“Unless you donut and drive.” Sommer popped her eyebrows.
Suited up, the women pulled on their backpacks, closed the vehicles, double-checked that they were locked, and headed out.
On a trail, there were, notoriously, two kinds of hikers: the tortoises and the hares.
Diane, Jen, and Sommer were the turtle hikers—they could cover great distances with heavy packs, but they adopted a slow-and-steady-wins-the-race tactic.
Marna and Abbie were rabbits. They bounded up the trail in bursts. They’d go-go-go, then they’d stop and rest.
When Sommer hiked with more people, that difference was much more manageable. The slow pokes could still take a rest, pull off their socks and shoes to air their tootsies, have a snack, a catnap, a good long drink.
Sommer felt less willing to do that alone, not knowing how far she had fallen behind.
Alone, she felt the push to stay in the same general range as her friends.
And though they’d offered to slow their pace, Sommer had shooed Abbie and Marna along. She was enjoying this stretch of solo hiking.
The trudge, trudge, trudge up the often-steep slope got Sommer’s heart beating fast.
The sensation of the exertion felt cathartic and healing.
In the ED, her adrenaline got her blood racing, and she’d pant, looking for more oxygen to feed her system as she tried to help her patients.
It was good to know that her heart could beat for fun things as well as emergencies.
Out there, exposing herself to the smell of the trees, the green all around her, and the quiet, her pumping blood was good medicine.
Today had been particularly quiet. No one else was on the trail, which was normal for a Wednesday. They’d hiked for a while, snacked, and lolled for a while. Thirteen miles wasn’t tough over a whole day.
All day long they’d been accompanied by the whoosh of the stream somewhere to the west; other than that, the birds andforest creatures seemed to be hiding away from the first hot day of the year.
Sommer had rolled her hiking pants up to be shorts, but sweat still streaked her legs and dried in the breeze.
They weren’t far from where they would be camping.
It would feel good to put her pack down and set up her tent. Today was the heaviest day as Sommer packed in all her food and water.
Each day would become lighter and easier; she just needed to pace her water consumption to last all four days, especially in this heat.
Up ahead, she could see that Abbie and Marna were rounding the trail off to the west and stopped.
As Sommer caught up to her friends, she found them standing with their legs wide, conferring.
“What’s up?” she called.
“Wipe out,” Abbie called back.
By the time she got up there, Sommer realized that there was a problem. There was usually a bridge right here across this creek, but apparently it had been washed away in a recent storm.
“We’re thinking this happened about a week ago when that thunderstorm roared through,” Marna said. “I didn’t think it came this far east on the mountain, but it might have been that the water up in the mountains came roaring down too fast and swept the bridge off.”
“Last time we were here, it was a little rickety,” Sommer said.
“Yeah, last year it was in bad shape. As a matter of fact,” Marna said. “Didn’t we call that into the rangers?”
“I did,” Abbie said. “Well, I filled out the online form and told them that we threw some rocks on the rotten parts to fill the holes.” She threw up her hands. “There’s no bridge to complain about now.”
“It’s too late in the evening to turn back,” Marna said. “And this slope is too steep to pitch a tent on.”
