Five minutes later, I'm more lost than before.
The rain has turned the whole mountain into a waterfall. Streams that didn't exist an hour ago are rushing past my feet, carving new channels through the earth. My jacket is failing. Water drips down my collar, soaks through my shoulders.
I'm shivering now. Not just from cold but from fear. I pull out my phone with numb fingers, praying for a signal, but nothing. Just the emergency SOS option glowing at the top of the screen.
Should I use it? Call for rescue because I'm an idiot who got herself lost? I hesitate. Search and rescue is for real emergencies. Life or death situations. I'm just wet and lost and scared. I can still figure this one out.
Another bolt of lightning, this one striking close enough that I can smell the ozone. The thunder is instantaneous, deafening.
I need shelter. Right now. Before I get struck by lightning or succumb to hypothermia or fall off a cliff I can't see.
"Help!" I shout into the storm. My voice sounds small, pathetic, swallowed by the rain. "Someone help!"
Nothing. Just the roar of water and wind.
"HELP!" I scream louder, cupping my hands around my mouth. "PLEASE! SOMEONE!"
My throat is raw. Rain fills my mouth when I open it to yell again.
This is how people die in the mountains. I know this. I've read the stories, seen the statistics. Experienced hikers who made one wrong turn, one bad decision, and never made it home.
I can't be one of those stories.
I stumble forward, hands out in front of me, trying to find anything that could serve as shelter. A rocky overhang, a thick cluster of trees, anything.
My foot comes down on nothing.
The ground disappears and I'm falling, sliding down a slope I couldn't see, unable to stop. Branches whip at my face. My pack catches on something and jerks me sideways. I tumble, roll, slam into a tree trunk hard enough to knock the wind out of me.
For a moment, I just lie there in the mud, gasping for air, pain radiating through my ribs. Everything hurts. My hands, my knee, my side, my face. I can taste blood where I bit my tongue.
I need to get up, but I'm so tired. So cold. The rain is relentless, pounding down on me like fists. Maybe if I just rest for a minute. Just catch my breath.
No. That's what people think before they die of exposure. Rest is death.
I force myself to my hands and knees, then to my feet. My ankle protests but holds my weight. Not broken, just twisted. My ribs scream when I breathe deep, but I can breathe.
Nothing's broken. I'm hurt but functional.
"HELP!" I try again, but my voice cracks. I don't think I'm shouting anymore so much as crying. "Please, somebody! HELP!"
The forest swallows my words.
I need to move. Pick a direction and commit to it. Staying in one place means dying here. Downhill. Water flows downhill, and eventually water reaches civilization. That's basic survival knowledge.
I start walking in what I think is downhill, but the terrain is so chaotic I can't tell anymore. My foot slips and I catch myself against a tree. Take another step. Another.
The cold is seeping deeper now, into my bones, into my core. My fingers are so numb I can barely flex them. My jaw aches from clenching it to keep my teeth from chattering.
"Help," I whisper, because it's all I have left. "Please."
Lightning flashes again, and in that split second of illumination I see it, a darker shape among the trees. Something man-made. Straight lines where nature makes curves.
Building? Shelter? Hallucination? I stagger toward it, hope and desperation giving me strength I didn't know I had left.
It's a structure. Small, barely more than a shed, but definitely man-made. Some kind of old ranger outpost maybe, or hunter'sshelter. The door is swollen with moisture, stuck. I throw my shoulder against it and it gives with a shriek of wood on wood.
Inside is dark and musty but blessedly dry. I collapse just past the threshold, water pooling around me, and let the door swing shut against the storm.
