Just this year, my two friends and I went to a biking trip to a famous mountain trail here in the Philippines. We started at around 4:30pm because we all have to wait for each other to get off of work. I remember that was rainy season but we still pushed through because we are planning to do this for a long time. Just a brief background of the mountain trail-- it is very dangerous to traverse in the dark because they haven't erected lamp posts at those parts yet and is a bit rocky. There are also a lot of really huge trees at the entrance that blocks any light coming from the moon. In short, it is very dark.
So, we traveled for a while to get to the mountain trail. From what I remembered, maybe we reach the spot at 5:30pm. It was quite dark and the sun is about to set. We traversed the mountain trail and reached the end where there's a clear river flowing and a makeshift hut where the natives from the mountain used for stop-overs. We took off our shoes and dipped our feet into the water and talked about life. We catched up with each other, talked about our college pranks/stunts, future, etc.
That's when we noticed that the sun has already set and it's already 7:00pm (that's how immersed we are with our catching up. haha). We hurriedly worn our shoes and rode our bikes. As we are about to traverse the mountain trail, it started to rain. Really hard. Honestly speaking, we thought we're gonna die there. So nothing to do, we waited inside the makeshift hut which we thought any minute will give way to the strong winds.
We were about stranded for 30 minutes when luckily the rain kinda mellowed down. We grabbed our chance and traversed the trail in the dark. It was so dark that we only follow each other's blinkers and moved closely in a slow pace. I will never forget that moment when you can't see nothing ahead of you aside from your arms and the red light from the blinkers ahead of you. To monitor that we are still in formation, we kinda say a word for the others to repeat. This was the craziest thing I've done in my life with my friends.
For about an hour, we were able to get out of the mountain trail and get on the main highway. We were drenched in mud, sweat and rain but perfectly fine and thankful that we made it. The story doesn't end there, but my post is too long now for anyone to even read. So yeah, that was the best experience with my friends so far. Also, we still traverse that mountain trail until today but we will not do it again in the dark..
“Certain things, they should stay the way they are. You ought to be able to stick them in one of those big glass cases and just leave them alone.”
― J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye