Total pages in book: 198
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 186242 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 931(@200wpm)___ 745(@250wpm)___ 621(@300wpm)
But with each step I took, the clouds got darker and darker.
It started pouring again, and I took out my wet tarp and hunkered under a tree with it.
But this time, it didn’t clear up after five minutes.
Or ten.
Twenty or thirty.
It poured. Then it hailed. Then it poured some more.
Thunder shook the trees, my teeth, and my soul. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and checked to see if I had service. I didn’t. I ate most of the snacks I’d planned on treating myself to when I got to the lake to save time. I was going to have to get there and pretty much turn around and start heading back.
The rain finally turned into a sprinkle after nearly an hour, and the quarter mile I had left felt like ten.
Especially when the bullshit lake was the most underwhelming thing I’d ever seen.
I mean, it was nice, but it wasn’t . . . it wasn’t what I’d expected. It didn’t glow. It wasn’t crystal blue. It was just . . . a regular lake.
I started laughing; then I started laughing like an idiot, tears bubbling up in my eyes as I cracked up some more.
“Oh, Mom, now I get what the wave was for.” So-so. It was for so-so. It had to be.
I’d expected to find some people around, but there was nobody. Had they kept on hiking? The Continental Divide was miles out, branching off from a different trail attached to this one.
I laughed even more, again.
Then I sat down on a wet log, toed my boots off as I ate my apple, enjoying the crunch and the sweetness. My fucking treat. Whipping my phone out, I took a selfie with the dumb-ass lake and laughed again.
Never again.
I took my socks off and wiggled my toes, keeping my ears open for animals and people, but there was nothing.
Ten minutes later, I got up, put my socks and shoes back on, zipped my jacket because the rain had seriously cooled everything down and the sun wasn’t out, and started the damn hike back.
Everything hurt. It felt like every one of my leg muscles was shredded. My calves were on the verge of dying. My toes were never going to forgive or forget this.
I’d lost my momentum having to stop for the rain, and another glance at my watch told me I’d lost two hours because of the weather and my breaks. What had seemed hard on the way to the lake was about a hundred times harder on the way back.
Fuck, shit, fucking shit, motherfucking fucker all came out of my mouth. How the hell anybody ran this was beyond me. I stopped what felt like every ten minutes, I was so tired, but still, I kept on going.
Two hours later, not knowing how I was going to survive the next three hours and eyeballing the damn clouds that were back again, I pulled out my phone and waited, hoping for service.
There wasn’t any.
I had to try to send a few messages out.
The first was to Rhodes.
Me: Running late. I’m okay. Heading back.
Then I sent Clara another with basically the same message.
And finally Amos got my third one.
Me: On my way back. I’m good. The weather turned bad.
I left my signal on, hoping it would eventually reconnect with a tower. The battery was at 80 percent, so I figured it would be good enough. I hoped.
The ground was slippery, the gravel dangerous under my boots, and that slowed me down even more. There was no one around. I couldn’t risk hurting myself.
I knew I was going to have to go even slower than I’d planned.
And the clouds opened up more, and I gave myself the middle finger for being a stubborn idiot.
I had to be careful. I had to be slow.
I couldn’t even call out for rescue because there wasn’t any service, and I wasn’t going to shame Rhodes by being that person who had to get saved. I could do this. My mom could do this. But . . .
If I made it out of here, I was never doing this shit alone again. Didn’t I know better? Of course I fucking did.
This was stupid.
I should’ve stayed home.
I wished I had more water.
I wasn’t going to hike at all next year.
I wasn’t going to walk anywhere ever again.
Oh God, I still had to drive home.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I wasn’t giving up. I could do this. I was going to make it.
I was never doing a difficult hike again. At least not in a day. Fuck that shit.
One foot after another took me down. I stopped. I hid under my tarp. The temperature started to drop, and I couldn’t believe I hadn’t brought my thicker jacket. I knew better.
I layered Rhodes’s jacket over my pullover when I started to shiver.