7. carpe hikiem (seize the hike)

Person of the Week: The camp counselors who were NOT dating

With food rations replenished, we pressed on, confident and prepared to seize the second half of the hike. Much of the time passed relatively uneventfully, and we found ourselves doing exactly what we had set out to do from the beginning: slowly meandering through the forest with few cares, enjoying the company of the trees. We had settled into a consistent routine by this point and felt fairly capable of handling whatever the forest might throw at us. I really enjoyed it.

Sometime in the days following our hitchhiking adventure, we came into a clearing in the middle of the day that we soon identified as Indian Graveyard Gap. Though the name was a bit off-putting, we were pretty exhausted and decided to stop for a short break. We dropped our packs and straddled a fallen tree, commenting to each other that it looked like we were trying to share a romantic granola bar lunch. A narrow gravel road ran next to the clearing and there was an unoccupied sedan parked on the side nearby. After sitting and talking for a good while, we heard voices coming down the trail on the far side of the road—presumably the owners of the sedan.

It wasn’t long before a girl and a guy, roughly the same age as Chandler and I, emerged from the trail opening. I don’t remember very well how the introductions went—other than that they were friendly—but we quickly struck up a conversation. We told them about our hike; how long we’d been out there, how much longer we would be, and all the other fun introductory facts that temporarily veiled our ignorance. They told us they were friends—the girl was very quick to emphasize that they weren’t dating—and would be counseling a youth camp the following week, so they were checking out a section of the trail that they’d be day hiking with their campers. As they moved towards their car (it was, in fact, their sedan), they told us that they were going about 15 minutes up the road to swim in a lake at the bottom of a waterfall; they invited us to come with them, saying that they’d be happy to drop us off at that very spot afterwards.

We politely declined; a poor decision, the absurdity of which we lament on a regular basis to this day. It would’ve been so much fun! But, as we told them, we didn’t have the clothes to spare or the means to dry them, and we needed to continue on the trail to maintain our schedule. Had we thought about it further, I think we could have remedied those issues relatively easily and tolerably well, but, alas, we didn’t.

Understanding that we couldn’t go swimming, the girl offered to at least give us some water—they had extra in their car. Chandler’s bottles were low, so he gratefully accepted; she looked a little bit surprised that we’d taken her up on her offer, but kindly obliged and filled one of Chandler’s bottles with her own. We thanked them, and they loaded into their car and drove off. After resting a short while longer, Chandler and I hoisted our packs and disappeared into the same opening our friends had appeared from, single-mindedly intent on covering more ground.