Nightmares About The Trail

[Mother Natures Son]

Has anyone had Nightmares about the trail? Yesterday, my wife and I were hiking up near the Halfway point of the trail. That night, I had a nasty Nightmare that woke me up in the middle of the night. They had made the 1st., A-I Hiker Robot. My job was to escort the Robot from Springer to the halfway point were someone else would take over. At the General store (At the Halfway Point.) I collapse on the porch. I was spent. The Press all gather around me and said, " So how was it hiking with the first A-I Hiker Robot?" "The machine is an animal. It doesn't want to rest, only go, go, go. We were doing big miles every day since we left. The only time we took a break was to get supplies in trail towns." Talk about a dream! Robots replacing us? Any Nightmare dreams out there about the trail?

[Tipi Walter]

I've had many nightmares about the backcountry and trails. They all involve massive development and destruction of the landscape due to human interference and sprawl. I wake up in a daze. Maybe I'm seeing the future??

[LazyLightning]

I wouldn't call this a nightmare but on my thru hike I kept having the same dream during the first couple months. Not same exact but I would always be back home in my dream and I would be saying "Why did I come back home? Now I have to get all the way back to the trail!" ... it was pretty crazy and happened often, different scenarios but I'd always be home wondering why and stressed I now need to get all the way back to the trail.

[Leo L.]

Not a nightmare, but a strange dream:

In the mid-80ties I did a motorcycle tour through the Sahara desert.
My friend and me started our ride at the first of February, and after the first hundred km a heavy snowstorm started, which blocked the whole traffic on the Interstate and we had to drive off the road and seek shelter in the adjoining forest, where we setup our tent.
We were well prepared for winter camping and had a good sleep.

In the early morning I had a dream where I saw a man passing by, stopping right at the tent very close to my head, looking down at me, shaking his head and walking on.
When we woke up the snowstorm had ceased and we crept out of the tent into a bright and very cold morning.
We found fresh footprints of big hunter's boots passing by our tent, stopping right at the headend, and heading on.

We could only guess that the guy had also shaked his head while staring down at the tent.

saharah0003.jpg

[gpburdelljr]

Not a nightmare, but a strange dream:

In the mid-80ties I did a motorcycle tour through the Sahara desert.
My friend and me started our ride at the first of February, and after the first hundred km a heavy snowstorm started, which blocked the whole traffic on the Interstate and we had to drive off the road and seek shelter in the adjoining forest, where we setup our tent.
We were well prepared for winter camping and had a good sleep.

In the early morning I had a dream where I saw a man passing by, stopping right at the tent very close to my head, looking down at me, shaking his head and walking on.
When we woke up the snowstorm had ceased and we crept out of the tent into a bright and very cold morning.
We found fresh footprints of big hunter's boots passing by our tent, stopping right at the headend, and heading on.

We could only guess that the guy had also shaked his head while staring down at the tent.

saharah0003.jpg

I assume you meant some other desert, not the Sahara desert.

[blue indian]

Ive had a reoccurring dream of bumping into a sleeping sasquatch. It has reddish fur and is sleeping next to a log with its back to the trail. It feels so very real and detailed in the dream. It is not a particularly pleasant dream

[dudeijuststarted]

I don't have nightmares about the trail, but my dreams following a few days (or longer) out there are normally very vivid and replete with black bears.

Thanks for the memories!

[Leo L.]

Definitely the Sahara it was.
We named the trip "From Snowstorm to Sandstorm".
There were nice dunes ocassionally:

[dudeijuststarted]

Definitely the Sahara it was.
We named the trip "From Snowstorm to Sandstorm".
There were nice dunes ocassionally:

This adventure sounds like a proper 80's music video, and a real blast as well!

[Leo L.]

Thanks for the kind words, yes, it has been a once-in-a-lifetime trip.

There had been another dream involved:
My friend went sick once (after I had been sick a few days before) so we were stuck to the tent in the middle of the desert, in the searing hot sun and strong ove-hot wind, to wait and cure his sickness.
We were low on food and what we had was of very poor local quality: a few sticks of multiday-old Baguette, a few lousy tins, some rice and pasta. Drinking water from local sources, awfully rich with minerals and salt.
The night following this very bad day my sick friend had a very livvy dream: A truck approaching us, loaded full with juicy oranges, stopped and handed us over boxes full of these bright-orange gems.
Next morning, my friend still weak but health improving a little, a cloud of dust appeared on the horizon and something like a truck approached.
Very excited we jumped up from behind the shrubs we had our tent setup to get noticed.
The vehicle turned out to be a Rollotel full of tourists, which stopped just at our tent.
All windows of the bus rolled down and head, hands and cameras of the tourists appeared and we got foto-shot like we were apes in a cage.
Then the drivers window rolled down and the guy hollerd in our local dialect a hello friends (it turned out that he was from just around the corner of our local town) and asked if we needed anything, but before we could stammer "oranges" he threw us a few oranges.
It all took maybe a minute or two and the Rollotel was gone in a huge cloud of dust, and we were left standing with a gold-orange fruit in each hand.

[Dan Roper]

Reading that Rainbow People thread up above is sufficient as a nightmare. Yuck!

Over the years, I've had three recurring dreams about imaginary places on the AT. One an old pasture with a wood gate; one a ledge waterfall; and one a long walk through dense woods on a side ridge. In 2020, I walked into the third of those imaginary places, the ridge between Chestnut Knob and Walker Gap near Burke's Garden. It was an odd feeling and hasn't yet been repeated.

[HooKooDooKu]

The 1st time I took my son on a backpacking trip, along the trail, we kept getting reports of bears at our campsite. We never saw any bears, but the reports combined with we were the only two at the campsite that night left me hyper-vigilant. The result was that I started having lucid dreams. I distinctly recall having a dream about a family get-together, for like a BBQ. As I open the door and walk in the house, I say to myself, "yeah, I see myself walking into this house, but I know I'm actually lying on the ground in the middle of the woods".

[HankIV]

I have nightmares about not the trail.