Chapter 676

Dessie and Phillip’s First Backpacking Trip Continued

Six weeks earlier continued.

“We aren’t going all the way there, right?” Dessie asked as they stood gazing at the high, cloud-covered peaks.

“It might be fun someday,” Phillip responded, as he put his arm around his wife, “but we dare not even consider it without the proper equipment — and training. As far as mountains go, those aren’t particularly high ones according to what I’ve read, but I wouldn’t consider hiking them without someone we trusted who had hiked those mountains before. Besides, if we add another day’s travel, we will be well into them. From the satellite view of the area, even some of those foothills get pretty rugged in places.”

“But the mountains are so ... austere, yet so beautiful. Even if we don’t go far into them, we need to bring our cart full of food and stay for a week — just us and the mountains. Also those satellite views showed what looked like waterfalls. I would love to camp near one. Ever since we started backpacking, I’ve wanted to take a shower under a mountain waterfall,” Dessie commented wistfully.

“We’ll do our best to find just the perfect one,” Phillip assured her.

Other than an occasional small knoll that was free of the big trees, the forest continued throughout the morning. Besides the large trees being beautiful, they tended to keep the underbrush to a minimum. Soon after leaving their camping area, they had come across a faint trail that continued, more or less, in the direction they wished to go.

Near noon, they stood on the high point of a little rise using their binoculars to view the area ahead of them. “Look there,” Phillip said, pointing.

When he handed Dessie the binoculars and directed her where to look, she stood with the glasses to her eyes for a long moment before saying, “There’s a whole series of waterfalls coming down that smaller section of the mountain. Is that what you wanted me to see?”

“Yeah, the falls, at least the lower ones, are probably another two hours in front of us, and the area is rough, but as you can see, it sure looks nice.”

“Those falls are so pretty. We can bring in food and stay there for a week. Let’s do it, Baby.”

“The area is beautiful, no doubt, and we’re bound to find a decent place to put up our tent, but a week’s supply of food is going to be heavy to bring in. And don’t forget there is a two-day hike in, and the same on the trip back to the castle. A week will require eleven days’ worth of food. That’s a lot to carry in with the rest of the essentials.”

“We can do it, Baby. We can bring in enough as long as we’re heavy on freeze-dried meals with rice and dried beans to supplement. We should certainly have plenty of time to cook should we run short of freeze-dried meals.”

Dessie went on in her enthusiasm. “With the cart and its tall wheels, we can make it. When one of us gets tired, we can swap out pulling it. Should there be places where the trail is too rough to pull the cart, we can carry it between us. Baby, I want to do it. I’ve always wanted to camp by falls, but we never backpacked near any that looked that beautiful,” she said, motioning. “It’s been so long since we’ve done anything even remotely like this. Now, I wish we had never stopped.”

“If that’s what you want, we’ll do it. Oh, I just had an idea. We could take the tent down tomorrow morning and hide it under that overhang we checked out. I’m sure it would be safe enough for a few days. That will free us up some space and a little weight for the first day’s travel.”

“Good idea. We could also leave our shovel, hatchet and maybe a couple of other things that we won’t need while going back to the castle. That would help some too.”

For the next ten minutes or so, Dessie, using the binoculars, continued intermittently to look at the waterfalls, obviously wanting to be there. Phillip reached to hug her as she said, “It’s so beautiful. I think we’ve found the perfect spot to stay out here in nature for a few days. Do you suppose we could get there this afternoon?”

“Get there? Sure, but not there and back. The approach to the falls area looks rough and will probably slow us down considerably. By the time we got there, it would be late, and it would be hours after dark before we could get back to last night’s campsite. Let’s just stick to our plan. We’ll go back to our campsite, rest up and head back to the castle tomorrow. When we’re ready, we can come back to the falls with enough gear to stay a week.”

“Oh, I know you’re right. I just want to see it up close so badly. I’m sooo excited. Let’s hurry back to camp so we can get an early start to the castle tomorrow morning. Instead of a week, do you suppose we could bring enough food to stay ten days or so? If you think we can, I’ll help with the heavy food and swap out pulling the cart. Phil, I think we can do it. We could even supplement our food if we bring our fishing gear. Surely, there are fish in those streams. Just think how good freshly-caught fish would taste while sitting by the falls.”

“We don’t need to advertise our fishing, though,” Phillip responded with a frown. “Those licenses look legitimate, but that guy could have ripped us off, and they could be useless pieces of laminated paper that could get us put in jail. This isn’t our home country, and I don’t want us to wind up in trouble,” he cautioned. “On the other hand, if they have game wardens or whatever they call them over here, I hate to think how many miles one would have to walk to check out the falls area for illegal fishing. So, isolation and distance might just be our friends. From what Karl and Glenda said, there certainly aren’t any trails wide enough for any type of motorized vehicle to come in here, and we’ve seen nothing much better than a game trail since early yesterday. So ... maybe you’re right. Maybe we could try fishing.”

