We are the architects of our own destruction. This is what I reminded my wife of yesterday as we trekked back down the trail at the end of our disastrous family hike. Battered, bruised, bitten, beaten, and bleeding, it was hard to remember why we thought this was a good idea in the first place, but of course everything that had happened had been set into motion by…well, us.
We obviously had no idea what we were getting ourselves into when we chose the short (1.3 miles) trail that was described online as easy, flat, and perfect for families of all ages. I guess that may have been true once, but more on that later. This trail sounded so appealing, and we were so ready to drag our kids out into nature for more family physical activity, that we packed a picnic lunch and drove over to the trail head.
It started off quite innocently. I carried the backpack full of food and Simone carried the backpack full of Edward. I’m sure he could have walked, but he walks so slow, and it was getting to be lunch time, so we wanted to hike up quickly and then let him toddle his way slowly back down after we ate. Ruby, of course, was fine walking on her own. And by fine I mean “way ahead of us at all times shouting for us to hurry up.” I remember when I used to be fast and fit and have energy. I think that was just before I had children.
Well, the trail was certainly flat and easy at first, but that didn’t last long. This particular trail that we were on ran through a forest, and last week there had been kind of an epic storm that had knocked down trees all over town. Apparently this included our trail, as huge trees were down all over the path. I don’t mean small blockages here, I am talking “almost no way to get through” kinds of trees. There were at least four or five huge trees down that we had to navigate over, under, around, and through.
The biggest problem with getting over these trees was that my wife had our son strapped to her back, which made it very difficult to balance, crawl, and otherwise safely get through. As she was climbing over the first huge downed tree, she lost her footing coming down the other side and slid down, scraping all the skin off of the front of her legs. It looked extremely painful. Luckily my wife is a trooper and we continued on to the next obstacle.
While we were making our way through the forest we started regretting our lack of bug spray. Or at I least I did. My co-family members did not seem to be bothered by insects, whereas I had swarms of them all over me, apparently mistaking me for the bug cafeteria. By the time we got to the top of the overlook I was covered with itchy bites, my wife was in pain and scraped up, and Edward had been scratched across the face with a tree branch and was also bleeding. Time for lunch!
Having made it to end of the trail, we pulled out all the stuff we had brought for lunch, opened our Cokes, unwrapped our sandwiches, and started to take a bite. This was Ruby’s cue to tell us that she had to go to the bathroom really really bad. Simone went off to teach her how to pee in the woods, which did not go very well judging from what I saw walking back out of the trees afterwards. Ruby’s skirt was soaked through and through, and my wife also seemed to have been peed on somehow. I don’t think I need to tell you that Simone was not having best hike at this point, which made it even worse when she sat down and knocked her full Coke over onto her sandwich.
Amazingly enough we were able to get a decent family picture at the top before we started our descent, so we will be able to convince future generations that this family outing was not a complete disaster. As we slowly trudged back down the path we were happy that at least a few of us were not bleeding, but that changed when Ruby stopped to show us her toe which she had stabbed on a stick or something. At least this time Edward was walking, which made it easier to get by the trees in our path. Actually, he seemed better at hiking than any of us by that point.
We did eventually make it back to the car, with Edward back in the backpack sleeping for the last bit. Ruby had somehow gotten a bug bite on the bottom of her foot which she was very upset about and everyone was sore and exhausted. And we did it all to ourselves. No, we had no way of knowing about the downed trees making the trail more difficult, and we can’t control the bugs or the accidents, but we decided to go on the hike. I guess what I’m trying to say is, we are all headed for destruction anyway (if you have even been on a family outing you know what I’m talking about), so you might as well be doing something fun while it happens. Life is like Gozer the Gozerian, and we always get to choose the form of the destructor. When all is said and done, I’m glad that when everything fell apart we at least had some nice scenery.
