A Wild Night in the Woods

On Saturday night, a forest ranger took a group of us into the woods to see some wild life and hear some mating calls... I saw none and heard few. Throughout this nature walk there were frequent stops and lots of words spoken in dutch, but virtually none in English (I think I hear one, and not from the ranger). The walk was more or less just a very quite walk through the woods with the odd stop here and there to take it all in. The real excitement came when we turned back and noticed some people weren't stopping with the group anymore (apparently they reached their listening to bores quota). Having grown bored of the confusing stops with purpose unknown, Taliah and I decided to follow the people who had also clearly had enough stops for the day. This however lead to more confusion when it got dark and the people we were following had realized that they were lost (as I had kind of suspected given how dark it was getting). So we sat there and waited in hopes that we had not gone too far and that the other group would eventualy cross out path. After a little bit of waiting I began sending flashes from my camera down the path and to my surprise we got a couple light flashes back. When the rest of the group finally caught up with us we were greeted with am excited shout of "Feet" in dutch (as the group was apparently unsure if we were people or a bicyclist until they saw our feet). Relieved that we would not become food for the mating wild bores, we followed the ranger till we saw Mennorode and quickly made our way back to our room. That is a 10 km walk I don't plan on making again in the near future. Although there is a certain amount of excitement to walking through the woods, never quite sure whether you're were stopping to listen to wildlife or to catch your bearings.