked away from our family home for the last time, and I took the auto train to FL. Our family home in CT has been sold. My father built that house, and he was sorry to let it go. I am slowly adjusting to life down here, though I miss Autumn in New England. That was why I enjoyed watching “The Sacrifice” again, because the Autumn scenery reminded me of what I had left behind.
Ooohhh! This is fascinating! I’d be curious, too! And, when that book is written, please, let me know! I’ll definitely read it!