I Cancelled the Trip the Day Before for No Reason

I had planned a hiking trip for months. Booked, paid, packed, excited. A small guided tour into some remote hills, the kind of thing I had wanted to do for years. Everything was ready.

The morning before I was due to leave, I woke up knowing I was not going to go. It was not fear, exactly, and it was not doubt. It was a flat, quiet certainty, the same way you know you are hungry. I was not going on that trip. Something in me had simply decided, overnight, and no argument I made to myself could move it.

I tried to talk myself out of it all morning. I had spent a lot of money. I had told everyone. I would look ridiculous and flaky. But every time I imagined getting in the car the next day, my whole body said no, a deep animal no, and I have learned the hard way that when my body talks like that I should listen even when my head cannot explain it.

So I cancelled. I called the tour company, ate the fees, and felt like a fool for the rest of the day, unpacking my bag, dodging questions from friends about why.

Two days later it was in the news. The area the tour went into had been hit by a major landslide, triggered by heavy rain none of the forecasts had predicted well. The road in and out was buried and closed for over a week. The tour group that went in the day I was supposed to be with them was stranded, unhurt but cut off, sleeping in a mountain hut, waiting for the road to be cleared, with no way down.

I would have been one of them. I still cannot tell you what I knew, or how. I only know I felt it, and I did not go, and I have never once regretted looking foolish.