Campin'

You know when the weather is perfect and you're in a beautiful place camping with friends after just having What-a-Burger for lunch? What is better than that for your birthday, maybe except for Pizza Junction? March 27 fell on a Saturday this year and we hopped in old Vern and drove down to Petit Jean State Park for some camping, hiking, cookin' on a campfire, and S'mores.

As we were driving in, we passed a State Park EMT vehicle whizzing past us with its sirens on. I thought, "oh no...there's been an emergency." Once we got to campsite 16 and got our gear all set up, we put on our hiking shorts, took our dog, Allie, and we all headed out to Cedar Falls.

Once we got to the main lodge, there were several park rangers tuned in to their walkie-talkies. We all looked at each other and knew there must have been an accident. We took off down the Cedar Falls trail, 2.2 miles to the waterfall. We're about a fourth of the way down the really steep part when we saw it, like out of a Stephen King book.

There was a man on a stretcher with about a combination team of EMT and other hikers carrying him up the mountain. At first all I could do was stare, but then, I started to get that sick feeling and had to look away. He had fallen 75 ft. off of Bear Cave. Everything was broken and bloody. Christian and Brian offered to carry him up the rest of the trail to give the guys a break. They had to have been carrying him over a mile. My friend, Meredith, and I, just sat on the trail and watched them carry him up the mountain until we couldn't see them anymore.

I feel like there is this a dark cloud that follows me. Like, when the Lada outside my flat in Estonia was blown up by the Russian Mafia and I sat there afraid, staring out my window waiting for the police, which, surely someone had already called but no, they never showed up. Or when I got Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Asheville, NC after going rock climbing on my day off when I worked at a summer camp--that was the sickest I had ever been in my life. Or when our cab driver in St. Petersburg, Russia got pulled over and arrested for (what I assume was their equivalent of DWI/drug posession), after the scariest car ride and loudest techno experience of my life. This stuff just happens and even when it's scary or awkward, as morbid as that is, I always wish I had gotten a picture. I guess my mental images will suffice. 

Sure enough, we heard about the fallen hiker on the news. He lived and they said that 1-2 people fall off of Bear Cave a year at Petit Jean.

And that was my birthda -- hobo pockets & S'mores on a campfire, hiking, and a mangled hiker. Christian came home with poison ivy like a champ. Like, everywhere poison ivy, too.