Yesterday I went hiking. I've been hiking once or twice in my life, just very easy, light hikes. I would never list "hiking" under my interests in any sort of survey, on Facebook, or in general conversation. In the days prior to the hike, I debated whether or not I should go. I made up excuses, as I always do, and then countered each. What's the worst that could happen? If it really is terrible, then I never have to do it again--it's completely non-committal! So I wound up on the trail at about 10:30 am with four fellow hikers, three of whom I had never met. As a newbie, my shoes were completely inadequate. My youngest dog went on a shoe-chewing rampage a few months back and my tennis shoes were caught in the cross-fire. In the midst of two intensive summer courses, I grabbed a pair of close-toed shoes with velcro straps from a thrift store. They resemble water shoes, the popular shoe of the 90's when I was growing up. My feet have always been hard to fit because they are extremely narrow and I have high arches that caused my hiking friend to jump back and declare "mutant!" when I removed them on the trail at one point. Thus, these shoes didn't stay on my feet very well. Mistake number one.
My friend, the leader of the group who had organized the hike, began reading the green piece of paper he had printed from some website about this particular hike to Lemmon Pools. The more he read, the harder I swallowed. This hike was considered a 3.5 on a 5-point scale. I didn't even understand some of the simple language used only because I had hardly hiked before. But, alas, here I was and I was bound and determined to make the most of it and have a good time.
The beginning of the hike, meaning the first three miles, was gravy. The next mile after that we went off-trail and had to do quite a bit of sliding down rocks. My butt became my best friend. We searched far and wide for the pools, to no avail. Granted, there were little pools of water a few feet deep but nothing swim-worthy, which was our goal. So we eventually settled, after 3.5 hours of hiking, on some boulders for lunch. I had brought a granola bar to eat while everyone else had Subway sandwiches. I realized the main thing my granola bar lacked was protein. Mistake number two.
We began the hike back, which is usually supposed (or perhaps only supposed by noobs such as myself) to be easier. Except we now had to go up the rocks we had come down, not a huge feat until one rock was quite steep. Of course, my mock water shoes picked the moment I was in the middle of that rock to fall off, both at the same time. So my friend carried my shoes for about ten minutes while I climbed rocks in my socks. It was actually kinda fun.
Another reason to hate my shoes was that because they weren't tight enough, my feet moved around inside them. This caused me to literally stub my toe repeatedly on my shoe, enough times that the pink color underneath my toenail turned purple. I like purple, but not on or under my skin. So every time I went downhill, that toe would hit the shoe again. When I'm in a sucky situation, I like to think of others who have had it worse, to show myself that my situation is really not that bad. I thought of the book I'm reading for English 486, All Quiet on the Western Front and considered how my plight was cake compared to that of the soldiers in WWI. They got their feet blown off and would still run on their stubs to safety. Ewww. Ouch. Then again, can one even FEEL the ends of their nubs touching the ground if they run on them? I suppose it depends on the nerves and how much is left.
Towards the beginning of the hike, I saw a classmate from the 486 class on the same trail heading the opposite direction, which was so strange for me because up until six months ago when I started back at the UA, I hardly knew more than a handful of people in Tucson. Then, at the end of the hike when we were back in the parking area, I saw a friend I know from the dog park. What are the odds?! No one else on the hike encountered anyone they knew and I bumped into two different people. How comical for this Kansas girl.