Trail system: DellRiven trail and the Deadfern Gulch spur, up to the upper junction

Distance: Varies; the full loop runs about 9 miles

Difficulty: Easy to Moderate, with one new and immovable complication

Time: However long she decides, plus your normal hiking time

Conditions as of this writing: Trail surface is dry and in good shape. The complication is a manticore.

I have hiked every marked trail in this forest at least twice, and I have written up rockfall, washouts, lost bridges, and the occasional bad-tempered animal. I have never had to write this particular sentence before. There is a manticore living on the DellRiven network, she is enormous, she is filthy, and she is the friendliest thing I have ever met in the backcountry.

For those of you who read the Faded Lands board, you have already met her. This is Wendigo, the four-year-old manticore Grandma Windward’s sanctuary put up for adoption a couple of weeks back, the one the notice warned would eat anything and occasionally sit on you. I can confirm both halves of that description from direct field experience. She has evidently let herself out, made the long walk up into the Groves, and decided the DellRiven system is hers now. I do not know how she crossed Ashwinder Creek. I have stopped asking the forest questions like that.

Here is what to expect.

She will find you. She is fearless and completely unbothered by humans, elves, dwarves, half-folk, or anyone else who has tried to look intimidating at her, and several hikers have tried. She does not stalk. She bounds up the trail to greet you as though you are the best thing that has ever happened to her, which is flattering for roughly four seconds and then becomes four hundred pounds of enthusiasm at close range.

She will eat your pack. Not your food. Your pack. The sanctuary’s own notice documented her consuming a candelabra, most of a wool rug, and a small enchanted ottoman, and I see no reason to doubt it, because on Thursday she ate a party’s entire lunch, one of their trekking poles, and a not-insignificant portion of the pack the lunch came in. Anything you set down is hers. Anything you are holding is negotiable. Do not feed her by hand to make her go away, because she will not go away, she will follow you home and you will have a manticore now.

She will, at some point, sit on you. This is the part I cannot adequately prepare you for. On rare and unpredictable occasions she presses her full frame against a hiker and simply rests there, warm and rumbling, for as long as she decides the visit should last. I have logged five such incidents this week, the shortest about twenty minutes and the longest closer to forty. There is no negotiating an exit. You wait. Bring patience and possibly a second breakfast.

The important thing, and the reason this is an advisory and not a warning, is that she has not harmed a single person. There have been no injuries, no aggression, nothing worse than a ruined lunch and a delayed afternoon. She is a genuine delight if you have the time, and an immovable obstacle if you do not, and on a trail this gentle most of you have the time.

If you would rather she were somewhere safer, and she would be, the sanctuary would like her back. Grandma Windward’s Sanctuary can be reached by owl, and they are coordinating volunteers to help walk her down out of the Groves before she discovers the busier trails. Until then, hike the DellRiven knowing the friendliest hazard in Wexamour is up there waiting to love you, rob you, and pin you to a log, in that order.

Maren Voss covers trails and backcountry access for the Chronicle and has now added “sat upon” to her field notes. She can be reached by owl.