(Continuing our little hiking adventure. Read the first part here at
YogaHub.)
My mother leaned over to me and I saw a smile on her face (although it may have been my imagination – it could have been me laughing to myself about the situation we’d put ourselves into). She was obviously thinking what I was thinking but she asked the question anyway. “We’re going back to that tree, aren’t we?” That was so funny. By now, it was about 2 pm, the sky was sprinkling with a bit of rain, and everyone was looking (and feeling) exhausted. But we headed back. Presented with the same choices again, we all diversified a little, crossing the stream by tree or by rocks – by this time we were pros. Now – finally – we were on our way home.
Or so we thought.
Our choice to take this unusual path was made all the more interesting because we had to maneuver our way back and forth from one side of the stream to the other in order to get back on the path. Each time, we would station ourselves on rocks within arms’ reach across the water so that we could help each other over. After doing this about a million more times, my instincts told me that someone was more likely to get hurt, twist an ankle, or get very cold if we misjudged our steps, ended up in the water, and couldn’t dry ourselves fast enough now that the sunshine was slowly disappearing. I decided that we couldn’t keep on doing this as it was way too slow a progress. So far, we’d managed to stay fairly dry and had kept our bodies warm, and I was determined that we should keep it that way by just walking up the hill and around the mountain back the exact way we had come from – even though it was mostly an uphill walk. No one objected, so we headed back to meet our friend, the tree bridge. This time, we crossed the length of the tree with ease, just like we were walking on level ground. With camera in hand, I took a few more pictures as we headed up the mountain path.
At some point, my mother started leading the pack. Walking on an incline, I felt my thighs burning, and I could hear the gang behind me breathing heavily. I stayed close behind my mother to make sure she was ok, and was really struck by the sheer amount of energy she had. My cousin agreed and wondered where all this energy had come from since we had not had much to eat earlier. That got us thinking about food, about the huge bowl of pasta that we were going to chow down on later at some restaurant. Everyone started to chime in. “No, no. Gotta go with fast food.” “Oh, that double, double burger!” “I could eat an entire pizza by myself!” “Mmmm, a steak sounds good right about now.” Well, that topic kept us occupied for a little while, and then someone called out, “Let’s take a quick break”.
Most of us pretty much stopped in place and plunked ourselves down onto the earth. But my mom hiked up a few more steps to sit on a ledge formed by stones jutting out the walls of the mountain. My dad followed her and stayed within view, and we finished off whatever remaining snacks were packed for this “short” hike. I looked at each person in our group and knew that, even though we were all very tired, we appreciated that we were doing this together. No one complained; we just took in the day. I had to smile about that. I glanced over at my parents and thought how amazing they were. I was so proud of them, especially my mother, who must have been feeling every aching muscle in her body and yet was managing to stay awake and even cheerful on this damp, cold day.
Ahhh, we grimaced as we got up again and continued onward, feeling relief when we could gauge by some landmarks how much farther we had to go. We kept our spirits up by chatting about things going on in our lives. Then we joked with each other. My cousin and his wife announced that they’d had their fill of hiking and would be fine not seeing another trail for months.
Needless to say, we all survived. The heavier drops of rain held off until the very end of our hike. By then, we had returned to the beginning of the stream and crossed it quickly – we didn't even care about getting our feet soaked in water at that point because we were closer to home. When we finally reached our destination, we all cheered at the sight of our vehicles.
It was an unexpectedly long and arduous hike, but we did it as a family and took some awesome memories home with us, so that made it worth every single step.
