It was a high pitched scream that ripped the night. It wasn’t an owl, or a fox or a coyote. It wasn’t anything I’d ever heard in 10 years of back-packing. And it was close. I got out of my sleeping bag, reassured the six teen-aged girl scouts I had taken on their first backpacking trip that it was on a nearby mountain, not ours, and prayed I was right.

Then I checked the locked chain on the gate of the shelter. We were inside a three-sided, log cabin with a chain-link fence front, but because I was with teenagers I locked the gate. I feared they would get up and wander around the campground. I had encountered bears on previous trips in this same shelter and didn’t want them outside at night. They didn’t believe there were really such things as bears - at least until they heard the screams. I fingered the key on the cord around my neck and stared out into the darkness. The screaming continued for a long five or ten minutes. I thought someone was being murdered.

Cougar? Panther? Bobcat? Some animal being killed? I don’t know. I know it scared me, and the girls, enough that at first light we packed up and hiked out. I have never returned to that shelter and have no desire to ever again. Blood-curdling is the only way I can describe it. This was before cell-phones. And although I reported my concerns when we got to the ranger station - no one ever turned up dead or lost.

“It sounds like a panther, although we haven’t had those in the Smokies in decades. I think they’re extinct here,” the ranger said. “It was probably an owl or coyote,” he laughed.

Two years later, after repeated reports of screams from other hikers, Rangers confirmed that a black Panther had been sighted by park personnel and hikers in the area. I felt relief.

In 2007 I was camping about five miles outside Danville, VA at a local campground. I woke up to the sight of a small bear trying to climb through the passenger side window of my van. It was after the cat food on the platform I’d built over where the passenger side seat used to be. But my 20-pound Maine Coon cat wasn’t giving up her Purina chow that easily. She was snarling and swatting at the bear and the bear was seriously considering her demand to back off. My Rottweiler however, slept through it all. It wasn’t until I got up and grabbed a tire iron and made a lot of noise, that the bear fled, the cat went back to eating and the dog woke up.

I reported the bear to the campground office the next morning. No one believed me. Later that summer additional reports of bears in the area, and at the campground, came in. The state patrol spotted bears on the interstate and I could finally say, “I told you so.”

While driving back home from a friend’s ranch in Washington State in 2001 a creature ran across the road in front of my truck. It was so fast all I could see was a golden blur. If I’d hit it, it would have wrapped around the front of my truck - and come as high as the hood when it hit. What amazed me was the fact that the animal seemed to reach entirely across the lane. I estimated him to be at least 8 or 9 feet long from nose to tail. It took a few minutes to think about what it could have been. I’d never seen a cougar before, but I was convinced that was what it was. Others thought I was just seeing a “big coyote.”

It wasn’t until a friend’s horses were attacked by an animal that left long claw marks down each flank that anyone believed there were cougars back in the area.

I’m used to not being believed anymore. But I know that, given enough time, someone else will verify what I know I’ve seen.

But it’s not just animals I’ve seen and others haven’t that people laugh at. My ideas, marketing insights and analysis of patterns have often been scoffed at. It takes time, but I’ve seen them all come to fruition. Stories that editors thought were “not news,” have won awards, been picked up by the Associated Press and even ended up in TIME magazine.

Clients who trust my insights and analysis do benefit - even if they have to wait. If you trust yourself enough, the wait is easy. It’s not a matter of risk - it’s a matter of patience.

Learn to trust yourself.