Scavenger Hunt

 Post #8 in the series...
Walking for hours in the darkness, I started to notice some things on the ground. I saw plastic toys, sheets of stickers, flowers made from rocks and leaves and the large rocks had been painted like animals and people. Finally, I said to Mark and Kim, "Can you believe that someone has gone to so much trouble to place all these toys and objects out here in the woods? I bet it is for a scavenger hunt." They both stopped and looked at me and said, "Susan, there is nothing there except rocks and leaves." Stunned, I asked them again about specific things I was seeing right then!  No, they assured me, none of it was real. None of it!! Even after my logical brain told me it didn't exist, I kept seeing all of it!! Although I had not experienced altitude sickness (severe headache, vomiting, etc), I was suffering from delusions brought on by exhaustion, pain and fear. Part of me still doubted Mark and Kim telling me nothing was there, so when I came upon another set of toys, etc, I stopped and scraped my stick across the area, hoping to find that they were indeed where I saw them. Later, Kim would tell me she would watch me stop and drag my pole across the path. It annoyed her because she couldn't figure out what I was doing and just wanted me to keep moving! Needless to say, where I scraped my pole, only dirt and leaves moved, nothing else.

I can close my eyes right now and envision these objects very clearly. They were so incredibly real to me and I will never forget them. I can see the images of frozen people off to the side watching my every step. I did not feel threatened by them. I was told they were not real, but they never left me. Retelling this part of the story to EB (future DIL), she commented that perhaps this was how my mind stopped thinking about every hard step and every long mile. Looking ahead at these strange objects left haphazardly in the woods kept me going.
A scavenger hunt for a scrambled mind...