The Waterfall Was Real, The Snacks Were Insufficient

Labor Day weekend and I had exactly one plan, which was to not sit in my apartment for three days straight. A few weeks ago I grabbed a paper map of the state parks within an hour of here, the kind they keep in a plastic sleeve near the ranger station entrance, and I had been meaning to actually use it since approximately July. Yesterday I finally did.

The drive out was fine. The trailhead was fine. The first forty minutes of the hike were fine. Then I hit a fork that was not on the map in any way I could interpret, turned what I am now calling 'confidently left,' and spent another twenty minutes walking in a direction that was, according to a creek I eventually hit, definitely not the direction I wanted. I turned around. I found the fork again. I went right. Within ten minutes I could hear water.

the map was not lying. i was.

The waterfall is small, it's not the kind of thing that ends up in a magazine, but it's real and it's there and it was mine for about forty minutes because nobody else was around. I sat on a flat rock next to it and ate the one granola bar I had brought, which I had somehow convinced myself would be enough food for a four-hour round trip. It was not enough food. It was, however, a very good granola bar.

I drove home with the windows down and the radio on and got back just as it was starting to get dark. I feel like I did something, which is the whole point of a day like this. I'm already looking at the map for a longer trail. Next time I'm bringing actual lunch.