Mr. Darcy's Mist

It's amazing how when you stay up all night, the day before seems so far away, like another lifetime. When you sleep every night to divide each of Earth's rotations, it gives it a more permanent end to the day, as opposed to staying up all night, when it just feels like the day never ended and this is just a huge run-on. Yesterday seem so far away and yet I remember every bit of my life leading up to it (apart from the hours I slept this morning).

The Nite Hike was illuminating to say a least. I learned a few things. 1. When it starts to get light outside first the sky is a light blue and then when the sun gets higher it turns into a pretty orange-ish colour (quite like the scene in Pride and Prejudice [2007] when Mr. Darcy walks through the mist--*sigh*); 2. there are many phases of staying up all night (denial, confusion, acceptance, exhaustion, extreme giddiness, awakeness); 3. feet can feel like crap on toast (and worse).

Getting in the car to leave, I was already doubting my decision to go in the first place. I was going to stay up all night, walking through the woods? Was I mentally sound? Were any of the voluntary participants? But alas, I got in the car and we drove off, and it wasn't until about 9:30pm that I started to regret it.

First thing after we started walking I remember thinking, whoa we have a lot ahead of us. After an hour it was clear that this was going to be a very long night. Then at about 11:00pm I got all delirious and just laughed at and made fun of everything (there were some zombies involved). After that I got kind of miserable and had to really work at not dropping down on the path and staying there. All I wanted to do was sit by the fire at the break station and drink hot chocolate (with no hot dogs because those close minded boobs didn't bring any veggie dogs), for a little while longer. Unfortunately, no one would oblige me in this wish. Come on, Alex, we have to keep going or we're not going to finish on time.* It was estimated that if we kept up the rate we were going we'd finish the hike at about 4:30 or 5 and we could go home. Which seemed laughable after we'd spent an hour at the Rock Band station (J--we were going backwards from Z to A). At 4am we still had nine stations left to complete.

It was at 5:30am that I finally conceded defeat. I had wanted to go back to the car and leave countless times during the event, but it was after we had walked four kilometres to a station that was packing up (we still had 3 more to go after that) that I finally realized we were not going to finish in time for 6am (or finish all the stations period).

The feeling of disappointment when we realized this was pretty sad. At first we were disbelieving but then we started taking out our anger on the ground. Eventually, we picked ourselves up and walking back and that is another story entirely.

We made it back to the car. Our team finished the hike dead last, which is a pretty spectacular accomplishment, that I think we can all be proud of. At 7am I found my bed and slept for a few hours. All is well.

I think it's pretty fun when people have to describe somethin as an "interesting experience". It basically means that they don't exactly regret doing it, but they don't want to repeat another similar "experience" any time in the near future. This hike qualifies as one such time. I'm not exactly glad I went, but I'm glad I didn't not go, if that makes any sense. I don't know whether or not I'm glad that we didn't quit at 2,3 or 4am (or earlier). It was really pretty to watch the sky change colours and I guess I'm happy that I spent time with Rachel and Brianne on the long walk back the car. However pathetic we were, that was fun. It's hard to explain all the weird feelings to an outsider, so I'm just going to stop.

*Which is pretty ironic. Read on. Or not, because that's silly since it's the end of the blog.