A Night in the Hollow Tree
A traveler lost in the brush near Snohomish spends a freezing, rain-soaked night in an hollowed-out tree, only to discover he was feet away from safety.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
A gentleman recently took the trail for the Snohomish country, thinking that by reaching the river he could reach the town by night. But the thick brush and the rain made it impossible to gather and build the fires. Finally the rain compelled him to halt in the gathering gloom of night. Shortly after he found himself off the trail among the brush and windfalls. Wishing to endure a cold night in the woods, he set out with his revolver to strike the trail; but failing to do so, he concluded it was best to secure himself in some sheltered spot and wait for daylight. At this juncture, he luckily hit upon a large hollow tree, and being drenched with the rain and chilled with the cold, he crept in and there awaited the coming of day. Daylight finally came, and his chagrin may be imagined when he found that in the darkness he had crawled into an old tree which had been burned out, that he was all covered with soot from his head to his feet, and that he had halted within a few feet of the road which leads directly to the Snohomish.
“His chagrin may be imagined when he found that in the darkness he had crawled into an old tree which had been burned out... and that he had halted within a few feet of the road.”
Travelers today rely on GPS to navigate the Snohomish river valley, but the dense, unforgiving nature of the brush remains a hallmark of the region. This story captures the precarious reality of early settlement where a wrong turn in the dark could turn a routine walk into a survival ordeal.
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