Life is funny. I know I’ve said this before, but it really is true. I currently have a bruise on my leg, the size of a small state. It’s red and blue, and painful, and really has stolen the thunder from my otherwise amazing tan…(I’m pretty vain I know.) So the thing is, this injury is a result of nothing more than what was meant to be a simple hike. Not a challenging hike…not a death defying, hair raising, can we really do this hike…nope, just a regular, after dinner stroll up a mountain. I brought my camera (of course), and Jessica brought her tin whistle (after I mentioned she really needed to be practicing more). Things started out ok. I saw some goats in the road, I took some pictures of the beautiful sea below us, Jess obliviously followed me, playing her D scale up the mountain… you know, just regular stuff. We had a goal. We were heading for this small little tree at the top of this mountain. Easy enough…we had surely conquered greater feats than this before. This was a walk in the park. And truly this was the case.

The injury occurred as we neared our summit. We had been sort of switchbacking up the mountain, dodging the prickly bushes that have become a familiar fixture here on Naxos. The last part of our ascent involved climbing some fairly big rocks up and over to our tree. No problem, I love climbing stuff. It’s actually my favorite part of the whole thing. So I believe my words to Jessica were, “well, we can either switchback along this route here, or we can just climb this rock up and over to the top….I want to climb.” Jessica didn’t stop me, and was thinking of doing the same, so all in all it seemed like a pretty good plan. I grabbed ahold of the seemingly sturdy, very large rock, and attempted to hoist myself over it when the rock decided it had had enough, and broke apart in my hand. Not just one little crumbly piece…no, I’m talking the entire front face of the rock. For a split second I held that rock face in my hand, I may have thought…oh crap, this isn’t good, and then it fell, and luckily I didn’t, but it managed to hit me on the way down, and leave me with a pretty decent scratch. Now I usually know when I’ve made a poor decision, and I think I deserve most of the injuries I obtain along the way, but seriously, I really don’t think this was my fault….I mean, come on people, it’s a rock, a big rock, fully capable of holding me up…I suppose it was just bad luck.

And I guess the same could be said for our way down the mountain. How were we suppose to know that the way down would take just a tad bit longer than the way up…and oh yea, that the sun would set, and maybe it would be just a little bit dark, and maybe the moon that has been shining so brightly the last few nights would just decide to not show up on this particular night…again, not really our fault.

So we started down, and just like I said, the sun went away, and we managed to get ourselves just a little bit lost. Soon it was really dark. Jessica just continued to say how pissed she was for not knowing where we were (on account of the whistle playing), and I didn’t really say much, mostly because I didn’t feel like hearing my voice do that cracking thing, when you might just cry, but are trying to still play it tough. In my head though, I was a little bit freaking out, wondering how we were going to make it home, and hoping that we didn’t just walk over the edge of some ravine by accident. At one point, I contemplated what it would be like to spend the night on the mountain…Oh yea and my leg hurt from that stupid rock falling on it, and because we were no longer able to see the mean prickly bush things, we just kept walking right into them… We were in bad shape. Nothing really looked familiar, and we seemed to just be aimlessly wandering…sometimes hiking down towards the water where we would encounter impassable thick plant life (with thorns of course), other times hiking up to higher ground so we could assess the situation…hmmmm, yep, still pretty lost.

Props to my friend Jessica though who was a navigational wizard…or maybe she was just pretty damn lucky, because eventually, we found the road home, and all was ok, and I was able to appreciate the starry sky, happy that I wouldn’t be sleeping under it. The pasta with veges, oreos, and homemade wine never tasted so good, and watching a few Friends episodes before bed seemed like the perfect reward for conquering yet another challenge here in Greece….A challenge that was never really meant to be one…. See, like I said, life is funny, or maybe just ironic, or unpredictable, or exciting, or scary, or….well you get the idea.
Oh, and one final thought…. if you ever go on a hike, I think it would be wise to bring your flashlight with you, you know, just in case…and maybe, just maybe, leave your tin whistle at home.