Tonight I’m at a new campsite. It’s in the national forest, but the dogs bark in the distance like it’s a whole city neighborhood. Earlier I could hear the much more nearby campers, but not see them. I only see forest. There are plenty of ambient highway and road sounds.

It’s late now and the moon is bright and all the humans are quiet but the dogs are still at it in the far distance. I’m inside my car with the tent up when I’m suddenly aware of not being alone. I mean theres always bugs, but something else now. And then I hear it, a weird growl that doesn’t sound so much menacing as wary. Because it sounds rather like a dog, I immediately just say “No” in my most reproachful, also hopeful, voice. I hold as still as one can while shaking, barely breathing, listening hard. I have bear spray in reach but I’m unable to muster the will to move before the growl comes again, this time somehow more plaintive. It has to be a dog, I tell myself, as I again intone a “No” that would freeze any good boy. Then I move quickly. Toward the bear spray and my headlamp, immediately searching outside the car from its safe-ish confines—there’s still a tent at the rear—for the source of my adrenaline rush. I put the lamp in the brightest setting and shine it kind of wildly, searching for movement. There’s nothing. No hurried shadow, no quaking shrubbery, not even a neighbor calling their pet home. The far away dogs resume their barking. Are there more now than before? I shine my lamp uselessly into the underbrush. What the fuck just happened.

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