“AVVVAAALLAAANNNCHE!!!!!!” We yelled, hurtling downwards at break-neck speed, shoving the cautiously advancing Preston out of our way (“you GUYS!”) and continuing full throttle past Trent and Drew and the rest of the non-smoker posse towards the front.
“Coming through, Mr. Henley!” Don stepped nervously out of the way as we skidded past him to a ledge where we were faced with an even more vertical plane, a straight drop down the face of the mountain.
“Be careful, girls!” His worried cry was lost upon us as we had already disappeared over the ledge to a point halfway down the mountain, the wind whipping in our ears and spots forming before our eyes as we flew down the slope, sprinting, zig-zagging, and surfing to a final screeching stop at the bottom. We turned around, breathless, to admire our work; Don and the athletes had just barely begun their descent and the rest of the herd was slowly starting to appear out of the forest. We amused ourselves by rating each individual’s descent down the hill, betting on who would end up on their face or rear end and at what point they would have to be rescued:
“Ooh, look at Drew going down, nice form, nice form.”
“Trent isn’t bad either, he’s got the snowplow motion perfected.”
“Ahaaa look at Preston! Preston’s not gonna make it!”
“Look at him clinging to that tree!”
And so it went. The show got even better as time went on, due to the fact that the less physically fit were hiking towards the back.
“Ooooh! Alex! Right on the butt!!”
“Uh oh, here comes Martha, this should be good….”
“Ohh, she has Don helping her, how sweet!”
But Martha still managed to fall in about 30 different ways during her descent, a spectacle so pathetic that we began to feel guilty about the rating game and terminated it temporarily. Besides, we had more important things to worry about. The boys were bitter about having lost their position up front, and were clearly going to challenge us for it on the next slope. While we had been entertaining ourselves, they had snuck ahead of us on the trail, and when Mr. Henley gave us the signal that we could move on, they were off like a shot.
“HEY!” We screamed, taking off after them and trying to muscle our way in. But the boys were playing rough and weren’t going to allow any compensation for girls. We would have to win this the hard way.
The trail had turned into a downward path through the forest, in which erosion had created two deep, massive trenches running side by side. We wove our way in and out of them like the heroes of a Star Wars video game, strategizing how best to navigate corners and adversaries in order to overtake one another, all the while keeping a member of our gender in the lead.
The competition was fierce between Drew and Olivia, while Megan and I were battling for second place with Trent, who had appeared out of nowhere and was aggressively trying to secure his position. Finally, our convoy rounded a corner to where the end was in sight; a large lavender field lay ahead. In a burst of final motivation, Olivia took off, leaving Drew quite literally in the dust as she sprinted into the sunlight and collapsed, gasping for air, on the grass. The rest of us followed suit, forming a kind of sweaty pig-pile which culminated in an impromptu run through of the laughing game.
Once we had caught our breath and the giggles had subsided, we dispersed to pee, explore the surroundings, etcetera. We had plenty of time until the group caught up, and there was a large abandoned farmhouse at the edge of the field, just waiting to be investigated. I squatted to relieve myself next to a trap door, and then, mustering courage just in case it was haunted, opened the door and went in.
The cellar was cool and musty, and the floor made from piled up rocks. Shafts of sunlight descended from the wooden beams which had once formed a floor above; my heart caught in my throat as sudden shadows fell across the beams, accompanied by faint footsteps.
“H....hello?”
“Hey, whats up?”
It was Olivia. I gasped a sigh of relief.
We continued to peruse the ramshackle house while fantasizing aloud about our future building developments in the south of France. We climbed through the left-over debris of what had once been a kitchen, a parlor, and a living room, and were debating the reliability of the stairs leading to a loft space when we were jolted out of our reverie by Megan, who had been sent to inform us that the pack had arrived and was waiting. With the avalanches re-united, we took our place at the front of the line and set off, pretending not to hear Don Henley’s admonitions of “trying to stay with the group this time.”
We were the first ones to reach the village and caroused happily through the country roads, indulging the blissful fantasy that Johnny Depp’s house was around here somewhere and that any minute we might chance upon it. Alas, our cries to him went unanswered, and we were soon trundling into suburbia, which gave way to a quaint little town complete with lavender shops and glistening water spinning from a nearby mill.
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