Let's Not Meet Again

An Evening By The Creek

This happened last Friday on a pleasantly warm night. As a result, my girlfriend and I had decided to spend the evening down by the creek near my place. We figured that this would be our last chance before winter to spend an evening lounging out fireside amongst nature without freezing to death.

This creek runs through a beautifully forested ravine that weaves through the neighbourhood. It's lined with backyard properties on either side. Contrary to what that picture paints, it's still very private as ravine properties tend to have a surplus of land. Anyways, we arrive at the parking lot near a main street and proceed to venture into the park, firewood and wine in hand, admiring the gorgeous sunset. The walk to our favourite creek side spot usually takes 15 minutes; it's a fair way into the park. But I literally spent my childhood riding the trails there and grew comfortable with the landscape as nothing weird ever happens in that park. Plus I live in a pretty good area so hanging out after sunset never gave me odd vibes. We arrive at the spot and it's going to be completely dark in about 5 minutes so we get the fire going. We got comfortable, poured ourselves a tall glass of chardonnay, and let the conversation flow.

After what I perceived to be roughly 45 minutes, the fire began dimming so I added a few more pine logs and curled back up on the ground with my girlfriend. Now we were just cuddling and taking in the therapeutic sounds of the forest. There was the ambient noise of trickling water, branches dancing in the slight breeze, and squirrels prancing over dry leaves. I had to take a piss and I have a somewhat shy bladder so I always go a little ways away to do so. I come back and laydown once again. She then pointed out that the animals had become very inactive now as the occasional crunching of leaves behind us had completely stopped, though we disregarded it.

At this point, things have escalated and our bodies may have been missing a little bit of clothing. I'm aware this is breaking a law or two but what cop is going to find us here? We switch positions and now I'm facing the treeline as opposed to the creek before. Right when I do so, I see a distant twig shake and leaves scurry. Not going to lie, this creeped me out a little, but in my current mindset I only had one goal. After resuming, I slightly tilt up my head and raise my pupils as high as they can go to get vision of the tree line. I did that because at the moment, I was a little weary of something a bit bigger than a squirrel having moved that branch. But I'm on over thinker by nature and chose to ignore my farfetched thought.

I looked back up in 5 minutes doing my covert head movement to not alert a possible on-looker. Then I fucking saw someone in the moonlight hiding behind a tree. After looking for a few more seconds I could determine it was a man stroking himself off to our image. I didn't know what this guy was capable of so I was having an inner debate as to what the best course of action was. I then rolled over and told my girlfriend to calmly get dressed and explained the situation. We decided the best course of action was to wait it out and hope the on-looker got bored. I've always been one to avoid confrontation but was ready to step in if the man got closer. After about 10 tense minutes of hard core anxiety we could hear the "squirrels" again, the sound of crunching leaves grew more distant by the moment. What a relief.

Though we still had to make it back to the car and I was really loathing the idea of that. Call me a coward but being watched like that creeped the shit out of me and I just wanted to get away. The two of us have always been quite apt in terms of running, so we did just that. We booked it back to the car in record time without seeing anyone on the path. I guess the school track team came in use. Now I know this experience isn't one of life threatening or immediate danger, but I don't think anyone would enjoy the feeling of being used as masturbation material in a secluded eerily dark forest. So, stranger of the woods, go find an internet connection and watch someone else.