Did I mention I'm an idiot?

We got a new girl at work today, Emmillie. Or Emillie. Or Emmilie. Or something like that. Until I learn how many Ms and Ls she uses, I'm going to call her Em. Anyway, she's sixteen years old, and Rye warned me to be nice to her and not corrupt her or scare her, because he'd heard she was shy and religious both.

She's not shy. At all. And she "avoids church like the plague" in her own words. Even though it was her first day, she was perfectly comfortable and acted like she's been here for months. She worked as a housekeeper at the Breeze Inn for the last year or two and before that, she worked in her parents' laundromat. Beth, of course, adores her already. She's just a few inches shorter than I am, delicately built while still looking spunky, and is pretty much dead gorgeous. She smiles and laughs a lot, loves telling stories (usually about her million and one friends), is super enthusiastic about everything, and is smart, seeming to know everything about everything. She's in drama, she's played the piano for ten years, she likes to sing, she likes camping, et cetera. I can't tell if I love her or hate her.

It's really nice hanging out with someone who's smiley and enthusiastic, for a change. But I almost felt like she was overshadowing me or something. I felt very out of place when Beth and Em started talking about Zac (guy who worked here last summer). He was Beth's Favorite last year (I don't know if he'll still be the Favorite or if Em will be the new Favorite), and Em knows him and likes him a lot, so the two of them just starting gushing about how wonderful Zac is and he's funny and likes anime (just like Beth! zomg!) and has a goal he's working for blah blah blah blah blah. I felt very out of place. Of course I like Zac. He's a fun guy. But I'm not about to gush over him like a starstruck teenage girl...

Anyway, I figure by the end of the summer, Em and I are going to either be best friends or mortal enemies. But I do think that I'll try and get her and her friends to play Dungeons and Dragons this summer. I bet several of them would play and we could have a real campaign with more than three people this year!

So anyway, after work, I finished my book, Goblin War. It was awesome! I want to get the other books in the series now, because Jig rocks my socks.

I decided that instead of playing LotRO with Rye and Tom and Allen, that I wanted to go for a walk. I had a lot on my mind, okay? And this is where I learned a valuable life lesson. If you're going to hike in the woods on a mountain in the middle of nowhere by yourself... at least stay on the trail. And if you're stupid like me and decide not to follow any trail, don't try to climb down a cliff so you can cross a waterfall so you can scale the cliff on the other side. I apparently have horrible depth perception or something. Not to mention horrible judgment.

So I saw no other easy way to get to the other side of this waterfall than to climb down this cliff. I looked down and decided it looked like it would be cake to climb down. There were quite a few ledge-looking things covered in pine needles and it couldn't be all that far. And, I thought, once I got to the water, if I couldn't easily get up the cliff on the other side, I could just follow the river down the mountain a ways and cross further on. I don't know why I assumed that. I guess I wasn't thinking straight. At all. Also, I'm an idiot.

So I started to climb down, and it turned out that the "ledge-looking things" were at about a seventy degree angle. And they were made of loose dirt and mud. I didn't realize that until I was about five feet below the top of the ledge--too far down to get back up, because it was too steep, and the dirt was so loose it was impossible to climb up. So I kept going down. And the further I got down, the looser the dirt was. At first, there were a few tree roots to hold onto... but then those were gone, and I found myself twenty feet down with nowhere else to go and my hands slipping off the last tree root, which I had to hold in a horribly awkward position that felt like it was ripping off my thumb. I looked down. Now my depth perception was working. Once I let go of this root, I would slide down about fifty feet before crashing through twenty feet of Devil's Club (think spiky poisonous plants... with thorns. Spiky thorns. That are long and sharp and rip easily out of the plant to get embedded in your skin) and then falling off a fifteen-foot ledge, smashing into rocks below that, and being washed away by the waterfall. Not good.

Holy crap. I thought. I'm going to die. I'm seriously going to die.

My hands slipped a little more.

Oh God, I'm going to die.

And then I slipped and started sliding down the mountain. The only thing that kept me from falling to my death was a little root several feet down that I had managed to grab onto. The root wasn't even as big around as a pencil. And with my weight on it, it was started to pull out of the ground.

I'm dead. Oh God, I'm really going to die. For real. Oh God oh God oh God. Normally I don't use the phrase "oh God," but when you're about to die, it seems like an appropriate time (hypocritical though that may be, I guess). There's no way. Oh geez, this is going to hurt so bad... And dangit. Dangit dangit dangit. There's pine needles in my shoes.

...Yeah. I seriously thought that. Here I was, clinging for dear life to a thin root that was about to break, fifty feet above a waterfall halfway up a mountain in Alaska, when no one knew where I was, and it would probably take weeks for them to even find my dead body... and I was freaking out because there were pine needles in my shoes. Pine needles. It was so ridiculous that I started laughing. Hysterically.

Terror is a funny thing.

Through sheer luck, I managed to make my way over to a dead tree. And out loud, I said, "Oh my gosh... thank you, tree. I mean... I know you're dead... and I'm sorry about that... but thank you." Then I started cracking up again. "I know you're dead, and I'm sorry about that." Wow.

The tree, even though it was dead, and only about two inches in diameter, seemed sturdy enough to support my weight while I figured out what to do next. I suddenly remembered I had my cell phone in my pocket. I pulled it out and sure enough, I had one bar of reception. I thought about calling for help, but I didn't think anyone could really help me much, short of flying a helicopter to me and making me climb a rope ladder, but there were so many trees around that no one would find me and a ladder wouldn't reach me. Besides, that would probably cost me a lot of money I didn't have. So instead, I thought of calling Rye or Beth up and saying "Hey, I'm sorry for dying, really. Didn't mean to cause trouble. Just so you know, I left Rye's keys on my dresser. And the radio. I accidentally took it home after work. Sorry about that."

I decided against calling anyone, though, because deep down, I still refused to believe I was going to really die.

Well, to make this long story a little shorter, I somehow managed to get all the way home without anything but sore muscles and two minor shallow scratches on my leg. And very muddy clothes, of course. Talking to myself the whole way actually helped. Kind of funny how that works.

Remind me never to leave a hiking trail by myself again, even if I do know exactly where I am....