Storytelling

Have you ever noticed how stories get  more grandiose the more times they are told?  One of the favorites my mom and I like to tell is one camping trip gone wrong, very wrong.

My mom has worked for the Forest Service for ever and a day.  She is now a district ranger in charge of her own piece of forest.  (Of course there is a lot more to it, but I prefer to keep things simple.)  Before that she was a hydrologist.  This basically meant she got to play outside in water during good weather and was stuck inside writing reports in bad weather.  As I got older, I was able to go on more of her adventures and help with water testing, finding bugs, and mess around in the creeks and rivers while she was working.

One late August, Mom had a 15 mile backpacking trip planned to a lake on a mountain top for sampling.  I was invited to come along.  She was planning on using llamas to pack the majority of our supplies.    How could I resist llamas?  Taking the llamas divided our group into 2.  The first group led the llamas.  The second group followed behind because llamas and dalmatians do no mix.  The fist couple of miles were uphill on switchbacks.  Everyone was good, even Mom's newer employee, who was more of a desk jockey than an outdoors woman.  I still have no idea why she worked for the forest service.  Anyhow, after a couple more miles we ran into snow on the ground.  No one had really prepared for snow.  It was late August after all, but we marched on.

The farther in we got, the worse the weather became.  The wind was blowing the hard, crystalline snow from the ground into the air.  Then, it started to snow.  The further in we got, the deeper the snow became.  We could no longer see the trail to the lake, but the lake was always "just over the ridge."  We kept moving.  Exhaustion was starting to set in.  We had been moving for hours, through snow, and leading the llamas was not as easy as it might sound.

Around mile 8, Mom was starting to worry.  She had a large group and didn't think we were going to make it all the way to the lake.  She told everyone to keep an eye out for anything that would work as shelter overnight.  We found an abandoned mining shack and decided to call that home.  The walls of the shack were covered with scratch marks.  There was some debate about whether the marks came from a bear or a porcupine.  Neither of which I really wanted to run into in the middle of the night.  Mom started working on getting food prepared, others were getting the llamas tied down for the night, and the rest of us worked on getting sleeping bags and pads laid out.  We all ate dinner and laid down.  The desk jockey employee started to waterproof her boots.  She then told us she had just bought them the day before our adventure.  The other seasoned employees groaned and tried to look away before she could see the idiotic looks she was getting.  Why would anyone decide the best time to waterproof boots was after you had been hiking in snow all day?  Why would anyone buy boots the day before a major hike?  Did she enjoy blistered feet?  Why did she work for the Forest Service?  We turned out the lamp and tried to get some rest.  I woke up in the middle of the night because my eyes were stinging.  It felt like someone had thrown sand into them.  Mom gave me ibuprofen, her fix all, cure all.  One of the guys in the group said he was feeling the same way.  Uh oh!

The next morning, Mom started on breakfast, and we started packing up the llamas.  I went outside and could not see.  I told Mom and she rolled up a bandanna and placed it over my eyes and told me to stand out in the sun to get warmed up and stay out of the way.  We were not going to continue on.  Three people were unable to see, the desk jockey had blistered feet,and it had snowed all night.   Mom was now leading a band of blistered and blinded hikers.  She was ready to get out of the wilderness.  Mom and the llama outfitter tied the llamas together and told the blinded folks to go ahead.  They would pick up the rear.  They had been saved from blindness because they had transition glasses.

How were we going to pick our way through the snow and get back to the trucks at the bottom of the mountain?  The blind would really be leading the blind!  Have no fear, for the dalmatian is here!  The dalmatian had his very own red pack.  This was the key to getting us out of the wilderness.  He was told, "Go home Ringo!"  Off he went.  I had a bandanna completely covering one eye and partially covering the other.  The only thing I could really see was the red moving off in the distance.  I was following behind completely trusting this dog to get me out of the wilderness.

We all safely made it to the bottom and back to the trucks.  Those of us following the dalmatian made it out much faster than those leading the llamas.  Later, we learned that many of us were snow blinded on our hike in.  The sun rays bouncing off the snow had burned our retinas.  Not only that, but we all had varying degrees of wind burn.

One last detail to mention.  This was about a week before my freshman year of high school.  I remember wondering if I could convince Mom to let me miss a few days because my face was sliding off.  You laugh.  This wasn't such a funny site.  I could have passed for a zombie because of all the blisters and strips of darkened, burned skin.  Luckily, everything healed in time.  I would never have convinced her to let me stay out of school anyhow!