Part Two
Every once in a while a person wants something so desperately that she convinces herself that she has it. I knew that if we found the river, we could follow it to our car. I stood staring at the large evergreen limbs beating back and forth and the darkening sky, and then I heard it. Rushing water. The river was somewhere near us!
I tried to convince Laura that I heard water for a good five minutes, but she didn’t buy it. She said it was the wind in the trees. I didn’t want to believe her, but slowly reason returned and I knew she was right. We were way too high to be near that river. I needed to calm my over-active imagination and think. What should we do?
I turned and looked at the peak of the mountain that loomed up larger than ever before us. Really, we couldn’t climb it again! We were way too tired. We were out of water and food. It was too cold. It was getting dark. Yet in spite of the millions of reason we had not to climb up again, it seemed to be our only solution. We had to find the trail or we would be stuck here all night.
Before taking a single step we clasped hands and prayed. Our spirits buoyed, we lunged forward to tackle the mountain for the second time that day. Up the sandy ravines, scaling the rock formations, grasping for crevices. We thought of plenty of jokes and songs to sing that seemed to fit our precarious circumstances.
The burst of renewed energy lasted about two hours. The sky was black now and we were cold. Across the horizon a perfectly round white moon torched the sky and illuminated the hills. A blanket of fluffy clouds curled around valley floor. It was beautiful.
We were too tired to keep moving. There soon would be no more trees, only the sheer mountain against the angry elements. If we were going to rest, the time was now. We made a bed out of evergreen branches and huddled together to keep warm. Looking in our pack we found that we had a small packet of Starbursts, which we shared. Then we rested.
Continued tomorrow.
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