Our Family Just Got Bigger!

In May of 2020, the two of us found ourselves lost in the mountains. We were meeting our friends at, what we've been told, was a beautiful river in the Oregon woods. We took two cars there, the two of us in one car, everyone else in the other. Our GPS had given us slightly different directions to the river... up a mountain, through private logging land, through an abandoned, overgrown trail and... that's it. The path stopped. We were in the middle of nowhere. We had our radio on us, so we tested them to see if we were close to our friends. "Testing, testing, testing, anyone there? Over." Over, and over, and over. We made our way on foot, deeper and deeper into the woods. Finally, we heard our friends muttering nonsense through our radio. The deeper we went into the woods, the clearer the signal became, so we kept walking. When we finally made communication with our friends, we began to realize just how deep we were. Our friends were at the river, located at the *bottom* of the mountain. We were at the top. It might seem silly to believe we would find a river way up there, but when you're deep inside of these giant tree-filled hills, it's hard to tell just how high up you actually are.

The forest began to look exactly the same in every direction we looked. Our GPS was spotty and unreliable. The sun was going down. It was starting to rain. Our feet were blistering. We were singing songs. We had no reason to believe we would find the car before the sun went down. In the back of our minds we knew we might have to find a way to sleep in the woods. We were in serious danger, and we couldn't find a way to care. We couldn't help it. It was starting to get cold as the sun went down. We were using the GPS to find the car, but it would only refresh our location every 15 minutes or so. Nothing looked familiar, and yet everything looked familiar. By the time we made it back to the car the sun was officially setting. We were still uncertain if the car would back it out, or if the loggers had locked the gate with us behind it. All we knew was we had to keep on going. All we knew was, as long as we had each other, we will figure it out. As we made it down the mountain, Lacy turned to me and said, "How are we alive right now? I'm amazed we didn't fight or argue or anything.", "Of course not, we don't do that." I said. "Never? We've never argued about anything? I'm sure we have." "Name one time." And she got quite for a moment, looked out the window and blushed at the thought. It was the first moment we realized just how powerful our friendship is, still naive to just how far we would go together. To this day we live our lives in the same vein. As long as we have each other.