At first it was all fun. The fun quickly ended and the fear ensued shortly after.

It all started with Dustin saying, “Let’s all go hiking in Arkansas… it’ll be fun as long as you don’t have a fear of heights….” What he meant to say was, “You’ll only have fear if you value your life and want to raise your children.” He misled each and every one of us. And each of us threatened to wring his neck when we weren’t too busy screaming like little school girls. (See the “before” picture under the Bio section of this website. We looked happy, like we were going to have FUN. I am considering putting the “after” photo up so that readers can also see bruises, scrapes, torn clothing, twisted ankles and knees, and blood.)

You see we all do things in life that we really have no business - or very little business - attempting. These types of adventures are fun, but they are often times real tests of what we’re made of. Dustin is a young guy in my small group, somewhere in his mid twenties, and like the other guys in the group, he is fun to be around, trustworthy, and a guy you can or could count on when the chips are down. So when he suggested a small hiking trip, the other six of us quickly agreed. We range in age from early twenties, to late forties and are all in reasonably good shape. Or so I thought. And what better way to have bonding time than to spend the entire day away from civilization, hiking through the woods?

We all piled in one SUV a few Saturdays back, made sure our backpacks were stuffed with water and beef jerky, and off we took. When we stopped in Harrison, Arkansas, we made sure we had sandwiches and any other staples we needed for a day of “walking through the woods.” After passing through Jasper, Arkansas, and turning off the paved road, we all noticed we were going down a dirt and rock road that would not be possible without four-wheel drive. No worries, assured Dustin, this was just the road to the campground. And right he was. We got to the bottom of the mile-long dirt road and found many people camping, cooking out, and looking generally relaxed.

As the “hike” began, it was what we all were expecting. It was drizzling, so we knew to wear warm, water-resistant clothes. We started down a trail that was fairly easy to navigate and nothing too out of the ordinary. And it wasn’t long before we were crossing small streams and navigating our way over and around larger rocks (four feet by four feet). It was fun and we each realized within the first thirty minutes that we were going to get a good workout. Little did we know.

As the adventure became ever-more challenging, Dustin assured us that we were getting past the most difficult part of the hike and we would soon be back on a much easier trail. And about two hours in we came to what I would refer to as the “no turning back point” - although none of us knew it at the time. At this stage of our day we needed the help of a safety rope, as we each gingerly made our way up a twenty-foot precipice of sheer rock, followed by another 80-100 feet of dangerous climbing straight up. Since we had been climbing in elevation, we were now probably 250-300 feet above a rock bed, with absolutely no room for error. One wrong move by one of the seven men could literally get 2 or 3 others killed.

The situation became more and more serious as we made our way up muddy embankments with little to hold onto but a few random plants and roots. We worked together to climb over boulders that were two and three times taller than each of us. And several hours into our day, we each realized there was no turning back and no possible way for emergency services, no matter how serious things might have become (zero cell phone service on the most modern of phones and not one single way of contacting any other person). As the afternoon wore on, several realities hit home. Two of us (Dave and myself) were struggling on the climbs that were over 100 feet straight up and I wasn’t sure how many more of them I could physically do. And it was quite clear that we were not in a situation where we could just walk out. At this point, we were immersed in a few thousand acres of wilderness with steep ascents and descents all around us. And at the top of one of the final climbs, we also understood that we had no idea where we were. The trail had been long gone and we were in the middle of woods with only a couple hours of sunlight left.

While I realize my propensity toward the melodramatic, I also know when to keep that in check and recognize that sometimes a situation seems dramatic because it actually IS. So I was the first one to say, around the 4 o’clock hour while we were ALL wheezing heavily, that we probably should consider the fact that our predicament COULD get a lot more serious. If no one had heard from us by seven or eight, and we were navigating such treacherous terrain in the dark, we wouldn’t be laughing quite so hard. We had one compass and decided to head due north and stick with it, in hopes of finding a road, and to prevent walking in circles.

Fortunately, within a half hour, we accidently ran right into a real trail and followed it for the next couple of hours back to the campground. We were sore, bleeding, our adrenalin glands overworked, and exhausted. And… we had a blast. Dustin never wavered in his watching over us and the bonding we each experienced by literally helping each other through extremely dangerous situations helped bond us together for life. Seven men: Dustin, Dave, Chad, Wes, Garrett, Christopher, and Tyler, worked together to have an unforgettable experience. One that was a real test, and therefore a life-changing, unforgettable experience. May we each experience such tests a few times in our life.