An Afternoon Lost on Pine Ridge

The Pine Ridge loop is nine kilometres and I hike it twice a month. Post 7 to post 8 is the dullest stretch: flat, straight, twelve minutes through spruce.

I passed post 7 a little after noon — I drank water there and my tracker logged the pause at 12:04. The light was high, hard summer noon, the kind that makes the trail dust white.

Between one bend and the next, the light went amber. Not cloud-shadow: angle. The sun was suddenly low, throwing long bars between the trunks, and the air had the cooled, settled smell forests get before evening. Birds had changed shifts — afternoon insects gone, a thrush doing its dusk phrases.

Post 8 stood where it always stands. My legs felt like twelve minutes. My mouth said otherwise: I was savagely thirsty, and when I drank, I emptied the bottle I had topped up at post 7. My watch said 17:31.