I have three passions in life, reading, writing, and walking. More specifically, hiking. Lately, I have been afforded the ability to pursue the first two, but the latter has been more difficult to arrange. I walk for fun- weird I know. But I always have. It was something I got used to as a child when my family could not afford the luxury of owning a car. I was also blessed in that I had a grandmother whose favorite pastime was walking in the woods- it was a weekend activity that occurred in the winter, spring, summer and fall. And I loved every minute of it.
Finally after years of limiting my walks to parks, neighborhoods and my own backyard, I had the opportunity to go hiking with my son and a friend. It was a small park- we were aware we weren't heading to Yellowstone- however we were determined to be prepared for a whole day of hiking. We were intending to spend anywhere from eight to ten hours and for this reason we planned ahead. We had one pack filled with bottled water, as well as my son's CamelBak and a third pack filled with protein bars, soy nuts, wasabi mix, and sunflower seeds. If we had gotten lost, we had enough to survive at least three days before being forced to resort to Donner party methods. Given that the highway was never more than two miles away at any given point in the park, the chance of that happening was next to nil. Still, we were prepared. (My son had gone so far as to pack two additional pairs of socks so that he might change every few hours in order to prevent blisters.)
My friend- I shall call her The Navigator for reasons which will soon become obvious- arrived on time for our nine AM departure. And then we waited for my son, a young man who will without a doubt arrive fifteen minutes after his own funeral begins. So we sat. And we waited. And we looked at the clock. And we waited some more.
When he finally arrived, he was decked out like Indiana Jones (which works, I suppose, since we do in fact live in Indiana) sans the whip. In its place there was instead, a hatchet. Not kidding. A hatchet. Now I am not certain if he thought we were headed into the wilds of some foreign and long forgotten jungle, or if he intended to kill me while we were out there and he had a convenient place to hide the body- I have no doubt my children have dreamed of this on more than one occasion- in fact I am so certain of this, that if my daughter had been on this trip as well, I would have made some excuse and bailed out immediately. Just saying.
And so we finally headed out and arrived at our destination within the hour. Now, I must say, this is the first point at which The Navigator failed us. After turning into the park (thank goodness for the sign or I might still be driving up and down highway 24 looking for the park that The Navigator knew all about…), I drove down several narrow roads asking The Navigator where there was parking. At this point, The Navigator informed us that it had indeed been some time since she had been in this particular park and she was really not all that familiar with it.
Yay adventure!
We found parking (with no help from The Navigator I might add, although in all fairness I must report that I drove past it and didn't even notice it until Indiana Hatchet pointed it out; and this is why I was not The Navigator). I parked my car and loaded down with roughly fifteen pounds of gear split between us, we struck out on our first trail. Each time we reached a fork in the trail we waited while The Navigator consulted the map. Oftentimes upside-down. This should have been our next clue. Her success was, shall we say, limited. Varying. Mixed. Like nuts.
We followed the trail and it didn't take long to discover that the spiders- for arbitrary reasons known only to them, consistently, insistently, nonsensically, strung their webs across the trails. Every two feet or so, whoever was first in line would face plant into an icky, sticky web. If we were lucky, no one was home. If not, we found ourselves littered with dead bugs and one very live, very agitated spider. Never fun for anyone. Except maybe the second in line who always got a first rate view of the action. Suddenly, whoever was in front would start to dance a frantic jig, waving their hands wildly and shaking every part of their body like they were suffering from the D.T.'s. It was awesome. Ahhh nature.
It didn't take long to realize that the best course of action was for the person that was leading the way to carry a forked stick, waving it like a magic wand before them as they went. Which brings me to two thoughts: first- all this time we thought divining rods were used to find water- nope! - we were wrong!- they weren't looking for water- they were wiping away spider webs; and second- if this had been Massachusetts in 1692, we would all have been hanged- waving our de-webbing wands the way we were, we could easily be construed as conjuring some kind of wiccan magic. Of course, the only hocus pocus we were conjuring was the famous 'Spiders Begone!' spell. Or 'Eradicating Arachnids.' You choose.
