The Night Hike
I never thought the woods of Slovenia would feel like a fairy forest, with moss dripping off the trees and high peaks reaching toward the sky. It’s amazing, it’s a little bit intimidating, and way different at night.
A few days ago, we had had the pleasure of being invited to a Slovenian home for dinner. After a delicious three course meal and amazing time spent with the family who owned the cabin we were staying at, we headed back to our cabin. The thing is it was ten at night and was a half hour walk to the cabin through the forest. As I said before the woods of Slovenia do feel like a fairy forest… during the day, but night is a bit different.
All I could think about were what creatures were lurking around in the dark, or the spiders crawling on the cold dirt. Spiders we saw in the daytime that were as big as my thumb, hairy, and sitting on webs as big as my head.
The woods didn’t really feel fairy-like any more; I just wanted to get to the cabin quickly. But of course, Pema decided she was too tired to move and stopped in the middle of the trail in the dark. Classic.
We tried to push her, we tried to pull her, we tried to coax her into coming with us, but nothing seemed to work. So, Dad decided the only thing we could do was to carry her. He lifted her up and started trudging up the trail but every two minutes we had to put her down and take a break because this is a ninety-pound animal we’re talking about.
We did this for about fifteen minutes and finally, when Dad was taking a break, Pema decided it was about time she started walking. Afterall, we were more than halfway there, so better up than down.
We finally made it to the cabin at about 11:30 PM. We were happy. It was a late and great night.