Otter Creek Wilderness, Monongahela National Forest, West Virginia

In the Monongahela National Forest, in West Virginia (my new haven), there's a famous "wild area" known as Dolly Sods.  It's a great place with lots of upland meadows and striking views out across the nearby highlands.  Most wildlands in the East are pretty but obscured by trees, and that's what makes the Sods so special.  But Dolly Sods can be crowded, and it's always very wet.  Nearby, there's another wilderness area known as Otter Creek.

I did the southern loop in the Otter Creek Wilderness back in October.  It was lovely, though unlike Dolly Sods, much beauty was concealed by the rapidly disrobing trees.  Here's a view from Shavers Mountain looking more or less east.

Long views are rare here, but so are other hikers!  This is a larger wilderness area than the Sods, much more wooded, and far less visited.  The guy who originally told me about Otter Creek said that it's got a bad reputation because people get lost there.  I didn't find the trails too confusing because I purchased Johnny Molloy's hiking book about the Mon NF.  Without that, I'd have gotten so lost...

My friend and I set up camp right on the banks of Otter Creek, and though we did see a few day hikers on Sunday afternoon when we arrived, we encountered not another soul for the next two days.  It was really beautiful

Strangely, we didn't hear any birds at Otter Creek either.  The place was almost eerie in its silences.  You could sometimes hear trucks grinding through their gears on the hilly, distant roadway.  But no owls at night, no thrushes in the evening, no birds at all.

Coyotes there were aplenty!  They howled like a legion of unclean spirits in the ink-black night.  My friend--despite being from Texas--had never heard coyotes before...and I admit that these ones sounded especially vicious.  It gave him a bit of a fright.