“I think the licenses are legitimate. They certainly cost enough, but we’ll be careful if we decide to fish.” With one last look at the falls in the far distance, the two turned back toward their camping spot from last night.

They hadn’t blazed their trail, but being seasoned backpackers, they had left subtle signs that would help them return on the same route should their memories not suffice. They had also put waypoints into their route on the GPS. Marking the trail physically might have been overkill with the GPS to tell them where they were, but it was something they had always done, and it gave them confidence that they could always find their back trail and do it easily. They weren’t superior woodsmen, but they could find what direction they were heading, despite the weather and without a compass, having taken a bushcraft survival course years ago. In their enthusiasm, they had recently reviewed some of the things they had learned in the original course.

Dessie realized that she was in an excellent mood, much of it caused by her husband having apparently forgiven her. She knew that she wasn’t entirely out of trouble just yet, but he seemed to have decided to stay with her. I can’t believe we let things get so far out of control — especially me. I was too busy listening to my pussy to realize that I had progressed into hurting my husband. Jane had tried to warn me not to allow others into our small group, but I just had to experiment with other people — other people who almost got me divorced, not to mention what it must have done to my young daughter to see what was happening.

As many precautions as we made to be certain she knew nothing about what was going on, it certainly didn’t seem to slow her down any. She, being the genius she is, knew about marriage and surely must have realized that we were both violating our marriage vows. Even that was nothing compared to my having sex with more and more different men. And, of course, my being blinded by greed for more sex, and eventually with men who were virtual strangers, must have seemed continually more and more repugnant to her.

I still can hardly believe how thoroughly she bugged our bedroom suite. A lot of good those expensive locks did. I can’t rid my mind of that guy, whose name I can’t even remember, pounding me into the bed, all in high-def. You could count every drop of sweat on my forehead. And she had the scene from multiple angles. I must have been staring right at the camera, at least part of the time, but I didn’t see them. Once I knew she had the video, I never managed to face her without thinking about that, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to. Oh, if only she hadn’t started spying on us. But spying wasn’t the real problem — I was.

A couple of hours later, as her mind again worried the subject, “Stop,” Phillip said as he reached to pull her to him.

“What?” she returned, startled.

“Stop thinking about it. You just stumbled again. Eventually, you’re going to fall and hurt yourself if you don’t get your mind on what you’re doing. We can’t go back and change anything. We’re out here to enjoy ourselves and celebrate a new start in our marriage,” he said as he handed her a tissue from his backpack. “Wipe your tears and get your mind back on the present. And ... I’m not going anywhere. We’re in this together, and there’s nothing we can’t overcome together.”

She fell against him while he held her until the tears finally stopped.

“Only another hour, and we’ll be back at our campsite. The trail mix is delicious, but as before, I’ve grown sick of it. What are we having for dinner tonight?”

He very well knew because he had helped her select and pack it, but she reminded him, anyway, “Beef stroganoff with three berry pudding for dessert.”

“Good. Both are my favorites, as you well know. Now, let’s go.”

Their return trip took slightly more than an hour less than going out had, mainly because they had searched out the best way this morning and simply followed that way back this afternoon. As soon as they had returned to the campsite, Phillip dropped his pack before going on over to the overhang to retrieve the tent and items they had hidden there earlier in the day. In the few minutes he was gone, Dessie, trying to keep her mind off Selina, who she was missing even more this afternoon, took more of the lint from her backpack and prepared her fire-makings. Just as Phillip returned, she struck a spark from her starter, the intense heat of the big spark instantly igniting the lint. There was a breeze, and as usual, she cupped her hands around the tiny flame. In seconds, it had eagerly eaten some of the lint and spread to the smallest of the twigs. With her continuing to blow gently on the little blaze, it blossomed into the slightly larger limbs that she fed it.

Once Phillip had returned with the tent and supplies, he took the water filtering kit and went to fill their water containers. By the time he was back with the containers, her fire was beginning to blaze nicely, and she had the tent laid out ready to be erected.

Since they were using the same place for the tent as last night, Phillip had left the tent stakes in the ground. With her helping, it took only moments to erect the tent. While he was securing it in place, she gathered up the many twigs and smaller limbs, plus an occasional larger one scattered about from the storm. Phillip had gathered up some of the debris earlier, and Dessie further neatened the campsite by putting the wood in piles roughly by size. Because of the storm hitting just as they were eating their evening meal, they had used only a small portion of the downed wood that Phillip had cut for their fire. With it and what Dessie had piled up, they would have plenty for a fire tonight and more to heat their breakfast in the morning. The sun was just nearing the horizon, but a fire was always nice to have, even after their meal was prepared.