After three weeks of recovering from an outbreak of poison ivy, I was desperate to get back into the woods again.  “Take me to a trail,” I commanded my husband, Grant, even though it was already late in the day. 

“Any trail in particular?” he asked.

“You pick,” I said.  “Just get me there.”

I don’t know why I felt so driven.  Maybe it was the lingering effects of the prednisone I was allergic to. 

Grant drove for about an hour and we ended up at a section of the Appalachian Trail called Neel’s Gap.  The sun was dipping low in the sky, and most hikers had already left.  I jumped out of the car and got a head start on the trail.  In fact, I was running like my hair was on fire. 

About a mile in, I came to an abrupt stop.  In front of me stood a tall, dark, horned creature. In fact, it looked like a huge, upright, horny man.

At first, I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me – especially because the woods to my right had an exaggerated three-dimensional look.  I just stood there waiting for Grant because there was no way I could go forward with the creature in the trail and a cliff to my left.  I didn’t dare enter the enchanted forest on my right.

Grant saw me standing there and I pointed asking, “What the hell is that?”   

Grant said, “It appears to be a really large goat.  But, what would it be doing here?  The nearest farm is at least four miles away.”

“It’s looking at me,” I said.  “What should we do?”

We all stood in the middle of the trail until the creature walked into the warped woods, at which time, it truly looked like a goat, and not a very large one.  It was as if it were encouraging us to pass.

Grant got in front of me and led the way.  The goat stared at us from the sidelines.  After a short distance, I heard a noise behind me.  I turned and saw the goat trotting after me. I dropped to one knee and offered it a peanut.  The goat approached and took the peanut from my hand.  At this point, it looked like a medium-sized, spotlessly clean black goat with intelligent green eyes.  It had absolutely no visible sex organs or scent. 

After a few more peanuts, the goat nuzzled me aside and proceeded along the trail.  It looked back to see if I were following.

“I think it wants to lead,” I said to Grant.  Grant stepped aside to allow the goat to pass, but the goat clearly wanted to be between us.  We walked in silence for about a mile.  It was getting dark.  I said, “We’re going to have to turn back soon.  If the goat is still with us when that time comes, we’re going to have to bring it home with us.”  Grant agreed.

Suddenly, the goat went past Grant and led us up a rise.  We sat on a precipice in the waning light.  I fed the goat water from my hands.  It kept its distance from Grant and nestled beside me.  As we rose to leave, the goat climbed a hill and looked down on me one more time, looking enormous before it disappeared into the brush.

Grant and I retraced our steps back to the car.  I noted the peanut shells along the trail and the forest where I first saw the goat was still inverted sharply inward.

“Did we spend the past few hours with a goat, or was I hallucinating?” I asked.

“We definitely spent time with a goat.”

“I’m going to call the forest service. I don’t want that goat eaten by a bear.”

It was late by the time we got home, so I called the forest service the next morning.

“Have there been any goat sightings on the Appalachian Trail lately, up by Neel’s Gap?” I asked the ranger.

There was silence on the other end of the phone before the ranger replied, “I’ve been working the AT for twenty-five years, ma’am, and I’m very familiar with Neel’s Gap. Nobody has ever reported a barnyard animal on the trail and I’ve never seen one myself.  I would say you had a very special encounter.”  I could just picture him rolling his eyes.

That’s when I got it into my head that I may have had an encounter with a satyr – although I was surely no wood nymph.  I looked up deities on the Internet.  That’s when I learned that there is a type of satyr known as a Slavonic Ljeschi that lives in the woods and appears to change size.  It’s there to protect other animals and can tickle humans to death. 

“Holy shit,” I said.  I tried to call Grant at work but he was tied up, so I called my mother and told her I had an encounter with a Slavonic Ljeschi. 

“What?” she said.  “You’re involved with a Slavic lesbian?”

“No, I haven’t become a lesbian.  I ran into a goat in the woods and I believe it might be a form of satyr.”

“You ran into a ghost?  You’re going to a seder?”

“Are you having hearing difficulties today?” I asked.  Why was I calling my mother anyway?  She wasn’t going to get it.  “Never mind,” I said.  I needed to get to work anyway.

I met my client at a Starbuck’s.  Karl was an adventurous guy with the most intense green eyes.  We talked business for a while, and then we talked about our weekends.  He climbed a mountain with ropes and pitons.  And I had a close encounter with a goat on the AT.

Big, rugged Karl got up and ran from me yelling, “You are the spawn of Satan!”

That was a novel interpretation of my experience and it would be ironic because my father actually believed that he was the second coming of Christ (he did feel a strange vibration at Maimonides Tomb). 

Several years have passed.  We’ve returned to Neel’s Gap time and again, but the goat has not reappeared.  We even took my parents for a hike there once.  At the beginning of the trail, my mother asked a hiker who was leaving, “Did you see any goats in there?”  The poor clueless hiker thought she said “ghosts” and fled to his car without responding.

Maybe the goat was a ghost, after all – a peanut-eating, water-guzzling, dimension-altering phantom. Or maybe I was frolicking with a satyr.  Or maybe Mark Sanford really was on a six-day hike. Or maybe I actually am the spawn of Satan. 

Or maybe sometimes a goat is just a goat.