A drop of ice-cold water smacked me in the face. “Whaaaaa….?!” I exclaimed sleepily, sitting up in my sleeping bag. I had thought my cabin and I had a tarp over our heads, really the only consolation for hiking up North Mountain. It had been a grueling hike, the hot sun beating down on us and our heavy moss-green packs as we climbed up the trail. The memory made me tired all over again. But why was I getting wet? As the eight other girls slowly woke up, grumbling and tired, we came to a dreadful conclusion. It was beginning to rain, and we had only a thin blue tarp that, it turns out,  was not waterproof over our heads. The towering trees above us almost seemed to be shivering, their leaves falling to the ground. In sleepy defeat I sighed, curled up in my blue and yellow sleeping bag like it was a cocoon, and tried to go to sleep as rain started to create a rhythmic beat on the tarp.

Now, I don’t know if you have had the pleasure to be stuck on a mountain, with eight exhausted, 12 year old girls, but for us, as soon as the rain started coming down, so did our spirits. At first we were all giggles, but the steady rainfall along with the fact that we were all becoming uncomfortably wet started to dampen our moods. “Ugghhh…” I exclaimed to myself after waking up yet again. My socks were soaked through, and my hair was tangled, matted and dripping wet. “Why do I have to be in this cabin?” Was a frequent thought of mine throughout the night. Some cabins got to hike maybe a mile on flat ground, and sleep under clear skies. Not our cabin.  Tempers started to fly as we got wetter and wetter, like ferocious cats in a bag. “Ughhh… move over, I’m getting wet!” and “I’m trying to sleep!” was heard many times, but in the dark of the night I honestly didn’t really care. “They aren’t even really my friends, anyway.” I kept telling myself. I mean, after camp ended, everybody would go back to their normal lives and we would all forget about each other anyway… Soon, everybody, including me, gave up on being frustrated and fell into a restless sleep. In my mind I tried thinking of a comfy mattress, and a roof over my imaginary bed. All the while the ongoing rain was falling, falling, falling.

Even though it seemed to have taken decades, morning arrived and my cabin arose as slowly as zombies coming to life. We had been wringing out our sleeping bags for a long time in bitterness when we finally noticed a thick, eerie fog all around us drifting about the shrubs and evergreens, obscuring the distant trees. Everything seemed like it was part of a suspense movie, the scene where something is about to happen but it hasn’t gotten there quite yet. All of us were staring in awe as we walked around, in a sort of trance, until someone broke the silence. “Guys, you have to come see this!” For sure, nothing could be more attention-worthy than what we were already experiencing. I was wrong.

As we scrambled over to the rock ledge that overlooks the Shenandoah Valley, all conversation stopped except for the occasional “Wow”. The morning mist had actually seemed to swallow up the rolling Blue Ridge Mountains. Everything was hidden in a mysterious, beautiful shroud that  already had streaks of sunlight starting to peek through. We gasped and stared ahead in amazement, smiles breaking through our tired faces as we exchanged glances. In the days after the camp out our cabin was almost like a real family, whispering to each other after dark and giggling at all of the meals. We looked out for each other, and everyone was an important part of the cabin. Even though the night of the North Mountain camp out had been so long and miserable, I felt like our cabin got to share a special bond that no one else had, just in those couple minutes. It would be a bond that would stretch miles, one that stayed strong even after camp. That was enough for me.