Proof of Life?

A cat lover paid my expenses to go back up to look for Lost Bella today.

So I did, why wouldn't I?  I got nothing else to do.   And it's a lovely drive, if nothing else.

It was a five hour look today, is all.  It's storming out, warm but windy and wet.  I loved walking through the woods with the wind whipping and the rain on my face.  There's a trail, with switchbacks, to Iron Mountain, I think it is, that goes right up the bank behind the weather station, then switchbacks down the hill.  It's a lovely trail and takes you down the side of that embankment a hundred feet or so from where the car went down it.  It's carpeted in tree debris and so peaceful and beautiful back in there.  It tugs at me.  I'm not sure why.   "Just stay here," it says to me without any words.   So each time I'm drawn farther in, farther down various trails and Bella isn't the only reason I'm heading back to the mountains.

When I was young I traversed the forests and even the mountains with a backpack.  I went to Alaska to work, too, and hiked there, and climbed, mostly alone.  Maybe that's what I remember.

Food I'd left had not been eaten, at least not most of it.  Some was gone.   I don't know who ate it.

I found this, right up from the crash site, right where the car went off the road, and about ten or fifteen feet from food still out, from last time I went up there.

Nice, eh?  Posting poop pictures.

It was all in one pile when I came upon it, but I knocked it apart with a stick.

It looked fairly fresh.  Exposed like that you would think the heavy rains would quickly mash it soggy.  Now, I'm thinking, 'OK, it's from some predator, obviously carnivore.  But some predator would have eaten every teensy bit of that cat food sitting about ten feet away.'

Ok, could it be from a dog?   Why would anyone let their dog out there, to poop, by a busy highway, when Tombstone Pass pull out, with a nice huge parking lot and woods, is 100 feet away?

You never know about humans, where they might decide to take a dump.   Could it be human?  Sure it could.

Who knows? But I know who would poop right there, if she is still out there and alive. And it would make sense.

 Bella, that's who.

For all I know she could be really really close.  It can take a lost cat ten days or more to even emerge.  They have no idea what to do or where to go, lost way out like that.  So many will stay put and hope their owner comes for them.

And it wasn't just one pile of poo.

There was an older one, mushy from rain exposure.

Farther down the mountain I saw several deer and got a photo of one of them.

Lost Prairie campground entrance is gated, campground closed.

Near Cascadia, a very interesting false front.  Quite awesome.

I'm not sure if the poop I found is hers or not, but I would guess it might be.

All I can say is I saw it and I don't know, but it's probably grounds for continued hope.