Short stories

Lighting Position

Staying an extra hour at camp won't hurt anything, Sam thought as her exposition group refused to leave at the time they had discussed earlier. It's not like there that many days left of this expositions anyway, might as well as enjoy the view as we can. Sam's group included four more people there including, Max, Pat, Zac, and Milly. "Okay, for real now. We need to leave at 1:00 pm if we want to make it to our next campsite without having to set it up in the dark," said Pat, who had previously been roasting summer sources over the fire. Everyone agreed with him and put on their packs and cleaned up the area.

They did eventually leave the campsite at around 12:00. The first three hours were all nice since it was all on trails; they even reached a small civilized camp spot, which made them a bit uneasy. They rechecked the map to make sure that they were still going the right way. They had to travel along a path that leads out of the populated area and onto a well-traveled road. The road was no different than the path that led into the populated area except for the fact that vehicles would pass by less frequently. The group was looking for an ATV trail that would lead them to the next path they would have to take to get to the group; however, they could not find the ATV trail right away it too several minutes before they found it. In that time it had begun to rain intermittently. The rain was very refreshing, and it was the first time it had rained while they were hiking.

They traveled along the ATV trail for about five minutes before the trail disappeared into absurdity. "Looks like we will have to take bearings and make sure we are on the right rout. We should check the bearings at 15-minute intervals," said Max and everyone shook their heads in agreement. Pat was in the front followed by Sam, Max, Milly, and Zac.

The woods were very creepy because darkness was looming over because of a dark storm cloud covered the sun. The group continued to move through the forest in the right direction when they reached this logged fence very low the ground. "It looks like we have to get past it," said Pat. Everyone nodded. Sam thought that going over the fence was a bad idea, but did not know if it was just nerves of having to go over the fence wearing a heavy pack. They made it over the fence with no problems and continued walking. They wandered up a hill when suddenly a loud roar of thunder sounded through the sky. At the sound Max, Milly and Zac scrambled down the hill leaving Sam and Pat behind.

"You need to tell us if you are going to run!" yelled Pat, as he and Sam ran down the hill. The group was able to get to the lower ground and hurriedly feel into lighting position. For two hours they hunched over on their pack curled up uncomfortably in a ball position to protect themselves from electrical currents running through the ground. The storm lasted several hours or what seemed to be hours from the groups' perspective. By the time the storm had ended they were all soaked to the bone, freezing, and still had a couple of miles until they reached camp.

The hikers knew they would never forget this day or look at storms the same way again.