Survivor Man

“You can’t get lost in Gooseberry,” She casually tosses out as we walk through the door. If there’s a will, there’s a way, my friend. Oh boy is there a way.

I am slightly ashamed to say that this was going to be the first time I would visit Gooseberry Falls, or just “the Falls” as us locals like to call it. I’ve lived here for three years. Three years of great leaf changes and had never taken a day trip to enjoy the colors. With a strong push from some of my friends (“Hey, I’m coming up this weekend to take pictures of the leaves - cool?” […] “Wait, what now?”), we made plans to take the short drive along the North Shore. Unfortunately, the very next day called for rain which knocked down the pretty red leaves. But, no matter – this is why Adobe created Photoshop.

Saturday morning we woke to what everyone loves to wake up to: the smell of coffee and the sound of rain. Wait. Waterfalls tend to be outside, right? We, being the strong women that we are, weren’t going to let a little rain stop our fun. After throwing on a few more layers and grabbing some old shoes, we were ready to take on the world.
“How many of these Trail Mix bars should we take?”
“Just a few, we should be fine; unless we get lost.”
“I’ll grab the box.”
And off we went.

We drove along the North Shore (the scenic route, even!) singing along to Mika loudly and out of tune. After a quick pit stop at a pie restaurant, we made it to Gooseberry State Park. By then the rain knew it would be best to stay away for awhile, so we grabbed our cameras and went out on the trail. The place was PACKED. What was supposed to be a relaxing, reflecting time, ended up being more of a… “Hey! You… ugh. You just stepped in my shot. Thanks, pal.” To clarify, I slipped. I saw him there, but the rocks were wet. And besides, he’ll thank me when he gets those developed; I’m sure my “Woahaaah!” face will provide lots of laughter for him.

I, on the other hand, worked with the masses of people. Like with this boy. Can't you just see the wisdom of youth, or something? (I'm pretty sure he was just waiting for his mother to get her camera out at the bottom of the cliff... but 'deep in thought' works better)


After getting the shots of the falls, we headed further down the trail. It was only a short hike until we made it to the end of the river where it meets the lake. The trail stopped there, but we decided to go check out the beach and the rocks. Since there weren't any parents around, we rock climbed up some small cliffs along the shore just to see what was on the other side. We sat and walked along the beach taking in the light from... the clouds. No rain, and that's all that really mattered.
"I'm ready. You guys?"
"Yep. Which way should we go? We have the trail that we came on, and there's this one over here."
"The other makes a full circle back, right? Let's take that."

Right there. Right there is where we went wrong.

We began walking on the new trail, not really in the mood to take anymore pictures, just ready to get back. We didn't pass anybody going this way. We didn't see anyone. Not a soul. This also should have been a clue, but since we obviously weren't thinking, we kept going.
"Are we almost there? This is taking forever."
"It looks like the trails about the same distance on this map. And hey, we just curved a little while ago."
"We've curved, like, six times already."
"Well, there's only two big curves on this map. Wait - is there a sign up ahead?"
"It says, 'big site'. That on the map?"
"Um... There isn't any text on this thing."
"Of course not."

This is when things start to get hazy, and memories of "If you get lost, just stand next a tree and wait for us to find you." start filling the brain. Plenty of trees to stand by, but we were lacking the 'us to find you' bit. We rationed out the trail mix bars and kept walking all the while looking for signs of life.

"Deer."
"What?"
"Oh my... deer!!"

Not 15 feet from us there was a deer just of the path to our left. Staring straight at us. We froze. And by froze I mean whipped out our cameras.




"They don't attack people do they?" We all exchanged glances and backed away slowly. Well, except for one of us. Who decided to whistle as loud as she could. Immediately, the deer lifted his head (as well as the deer that was behind him) with that 'Attack mode, check' look as he stared us down.
"Don't do that!" "What? They aren't going to do anything." "They're stupid! They'll run at us!"

Bam! We bolted with such speed it was like a scene out of Lost and some other show where they run a lot. I mean, you see his yellow eyes, huge antlers and fangs, right? You would've bolted too. We ran all the way back to 'big site' out of breath, but alive and unscathed.

After cutting through the woods and some campsites, we managed to make it back to the original path. Four hours after we had set out on the trails, we finally made it back to the car. Yeah, you read that right. Four hours.

My bed never felt so good.

According to the map and our best guess, if we would have kept going when we saw the deer, we would have popped out right at the parking lot. Smooth.