March 5 - Directionally Challenged
By 11am, my friend Emily and I were still struggling to form a concrete plan. Originally, the idea was to hike, but after being spoiled with 70+º weather the last 4 days, hiking in 30º snow-rain-mist was sounding less and less appealing. After a lot of back and forth and only if you really want to’s, we decided to put on our big girl boots and brave a hike.
Emily and I get along because we’re both fairly free spirited. In most situations, our whimsical, slightly chaotic, open-ended personalities are more of a strength than a hinderance. One situation where this is not the case, however, is during anything involving directions. Unshockingly, hiking involves directions.
We scoped out a cute little 3 mile loop hike only 20 minutes from Em’s house, and showed up to the trailhead with positive attitudes and Em’s very excited puppy. The positive attitudes remained until we were about 4 miles in (according to my watch) and the supposed loop that I had thought we were on was feeling as though it was heading in the very incorrect direction. And this is coming from someone who is admittedly stunted in terms of directions.
Em… I paused to open my water bottle with my mittened hands. It feels like we might be going the wrong way.
I was just about to say that. She took off a glove and pulled her phone out of her pocket, opening the Trails app. I shivered just looking at her bare fingers out in the open air.
Oh dear. She looked up at me after studying her phone. I need you to double check me on this, but I think we are very far from where we need to be.
I pulled off my mitten with an internal groan and took her phone, examining the little dotted lines that showed us where we had hiked so far. Sure enough, we had missed the loop entrance… about 2.5 miles back. I looked up at the hill we had just had such an amazing time walking down and closed my eyes for half a second, mentally preparing myself to now walk up it.
Ah, shoot Larkin, I’m really sorry, She started to say, and I immediately stopped her.
Em, we both know this was on both of us. C’mon, we got this.
When we got to the point where we had taken a wrong turn, we realized how little of the hike we would have gotten to see if we’d done what we set out to do. All the great views had shown themselves during our hiatus from the main trail.
So a 3 mile hike may have turned into a 7-miler, but our positive attitudes remained and I have finally managed to dethaw after a very hot, very long (like environmentally unfriendly type of long) shower. The moral of the story? Never trust me or Emily with directions unless you’re willing to have things go not entirely according to plan.
