wind. We tossed large pieces of gravel and rock from the trail into the wind and watched them stop and do a 180 flying away out of sight. I felt personally responsible later when we learned that houses at the base of the mountain had windows broken from rocks flying off the mountain.

It’s at this point that John caught up to us.

“Oh, hello. Um, is everything okay? You guys didn’t make it very far.”

“Yeah… we can’t go around this curve because of the wind.”

John didn’t believe us. He walked a little bit ahead and stopped, crouching into the wind like staring into a hurricane. He came back to us and we started to strategize. Waiting would take too long. So we army crawled. Through the long grasses on the side of...

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