The night had been harrowing. Allison sat upright on the branch of the tree, trying her hardest to not move. It wasn't a particularly tall part of the tree -- just three metres or so off the ground -- but when the night was pitch black to the point that one couldn't even count the fingers on the hand put out at arm's length, that three metres is a long way to fall.
Sitting in the bough of a tree in the middle of the night wasn't Allison's idea of fun. But she had no choice. Originally a part of a hiking group through the park reserves, she had been accidentally left behind by the group after she had to excuse herself to relieve herself. By the time she was done, she found that they had moved on already, leaving behind only the rucksack that she had placed at the root of a tree before heading off into the bushes to urinate.
It wasn't her usual hiking group. They were a last minute replacement for her since her original team couldn't make it out due to some problems with their station wagon. But Allison had already made her way to the park reserve, and was unwilling to head back without actually having a chance to hike through. And so she joined the friendly group of hikers who were also intending to go through the park reserves.
Except they left her behind.
She had a map and a compass, but she hadn't been taking notes on it to track her movement since she assumed that she would always be following the hiking group -- why duplicate the effort? The only GPS receiver she had was the TomTom in her car, safely stowed away in the glove compartment.
It also didn't help that she was left behind after they had spent nearly half the afternoon in the park reserve. That made back-tracking difficult, and since nightfall came swiftly, it was hard to determine her bearings. Lacking a tent, the only safe thing she could do was to climb up a tree and wait for dawn to arrive before she tried to navigate back to civilisation.
That wouldn't happen for another hour or two.
(Based on an exercise generated by WriteThis - 11-Apr-2014 21:26:43)
No comments:
Post a Comment