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amyjensen98

February 2022

Updated: Dec 20, 2022




Okay, for those of you who remember last year’s February 2021 post, you may remember my story of that waterfall snow hike I did where that strange crazy man attempted to abduct me and proceeded to play cat and mouse with me for most of the hike and then I believed sabotaged my truck so that it would not start. I ended up getting rescued to get out that night by another stranger, but always wondered what would have happened had the first guy come back with his friends to find me in that dead truck in the snow on a closed winter road late at night. In fact, that hike started to consume my mind for some time. Every time I drove by the trailhead on my way to another hike, I found my heart racing and realized I was developing a huge aversion to this hike and even the trailhead itself. The best way I can describe it is a complete and total PTSD response. I was terrified to even get on that trail in any time of year. Well, for those of you who know me well, you know that I cannot let that lie. I cannot let anyone or anything control me like that. So, I started to think what I needed to do to overcome this fear issue. I debated doing a backpack and forcing myself to spend the night up there to end this. But then the idea instantly hit me and I knew what I had to do. I needed to recreate the exact hike down to the very day. Every detail had to be exactly the same.


I drove up there sweating bullets on that cold February day. It was the very same week in February as the year before. I parked my truck in the exact spot, backed in and aiming the same way as I had the year before. My heart was racing before I even moved from that truck. Nova and I wore the exact same gear (except she had a green snood instead of pink and I was breaking in a new camera). We, of course, made it all the way to the falls at the same time of day as that previous year. I cannot express to you how many times I looked behind me on that hike though! When we got to the icy falls, I did the same photo shoot and timed my hike out to be just as it was getting dark like the year before. Unbeknownst to me, I ended up losing a piece of gear at almost the same spot as the previous year. In fact, it was my memory while hiking out of losing a knee strap in 2021 and having to retrace my steps to try to find it that made me stop and do a quick gear check in the same spot….and I realized I had lost my pedometer off my belt. So, I retraced my steps on that same hill, and just like the year before, never found the missing item. I realized I probably lost it when I dropped to make snow angels in the same spot the crazy would-be-abductor made one in 2021. (I know you probably really think I am crazy right now, but I knew that I needed to recreate every part of this hike to make sure it did not have a hold on me. So I even did what he did, where he did it.) That last mile out in the dark to my truck was probably the hardest part of this recreation as I somehow became convinced the truck would not start just like last time.


I was practically hyperventilating by the time I was inside my truck and turned the key…...but as that engine revved to life, I felt all the PTSD of that hike completely drain away. I no longer have any fear of that trail!! Because everyone asks me, yes there was only one other person on that trail that day, just like in 2021. A man hiking solo. But this time, he was not trying to abduct me. He was a very nice older gentleman just trying to get a couple miles of snowshoeing in and he never made it anywhere near the falls, nor did he mess with my truck. No, I did not tell him what I was doing. He already thought that my dog and I were bad-asses for how fast we were moving when we passed him and how far we were planning on going in the snow that day when our eyeballs were already freezing in their sockets from the below freezing temperatures. I didn’t need him to know my true level of insanity. ;o} But this photo is one of my favorites for the whole year! For me, it symbolizes the grit and determination I would need to get through 2022. It was truly a mind over muscle kind of hike for me.

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