It’s interesting what you sometimes find in the backcountry.
I went backpacking two week ago across the Smokies with my son and daughter. About 30 miles in — far from any road — we came across clothes spread neatly on the ground near the trail. Underwear, pants, socks, shirt, and jacket. All were expensive outdoor wear, so it would be unusual to simply abandon them there.
We joked that some hiker may have striped down and wandered into the trees to hang themselves — go out of the world like they came in you might say.
We didn’t go look.
Sadly there’s such a forest in Japan. Lot’s of people there. Gruesome.
Life imitates art? In the German movie “Gold,” a man on an expedition to the Canadian Klondike gold fields takes off all his clothes and goes off to die in the woods.
When I was a kid I found two pairs of underwear, one male (tighty-whiteys) and one female (skimpy, pink floral print), lying neatly, side by side next to a trail in the woods behind a gravel pit near the tiny town where I grew up. It had rained and they were wet, but otherwise clean.
I was old enough to know what may have led to them being there, but I never heard anything more about it through the local grapevine.