Anyway, aside from the spiders, we couldn't complain. The weather was perfect, the woods were pretty, and we were in good, if oddball, company. So if I sneezed a bit (allergy season is at its peak for me), I was okay with it. I was taking strong enough allergy medicine to compensate for the pollen in the air. All was well.
It didn’t take long to discover the map was- among other things- inadequate and inaccurate. So much so, that it took about two hours for The Navigator to discover that the black squiggly lines indicated smaller side trails that branched off the main trail- which I will take this moment to point out encompassed roughly eighty percent of our hiking. In layman's terms, we had spent most of our time walking the black squiggly lines unbeknownst to The Navigator.
That struggle aside, we were unconcerned. As I said, it wasn't ever likely we would get lost, just likely that we would stumble upon a sight-seeing opportunity depicted on the map while thinking we were on the opposite side of the park. After a bit of walking, we crossed over a wooden bridge. After a while longer, we crossed over another wooden bridge. After even more walking, we crossed over a third wooden bridge. Either we were walking in circles, or that bridge was following us.
Eventually we came upon another bridge- a green metal one this time- ah ha! we had finally shaken the wooden bridge! - and a biker was sitting there consulting his own map. Turns out, he was having as much trouble with the map as The Navigator. According to his tale of woe, he had ridden in circles three times in an attempt to find the waterfall shown on the map. We were of little help to him and he finally gave up and rode off.
We took a right off the bridge and walked roughly twenty yards and voila! There was the waterfall. Oops!
Honestly, he wasn't missing much anyway. When I think waterfall, I think giant, massive rock face with hoards of water cascading heavily over the side. What I got was roughly a fifteen foot rock with buckets of water slipping over the side. It was tiny. It was the little brother of waterfalls. The tiny, baby, newborn, infant brother. Disappointing.
This was also a dead end, so we returned to the green bridge and consulted the map some more. What to do? Stay on the main trail, which according to the map was going to take us out of the woods and onto the road before us, past a large playground, through an asphalt parking area, before it headed back into the woods, or head back the way we had come and rejoice in the nature we had come to see. We opted to rejoice. We returned along the same trail and eventually found ourselves back at the car which thankfully was parked near a bathroom. Indiana Hatchet was able to take care of business off trail, but The Navigator and I were not so eager. We'd seen enough spiders to know we didn't want to drop our pants anywhere.
This also afforded me the time to scavenge in my car for much-needed napkins and tissues. My overflowing sinuses had in the last hour turned the faucets on full blast. My sneezing had increased exponentially and in all of our preparations, I had failed to prepare for this. All three packs were completely bereft of any piece of cloth that I might use to wipe or blow, save for Indiana Hatchet's dirty socks, which I hadn't gotten quite desperate enough to use. I had sniffed and snorted so much I was in fear of sucking my own eyeballs into my brain. In short, I was miserable.
After filling up on water and partaking of the multitude of munchies we had to choose from, not to mention several rounds of emptying my sinuses, we decided to head back and try to hit some of the smaller trails we had missed. How we thought we were going to accomplish this was anyone's guess. So far the map had not been our friend. It had in fact proven that it was the enemy. It hated us and was out to get us. Why were we trusting it now? But hey, we were only three hours in and we had all day.
After tackling two trails which were a complete disappointment because what looked as if it might be a mile or so on the map actually turned out to be roughly three hundred feet of hiking fun- whoopty-doo- we decided to go off-trail. Indiana Hatchet broke the way- hey, he had the hatchet, it's only fair- and The Navigator and I followed. That was the most fun we had in the day. We clambered up hills, climbed rocks, wedged between trees, picked our way across brooks, balanced on logs (one that broke) and slid down hills that were practically perpendicular. It was like being five again. And amazingly, no one got hurt.
Eventually my sneezing, which was punctuating the quiet wilderness with machine-gun regularity, startling away any and all wildlife (with the exception of the spiders), put an end to our activities. I was out of tissues and refused to resort to the socks. I am however happy to report that I finally found a good use for the map. Revenge is sweet.
