Came upon these little surfers' shacks (surfers who get this far have to be pretty motivated). Check out the footing here. Sun getting low, so I started heading back. I got so immersed in beachhcombing I seem to have missed the cliffside trail and by the time I realized this I was pretty far south of it. Sun now setting and of course I had no light and there are very few exits from the beach on this stretch of the coast, with its crumbling steep cliffs. Hmmm… I made the decision to head south where I knew there was an arroyo with a (sort of) trail.
As it got darker, I started to run. Not looking forward to spending the night huddled under a cliff until dawn. Oh yeah, I was lightly dressed, had no cel phone, and it was a new moon, so no help in the luminosity dept. Dumb fuck!
Stress level rising, getting darker, shit! Then -- is that a human figure up ahead? Yes, it was, I'd made it to the arroyo and Megan and her 2 kids were heading up the trail. You hop around a flowing creek going up and have to pul lyourself up in 2 places with anchored ropes. After walking through a muddy field, Megan kindly gave me a ride to my truck and I was able to come home to a warm fire, (ahem) big shot of cognac, and good meal.
If it don't kill you,
it's good for you.
3 comments:
Good stuff! As Yvon Chouinard says, it's only when you go out without the "ten essentials" that you can have an adventure.
Please at least bring a little flashlight with you next time. Get a Maglite, fer chrissakes!
I had a dream last night, which has mostly dissolved, but i was talking to an older woman, telling her about some kind of adventure that i had just had, which had ended with a "mishap". My face was some banged up, and i was saying to her, "Well, you have to fall off a bridge once in a while . . ."
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