Tales from the Garden of Eden (COMPLETED)

Chapter 11

Gilly is a morning person, without a doubt. Before the morning sun rose-although that doesn't count for much-we were all awoken by the deep, baritone yell coming from the campfire. Groggy and disoriented, we are pulled from our insufficient slumber unwillingly.

     I check my watch, groaning at the time. It was six forty-five, and the sun wouldn't be up for another two and a half hours. Sure, after unzipping the tent and peering outside, I came upon the observation that it wasn't pitch black; there was just a tad of civil twilight outside which casts the world in a purple haze.

     "Mother of God, why do we have to get up so early?" Kelly, unlike Gilly, seems to be averse to mornings. Her blonde, waist-length hair is in a messy bun-I don't even know how it is still intact-and her eyes were half-lidded from sleep. "Did anyone else take the longest damn time getting to sleep? I felt like my toes were about to freeze off."

     "Well we only have eleven more days of this. You can make it." Sydney is getting up while she talks, putting her socked feet in her boots and throwing on an extra jacket before plodding out to the campfire.

     "Ugh, we better go." I say. I may not be the biggest morning person, but I am more so than everyone else left in the tent.

     Breakfast is a disappointing mix of oatmeal, a protein bar, and coffee or hot chocolate. Last night, I had thought that I would be looking forward to breakfast every morning, but it seems like I won't be.

     Hodge and Gilly have mostly kept to themselves this morning, pouring over a map that we could only guess was of the park. So the campers sat in silence, eating the lacking meal, and awaiting orders from the rangers. We only wait a few minutes-the first people are just finishing their meal-when Gilly and Hodge walk towards us, brandishing the map in front of them. Upon closer inspection, it is just the Park, but in such fine detail that everything was put on there. At the guidance of Gilly's index finger, I can even see where we are right at this moment.

     I am taken aback by the staggering amount of space the Park takes up. It took us almost two hours to hike four miles, and we are less than a pinky nail into the borders. "As you can see, we are here," Hodge motions to his partner's fingertip. "Bye four o'clock this afternoon we want to be another ten miles in. Of course, that will only take us a little over three hours if we keep up a good pace. However, we have learned in the past that-especially on the first day-people like to stop, look, take pictures, all of that. So we will plan on walking ten miles. Now, you may be wondering what we will do all day after four o'clock until we go to sleep: the answer is nothing. With these temperatures combined with the amount of exercise you will be doing today, it is likely that you will be asleep by eight tonight. I suggest in the warmth of your tents propping your feet up on the walls for a few minutes until they start to get a tingly feeling. I promise it'll help with the foot pains tomorrow." Hodge speaks in short, clipped sentences, and I can only assume he is anxious to start traveling.

     He ends up having to wait a little over an hour; we are slower than they like-their annoyance is shown obviously on their faces-but who can blame us? This is all a new experience.

     The formation of us walking ends up much like it was yesterday: the two guides up front with the horse-which we were told his name is Sebastian, followed by Jack and me, then a large group in the back. During the first few minutes into the hike-which was through a wide open valley, with views that spanned for miles, until your vision was obscured by the mountain up ahead-Jack has distilled in me the need to walk faster, under the faulty claim that if you move more, you would get warmer.

     I don't know if he was right, because I was still shivering slightly, but I guess I wasn't getting colder. "So what were you and Hodge talking about last night?" Jack asks me nonchalantly, but I know that he is feeling nervous, much like I am.