The Ants

It was summer, or maybe Easter, in the 1970s, and the 1st Wylam Guides were camping somewhere in Northumberland with a group from Gosforth, possibly near the Kielder Forest or possibly near Rothbury. It was warm and sunny, and we were all very jolly: rough, smooth, rich, poor, urban and rural. Carol, from Wylam, was my best friend. She was a hard kid but we got on really well. She called me Macadamized Cheese and I made her laugh and she made me laugh.
We were all really excited one day because we were going off orienteering, which meant you went into the forest with a compass and a map in groups of six, found something (I can't remember what) and then came back. I was the Patrol Leader. I am not sure why as I was bad at everything except drawing, but I'd developed an authoritative demeanour that meant everyone trusted me. My patrol seemed to consist of all the oddballs but I liked that and so did they.
The camp was surrounded on three sides by wooded hills, and we started off, climbing through the bracken, brambles and ivy-scrambled trees, laughing and talking and fooling around, looking at our feet, the trees and each other but not at the map. We probably walked for about an hour in this way until we came to a track through the trees, a double-line of sandy soil where a farm vehicle obviously passed regularly. 'Ha ha ha', we chortled, until Susan said 'Look!'.
If you looked closely at the sandy tracks you could see they were seething with ants, millions of tiny bustling quivery-antennaed creatures, climbing over each other, weaving through crowds of each other, piled in trembling layers.
Susan was obviously upset but I was a country girl and I reassured her all the time, and we strode over them, heading towards a patch of light ahead, which I was sure was a field, but having lost contact with the map, not sure which field. We brushed the ants off us as well as we could and climbed over the wooden fence, jumping down on to a mound of wood shavings...
...which turned out to be a HUGE ants nest. They were dotted all over this open area in the wood- it was impossible to tell if they were man-made or ant-made, but there were loads of them, all busy, busy, busy, giving the impression of a haze with all the micro-activity upon them. They were massive, some reaching waist-level. These ants were fierce and red and bigger, and there was a collective resentment in the way they reared up as we approached. Although they were still tiny, the sheer quantity of them was nerve-wracking; we had disturbed them in the private planning and execution of whatever it was that they did, and they didn't like it, and there were more of them than us. We were clodhopping, stupid, slow giants in their sophisticated antworld.
One by one we began to freeze with terror. Nobody knew where we were, especially not us, and there was not another human being in sight, and no sound except a sort of sinister rustling. I tried to keep calm and look at the map while everyone else started twitching and shrieking and trying to stop the critturs darting about all over their trouser-legs. We tucked our trousers into our socks, and in slow-motion took what seemed to be an age to pick our way across the field, fright freezing each one of us in turn until the others called out encouragement to keep moving.
Finally we reached the furthest edge of the field and clambered over the fence again, shuddering, into the cool shade and an area where the ants seemed to be the safer black sort and not the nasty red ones we had encountered in the clearing. Our voices choked as we spoke and we focused on getting Out. At least under the trees the ants were operating in one dimension- they were on the ground and not piled up in great fear-inducing heaps. Deaf with the horror of it all, we crowded together and carried on.
It took us all day to get back to the camp. I don't know how we did it, because we totally abandoned the map and just walked. Gradually, the ants faded out and we started to hear the sound of other human beings doing ordinary things, voices oblivious to the awful experience we had just been through. We crackled through the undergrowth and down the sloping hill to the camp, almost afraid to believe we'd finally got back to somewhere safe.
It was impossible to explain to anyone what our day had been like. The collective fear had gripped us like wire. The ordinariness and calm of the camp seemed unbelievable for several hours. But being young, we put it to one side next day and got on with enjoying the rest of the outdoor experience.
Except, every so often, Carol hissed 'Antssssss', and stopped the six of us in our tracks.