Getting Lost By A Stream
By: Cole Hersey
Tags: Bay Area, Shelter In Place, Lost, Coronavirus, Hope

It’s Friday night. The eight o’clock howl was louder than normal and the day was hot. I woke up this morning, finished reading a book, made breakfast, and, feeling a little on edge, decided to go for a hike. Like I said, it was a sunny and hot day. I wanted to be out in it. I don’t want to take the luck I have, living in this town, close to so much space, so open, at all for granted. I wanted to get out into the sun. I wanted to feel it, feel that luck.

I went up a trail that I love in the backroads of a neighborhood. For me, the trail begins where the path ends, a little further out past the oak and bay groves, and past the small waterfall, up onto a single track that is covered with poison oak and little outcroppings of teal serpentine rocks. I love this trail, though I usually only hike it once a year.

My brother showed it to me. I remember that day we found a small dead king snake that had been killed probably in a rockslide. We hid the snake in a bush and then continued up, following a small single-track trail, at parts almost indistinguishable from the grass, until we reached the opening of the trees, walking up brittle rusty rock to the large swimhole, an oasis in the arid landscape, called punchbowl. Ever since that day it became, and still remains, one of my favorite places anywhere.

But I got lost today going up to punchbowl. Since the rains only stopped a couple days earlier, a stronger ephemeral stream tricked me, and I got confused and walked up it instead of the other stream. The way I go up this trail, which leads to a large swimming hole on the edge of the valley, is by following the sound of the stream to my left. It usually works, but the thickness of the bushes and the forest sometimes gets me. And this was the earliest in the season I had tried hiking up it, so the foliage looked so different, and the water sounded louder than normal, and so I got lost. But after a half hour of wandering, looking confused up at a small waterfall and wondering why the hell the punchbowl didn’t look the same at all, I found the right trail and continued to walk up to it, to punchbowl. There were a lot of people there. Usually I don’t see anyone out there, or maybe two people, and today felt odd, like everyone who thought, just like I thought, that their little secluded watering hole of dopeness would be empty today.

Shooting star flowers at the edge of the punchbowl

I guess that’s the problem with a little secluded spot of dopeness. Eventually everyone wants in and so it’s no longer secluded, instead it’s just a gnarly hike to a swim hole in the valley. Which is fine. I was just more concerned about the virus in this small place. Even with a little bit of hope surrounding the Bay Area, it would be stupid to think that this virus cannot get us, that herd immunity means immunity, and that we all can play on the rocks together. I hella wish that was true. But it’s not. Not yet. We’re lucky in the Bay, and especially in Marin, to not have such bad numbers compared with other places in the country like New Orleans, but we’re not finished with this disease at all. I don’t see anyone, fat or skinny, singing.

Two days ago, my friend sent me an article about a new study being conducted on herd immunity in the Bay Area. The study stems from such low rates of the disease in such a populous state, and how, due to a potentially early flu season called in December, how the disease could already have passed through California in ignorance. It will be weeks before anything comes of this study, but it’s been one of the few glimmers of hope in the news, and I’m going to hold onto it like it’s my lottery ticket.

And maybe that article changed something in me. Maybe now, with this bit of hope, I felt okay getting lost on a hike, or that I needed to rush out and run around, not sit inside reading and writing short stories all day, but should go out and find joy in the sun and a long walk uphill, making the hope of going home all the more rewarding after the hike was done. Because I can get outside, for now, and I might as well take this chance. Because, even though it’s hopeful, it seems unlikely*, and you cannot be certain of anything. Even a trail you’ve known since puberty.

*It should be noted that this article I mentioned has been disproven by Jane C. Hu of Slate. Read both articles here and here.