5/3-Into the Wild

Today I woke up and helped build a compost bin for all this shit I've collected. After that, I grabbed a paintbrush and applied some weather proofing to the stables. When that was done, I decided that I was going to find this waterfall that I had failed to track down a week previous. I passed Micheal on the way up and he gave me some navigation guidelines to prevent another mission failure.

It was a little sketch on the way in. The bush is really dense and the trail is marked by the occasional orange, spray painted dot on a tree trunk. It took about 45 minutes to get into the falls. My initial reactions was, "Yay, I found it!" followed by, "It's a lot smaller than I expected." It turns out, there is a baby falls above the bigger one, so the first one was just a teaser. I baptized myself, dressed as I came into this world in the chilled waters below. The sun was starting to duck towards the horizon so I decided to head back.

I followed the blue marker to the the orange markers and started heading up the hills through the forest. After passing a few markers I couldn't find the next one and I didn't recognize the terrain from that angle. I thought I could just use my stellar internal compass and keep the sun to my left. It didn't take me long to realize that I was lost. Climbing through densely vegetated topography, sometimes on all fours, breaking through spider silk ribbons, like finishing a thousand races. I knew if I hiked with the edge of the tree line in my sights, I would eventually come out at the trail head. The worst part is seeing where you need or want to go but not being able to get your body there. The problem was the deep, unscalable canyon that stood in the middle.

I walked along it until I came upon a fallen tree that sort of bridge the gap. I started walking across and I looked down past the log beneath my feet and it occurred to me how messed up I'd be if I fell that distance. I did some inventory on my footing and decided to turn back. While spending the next 70 minutes tripping over branches, slipping down embankments and narrowly escaping branch impalement every ten feet, I started to feel a sense of vulnerable desperation. I wanted to stop and regain some strength, but I knew if the sun set before I got out of there, I'd be screwed.

I eventually came across some shit from the cows I saw on the trail a week previous and I knew I was getting close, or at least I was on the right track. I was never happier in my life to see poo. I exited the woods just as the daylight was closing its eye. Happy to be alive. :)