I'm Not Sure What to Make of This, It's a Puzzle and a Mystery

I usually don't start bowhunting until about the last week in October since by that time it's usually started to cool down a little, the leaves have started to drop, and the bucks start to move a lot more because the rut is getting close.

But a few days ago, since it has been cooler than usual, the trees are starting to change color, and some leaves have actually started to fall, I started to get the itch to climb up in one of my ladder stands and sit in the woods holding a bow while I both hunted for a deer and thought on a variety of subjects (as I tend to do).  It was nice and cool, but I didn't see anything (which is one reason I usually wait to get serious about hunting until a little bit later), but I like to start the season by working out all the cobwebs first anyway, so overall it was a good morning (I did get some hard thinking done if you were wondering).

Come on deer, come out where I can see you

While I was sitting there in that ladder stand, a stupid calf kept bawling over and over on the other side of the railroad tracks (railroad tracks run the length of the farm for those that didn't know).  Usually a calf won't bawl like that unless he has somehow got on the wrong side of a fence and can't figure out how to get back on the right side of the fence, he fell in a hole, or he's just being a pain and decides to bawl his head off for no reason.   

Ninety-nine percent of the time the bawling calf is just bawling to hear his brain rattle around inside his head, but on the off chance he might actually be on the wrong side of the fence this time, I walked over to the railroad tracks, crawled through the brush on both sides of the tracks, and found out that I was right about the stupid calf and he was just bawling to be bawling. 

While mumbling something under my breath about stupid calves, I crawled over the fence, back through that thick brush (I swear, I'm gonna start carrying a machete with me), up onto the tracks, looked down into the brush on the other side, and saw a flash of something blue.  I still find stuff hidden back in brush and trees once in awhile from the tornado (that's right, 15 years later and I still find tornado debris), but this looked different so I had to get a closer look. 

What the heck is that blue thing?

I think that's a backpacker's sleeping mat, what the heck is that doing out here?

When I got closer, I saw that it was a blue foam sleeping mat, like a backpacker would carry, rolled out on the ground like someone had been camping there, had packed up camp, and then just left it.  It had been laying like that for a while, but the leaves under it were still in leaf form (usually leaves will break down faster into leaf mold if covered for any period of time), it wasn't buried in the leaves (so it probably wasn't there last fall or winter when the leaves fell off the trees), and I didn't see any obvious campsite around it except for an old Pepsi can and a green Sprite bottle placed in the grass up towards the edge of the tracks (FWIW, the date on the cap of the Sprite bottle was Jun 2014). 

Old faded Pepsi can

Green Sprite bottle

To me, from the date on the Sprite bottle and the condition of the leaves around the blue mat, it look like someone brought both of them out there sometime last spring.

The thing that puzzles me is that the nearest roads are at least 3/4 of a mile down the tracks one way and over a mile (1.25 miles)the other way.  It's rough walking down either railroad tracks or the gravel alongside the tracks, so I don't see why anyone would intentionally walk them.  A few miles farther down the tracks (going either way), the tracks cross creeks over a railroad trestle which would make the walking even tougher.

As fast as the trains go by, anyone that was planning on jumping either off of or onto a passing train would have an almost impossible job ahead of them. 

I might be reading more into it than I should, but why would anyone leave a foam mat laid out like that in the brush?  Why would someone place a Sprite bottle alongside the tracks as a marker?

Was the person that left the foam mat laid out like that desperate, crazy, on an adventure, a hardened hobo, some stupid kid, or something entirely different?  All of the above or none of the above?  Any ideas or thoughts?

It's still puzzling and a total mystery to me, it could be something and it could be nothing.