mollmeister
Angel Diva
When we lived in the Bay Area, we used to hike all over the immediate area (and the Sierras) pretty much every weekend.
One day we hiked closer to the city than we usually did, in the Marin Headlands.
After tromping around for a few hours, we came upon a very distinguished looking, but oddly dressed (more for the city than for hiking), older African American gentleman, headed the other direction.
My husband warned him that we'd seen a raccoon acting strangely back down the trail (we were a little afraid it had rabies), and the guy went nuts. I don't know if he thought my DH had called him an insulting name related to raccoons or what, but he was clearly off his rocker-- senility, mental illness, I don't know. But not OK.
He started screaming obscenities at us, and jumped between the two of us on the trail (I had stopped to look at something and we were maybe 30yds apart when he came on us) and then pulled out a hunting-style knife and started waving it about.
It was incredibly surreal. So surreal that I don't know if I did what I *should have* done.
We had been doing a lot of really rough trail running at the time, so I just hopped down off the trail and over some rocks and ran around him, downslope to my husband, and we took off running back to civilization. We told a ranger about him, but they never had us file a formal report or anything, which I thought was really odd.
One day we hiked closer to the city than we usually did, in the Marin Headlands.
After tromping around for a few hours, we came upon a very distinguished looking, but oddly dressed (more for the city than for hiking), older African American gentleman, headed the other direction.
My husband warned him that we'd seen a raccoon acting strangely back down the trail (we were a little afraid it had rabies), and the guy went nuts. I don't know if he thought my DH had called him an insulting name related to raccoons or what, but he was clearly off his rocker-- senility, mental illness, I don't know. But not OK.
He started screaming obscenities at us, and jumped between the two of us on the trail (I had stopped to look at something and we were maybe 30yds apart when he came on us) and then pulled out a hunting-style knife and started waving it about.
It was incredibly surreal. So surreal that I don't know if I did what I *should have* done.We had been doing a lot of really rough trail running at the time, so I just hopped down off the trail and over some rocks and ran around him, downslope to my husband, and we took off running back to civilization. We told a ranger about him, but they never had us file a formal report or anything, which I thought was really odd.
