My first time intending to go back country camping we headed to Ojai , and we picked an intentionally unglamorous trail to avoid running into people on the holiday weekend Labor Day , but still ran into a few more than we ' d hoped . Still , after making it 6 miles up the trail , one of the unreserved NFS camping sites looked better than back country spots but as we settled in some dudes showed up and were hovering around our site for a while . There were technically at least two sites so this wasn ' t really a problem , but the way they were carrying themselves seemed off . They didn ' t have backpacking packs , just regular Jansport bags and it didn ' t seem like enough volume to be carrying supplies to stay the night . It was pretty late , and at least 4 miles either up or down the trail under pretty steep canyon switchbacks to get to a trailhead , but they were just wearing sneakers . They didn ' t really make conversation and just sat and ate their packed sandwiches , hovered some more and then asked us if we were planning on staying , which by the half assembled tent should have been obvious . They eventually collected their things and left as it was getting pretty dark , but they didn ' t take out any flashlights . Being pretty new to camping and having our own new tent to assemble and food prep to worry about we were just glad they ' d gone up over the ridge and we ' d likely be alone for the night . There was a fire pit which helped distract us from the crazy number of flies coming from the nearby stream and it wasn ' t that late when we decided to turn in . The 6 mile , much hillier than expected hike combined with flies from the stream made stretching out in the tent quite appealing . Even though it was not much past 9 , it was pitch black with the new moon . The weather was nice and clear , no clouds and we didn ' t need the rain fly and thus our Marmot 3 P gives you almost totally open view of the sky through the microtech mesh or whatever it ' s called . We stared up at the starts and you could see so many more constellations away from LA , a bit of the haze of the Milky Way and all around it had been a successful last minute camping trip . But despite being exhausted from the hike I was having trouble sleeping . An empty feeling stomach from hiking rations , critters rustling the dead grass , and the discovery that my new head lamp gave me vision on the exact location of each and every one of the sparkly eyeballs of the hundreds of spiders sprinkled around the tent were making it hard to fall back asleep . I ' d doze off for a bit , then have one of those hyper realistic , temporal relevant dreams where you think you just woke up and I see somebody pacing the perimeter of our camp site . I freeze , plan my next action and then a cartoonishly large wild boar barges into the campsite , scares the person away , turns towards me and I realize it ' s a dream . Heart racing it takes me even longer to fall back asleep . I have a couple more dreams . Someone wakes me up to bring me food . Someone found better bug spray . Someone found live ashes in the fire we definitely put out . Then eventually a really long dream , but not from the campsite and it ' s about a time I almost got mugged back in my hometown of Baltimore . I start awake again and I ' m getting really frustrated . It felt like I hadn ' t gotten any sleep at all . It was going to be a long hike back , and I had gotten over tired on the way out and I was legitimately worried about slipping going back down the canyon trails that would be more precarious to pick our way back down with all the gear then they had been to hike up . My BF was asleep , and had been adamant about not taking a hundred pictures and being present in the moment which I get , but I snuck out my phone just check the time . Took forever to power back on , no signal not surprising and holy crap ! It ' s not even 11 . I ' m both relieved to have plenty of time to sleep and annoyed that after struggling to sleep through so many dreams it ' s so early . I toss and turn some more and eventually just settle in and stare at the new stars coming up over the ridge . I doze off again . Who knows how long later I wake up to a loud metal click . It ' s impossibly bright , but not morning . Up on the ridge there ' s a bright white torch that ' s illuminating my whole tent . Boyfriend is still asleep . I freeze and assess . No one moves and I hold in place long enough to be sure it ' s not a dream . Someone is definitely standing on the ridge shining a daylight style flashlight on us . I question the critter rustling , and the dreams about the people moving around the camp . I try to wake my boyfriend quietly so we can decide what to do , and as soon as he ' s half awake he starts against the bright light . I manage to shush him before he gets louder and we commence to whispering about what ' s going on and what to do . Is it those guys ? I check my phone no signal and it ' s not even midnight . They could definitely just be on the way back ? But why so late ? Why just stand there shining their light on our tent , blinding us , creating this massive 5 pointed star type lens flare type effect through the tech fabric . Eventually we decide the only thing we can do to break the stand off is get out of the tent and show them we ' re awake . Maybe they ' ll move along like last time or at least we won ' t be ambushed trapped inside the tiny tent and we ' ll be able to run . My boyfriend grabs the shovelmallet tool now combination shit shoveling tent construction drifter attacking implement and I put on my shoes . We quietly unzip the tent and as the flap pushes back the light starts shimmering then the flare disappears ! It is replaced by the moon . Turns out it wasn ' t a new moon , we ' d just gone to sleep so early it hadn ' t risen yet and we were so close to the base of the ridge and under a live oak canopy that reduced visibility of what would have been very high contrast moon shadows . The moon WAS full and WAS staggeringly bright , and it would have been obvious it was the moon but the new tech fabric of the tent resembled a dragonfly eye . It ' s greengoldorange and changes color depending on the direction you look at it from . We laughed , went back to sleep . I still had a crappy night sleep but the remainder of the trip was uneventful . Packing up to leave I saw that my phone that I ' d pulled out was totally in the path of the sleeping bag zipper and next to my ear could easily have been the loud click waking me up as I rolled over . The same tent has served us well in Joshua Tree but now I know to disregard the distortions of the tent fabric and do my high fidelity star gazing before turning in for the night . EDIT Saw I got a few upvotes and did some desktop edits to my phone posting .