day 2- tuesday

As we had gone to sleep that night, i remember thinking "well, this rain isn't so bad". i was mistaken. at the time, the rain was waiting for the perfect opportunity to cause the most misery. what we had at the time was the reconnaissance sprinkles. due to my sleep deprivation, i was asleep about 3 minutes after i laid down-roots, rocks and all. i awoke at some point to the sound of rain and realized i was getting a little wet through my sleeping bag and fleece liner. i poked my disheveled head out of my bag at what i was later told was about 3am to the horrible realization that my bed had become a river. tyler and i had given the kids all the good spots, of course, so i was sleeping on the trail, which was on a slight decline. my ground sheet, a rhombular piece of plastic not quite big enough for me to sleep on, had, to my horror, become a river bed, funneling the stream off the trail and right through my bed! i adjusted the sheet so the river didn't run through my sleeping bag, but the damage was already done. i looked around, noticed that tyler was awake too, and we just looked at eachother and laughed. all the kids were up, and some of them were sleeping in rivers and puddles too. we were all slowly freezing, so me and tyler decided that it was time for a night hike!

We broke camp and were hiking by about 4am. the kids asked me what time i thought it was and i would say horrible things like "well, it's probably about...mmm..11 at night". the funny thing is, i would say stuff like this all the time about distance, time, food breaks, etc., but they would never stop asking and believing what i thought. i love 'em. we hiked in typhoon-force rain for about 4 hours and we came upon a temple up in the woods. not that uncommon in japan. there was a shack outside the temple, and i noticed there was a stress camp-issue rain fly hanging outside it. the kids didn't notice it, and i was hoping we would get through without stopping, but we woke the other team up, and then all the friends had to talk forever. turns out that team made it to the shelter in time to stay pretty much dry, and had used part of the shelter to get their fire going, which they used to make a huge supper and baked apples. not good for my teams' morale.

So, we got going as soon as we could, out into the rain. we finally made it down the mountain at about 9:30 and found a little hikers pit stop in a little village, complete with bathrooms. there was a fire pit, but it had been bricked over and we weren't allowed to use it. we took the time for quiet times and journaling there; my journal entry is hilarious! as the entry goes on, my handwriting gets worse and worse as i sat there longer and longer and started falling asleep while journaling. i had to focus so intensely to get to the bottom of the page, at which point my handwriting gets pretty much illegible, my thoughts scattered, and i fell asleep.

We ended up stopping there for about 3 hours, which is too long to stop anywhere you aren't going to build a fire and make food. we started without breakfast, and since we couldn't get a fire going, we handed out a cold snack, which nobody seemed to mind. mostly we all just sat around not liking the fact that our combined telekinetic powers were doing nothing to stop the rain, and, in fact, seemed to be making it worse, which we hadn't thought possible.

We finally left the shelter to head up to an area that was circled on the leaders map, which in our experience meant there was a shelter there. it looked a little close to make camp, but tyler and i decided that we could stop there and hopefully make some food. and thus began what was in my mind the lowest point of stress camp. we got lost in the town- there should have been a trailhead, but instead there was just a few tiny roads going up into the hills. we wandered back and forth on a one mile stretch of road for about 2 hours, looking for this stupid trail. there was what we called the buddhist theme park, which cost ¥500, about $4 to go up this road that looked like it went the direction we wanted, but there's no way that we were gonna pay! so, we eventually found a trail that started after we went through someone's backyard and garden, but looked like it hadn't been used in about 10 years. sure enough, it petered out after about 500 meters, and the kids turned around and came back. at this point, me and tyler decided that we needed to get going. we were still about 20 minutes walk from the little hut we sat in for 3 hours, only now it was 2 hours later. me and him didn't know what was at that little circle on our map, but we hoped it was something awesome, cuz we were gonna get there, one way or another.

Turns out if someone has a bad attitude, telling them we are going to bushwhack in the rain only makes it worse. these kids did NOT want to go up that hillside. Guy, from the last entry, pretty much just refused. he told me there were dangerous landslides. he pointed to the sign that said "wildlife protection area" and told me he was morally opposed to breaking the law. he said it was impossible. he stood there, his feet apart, arms crossed, and shaking his head, refusing. meanwhile, everyone, including 4 girls, were already halfway up this hill. i couldn't believe it! Guy and another guy pretty much sulked the whole time- staying in the back, making everyone wait for them at every turn, dragging their feet and muttering to eachother how retarded this was. Guy told me, before he started the bushwhack, in response to my comment about how this was going to be fun, that he didn't like me, didn't like stress camp, didn't think i had any natural abilities in leading or surviving outdoors, and my very presence was offensive to him. *chuckle* kids will try anything. 2 days later he apologized to me, which was cool. i knew he didn't really mean it, or at least didn't really mean to say it out loud, but i just told him that i really didn't care if he like me or not- he was going to do what i said, and when he got back he could tell everyone what a jerk i was.

We ended up in the buddhist theme park, which we did not pay for, but we did get to see all the "sights", including statues, temples, bell towers, and random other sculptures of things with buddha over them. we took a break when we got onto the road that goes by all these, but i was hoping to find something that could offer us a little shelter from the incessant rain, so i scouted out a bell tower nearby and found that the door, which was about 4 feet tall, was not locked, and the bell tower, which was small, but 2 stories, was warm and dry. so, all 10 of them crammed into it while i went off to check on what the circle on our map might mean.

That was one of the hardest hikes of the entire stress camp. the trail was washed out, it was really really steep and slippery, with tons of switchbacks. i had to take my glasses off cuz they were steaming up from my body heat, which was radiating off of me in spite of the rain. if we had taken the kids up there, they would have mutinied- there was nothing at the top. where the map had a shinto shrine marked, and some past leader had circled, there was only a foundation. i stared for a few minutes before i realized what had happened- it had burnt down. all the trees around the foundation were scorched and dead or dying, and there was a soggy pile of charred wood that had once been the temple. i stayed up there long enough to get my breath back, then went back down to tell tyler what i had found.

We looked at the maps, and realized that for us to make it back to the camp we were aiming for, we would have to travel about 3 times farther the next day than we did on that day- more than we had already hiked on both days combined! that stress us out. then we looked at the map and agreed that there was most likely not anywhere else we would find shelter, which we both wanted almost as bad as the kids wanted it. but also, we didn't want them to freeze. so, we decided to camp in the bell tower that night. here's a pic of the not-so-warm-but-dry bell tower:

We set up some fly sheets outside so we could make a fire, had the kids go collect wood, which they did grudgingly, and we ended up with our first hot meal-stew! well, more like hard vegetables in lukewarm water, but at least it was lukewarm. and there were so, SO many onions in it. i ended up with a cup of warm water and onions. no good. there were a few stressful moments in the tower, like when i was standing on top and a guy in a truck drives by and stares at me, and our eyes lock and i make eye contact with him. i was convinced, and tyler was too, that he was a caretaker and was coming back with police. but we told the kids that jail would be warm and dry and there would be food, so they didn't care. we stuck the guys upstairs and left the gals downstairs, which was warmer due to the lack of wind chill. as before, i was asleep almost instantly, praying the most sincere prayers of my life that God would take the rain away like the weatherman had promised.