[at-l] Adventure and Adversity

[hudsom at us.ibm.com (Mark Hudson)]

On my first hike on the Long Trail, heading south, I started the long climb
up Camel's Hump. I hadn't made it very far when a thunderstorm hit,
thankfully when I was still in the lowlands. It rained so hard that you
couldn't look up to find the trail and inhale at the same time, unless you
wanted to drown while standing up. You could manage to follow the trail by
going upstream. There was a shelter, now gone, about three miles out, where
I stopped to wring out my socks and let the storm blow out, of course it
was mostly over at that point anyway.
I got to Gorham Lodge and the caretaker was surprised to see anyone had
made it up through the storm. He had been on top of Camel's Hump when the
storm hit, trying to count the time between the flash and the thunder and
not making it past  "One..."

Then there was the storm I got caught in, camped on top of a mountain in
Quebec, where both the flashing of the lightning and the roar of the
thunder were continuous, so there was no counting there... I can't say it
was life affirming, more fatalistic - "If I get it, I get it"...

skeeter