Short Stories

Strayed Away

I remember the one time, maybe 5 years ago, when my friends and I had been staying at the Upper Pines Campground in Yosemite. We went every year for 3 weeks. We had been going on a 6 mile hike to Mirror Lake when the most frightening thing happened.

"Cora!" someone said. I turned around and saw my two friends, Imura and Delilah running up to me.

"What took you so long?" I joked, falling into stride with them.

"Well, our counselor spent 20 minutes explaining the danger of bears to us," Delilah sighed, shaking her head.

We passed the entrance of our camp, officially going into the Yosemite woods.

"It's not like we would encounter a bear!" Imura rolled her eyes.

I nodded in agreement, deciding to pick up my pace, as we were slowly falling behind. From our view, we could see North Dome, a large mountain near Indian Rock.

Finally, at the 2 mile mark, we took a break near Tenaya Creek. It was 3:00 at this time. Delilah and I were sitting by the river, but Delilah noticed Imura wasn't with us.

"Where's Imura?" she asked, swiveling her head around, her brown hair flying with her.

"I'll ask Bella" I declared, getting up to my feet.

Delilah nodded, so I went to where the rest of our group was. Bella was our camp counselor.

"Bella hasn't seen her, but did you find her?" I asked after talking with Bella.

"Yeah, she was just taking pictures of the river for photography homework." Delilah said, relief evident in her tone.

"Pack your bags! We will start hiking again in a couple minutes!" Bella called suddenly.

"Imura! It's time to go!" I called.

"Give me a minute! I found a woodpecker. I'm getting photos!" She called back quietly. I tapped my foot on the soft, soily ground as we waited.

"Okay. coming!" I heard her call, after what felt like forever.

"You took so long the group probably left without us!" Delilah joked, nudging her.

We got back to the trail... and our group wasn't there.

"Uh, guys? I think they actually left without us," I said nervously, looking around.

"Wait what? No way!" Imura exclaimed, obviously not seeing the lack of people around us. She looked up. "OH MY GOD. They actually left without us!" she gasped.

"What do we do? Go up the trail and hope to catch up with them?" Delilah suggested.

I looked at the trail. It's probably been 5 minutes since they left. They would've walked a while by now. "They're probably about a quarter mile away... I don't know if we could catch up. We go off the trail near the end, remember?" I commented, looking back to the direction of camp.

"So... Which way did we come from?" Delilah asked.

We tried retracing our steps. We went over the fallen log that laid across the river, and we went back to the original trailhead at the 1 mile mark. But there was a fork in the trail, 2 ways to go. We didn't know which one we came from.

"Should we go one way and then try the next?" I asked, not knowing which way to go.

"We don't have time to go both ways," Imura noted.

We walked a bit more until Imura spotted something white on the ground. "Hey, what's that?"

I looked where she was pointing. There was a soggy piece of paper on the ground. It was crumpled and torn in some places. "Is that... That's a map! We can find the camp location!" I beamed, picking up the soggy paper. Searching around the map, I saw our location. Carefully, I traced the trail until I saw a heading that said 'Upper Pines Campground'. "I found it!" I exclaimed triumphantly, holding out the map. "We have to go Southwest along that trail. Then we have to go off trail to the Undergrove Wilderness Trail." I explained, pointing to the left.