“Was this what you meant when you said we should take a ramble today?” Sarah yelled down to Erica jokingly. She was carefully finding her way up the dusty slope below Sarah, cursing her weak ankle.
“Haha, not quite. But I should know better when it comes to hiking with you,” she muttered with both exhaustion and friendship.
Sarah looked up and down the trail she was standing on after spending the last 2 hours traipsing through the forest searching for it. Somehow they had gone around a pile of trees that had fallen haphazardly across the trail and instead of turning around (the reasonable thing to do), the two mid-life women had continued, confident they would soon meet back up with it. Instead, Sarah and Erica found themselves mucking through angled marsh and bramble without an established path, tearing a hole in a shoe now repaired with duct tape and wondering why exactly they followed each other out into the woods time and time again.
“What kind of adventure would it be if we didn’t have some mishap to laugh about when we are two grannies sitting on the front porch years from now?” Sarah reminded Erica with a grin.
“A level-headed one?” Erica quipped in reply. Erica thought about how they had been hiking and backpacking together for the last eight years and experienced more than their share of mishaps and adventures. From overestimating the maintenance performed on trails plotted on the map to escaping into quickly assembled shelters to prevent the swarms of mosquitos from draining them of the last of their blood supply. No matter how miserable or painful an outdoor experience was, there was always an equal amount of laughter and reminiscing to go with it. Like childbirth, Erica supposed.
“So where do we want to go on our next trip?” Sarah asked, already looking forward to the following summer.
Erica offered, “I’m not sure but maybe we can plan a more relaxing trip.”
“Of course relaxing could be good too,” Sarah replied, both women knowing their adventures were never going to come close.
I hope your rambles have been sweet, and your reveries spacious.
Emily Dickinson
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Haha.. so fitting to my last few days hiking in the boreal forest. Thankfully, our mishaps didn’t include losing the trail!
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Anytime we don’t lose the trail on a trip, we are waiting for some other disaster to happen. Glad to hear you stayed on yours!
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