Lost in the Dunes

“Start the car, John, start the car!!,” my friend Lou Ann yelled frantically, as we stumbled out of the wooded area of the dunes.  Well, she walked. I stumbled, prostrated with heat.  The car, with its blessed air conditioning would be my salvation.

But let’s back up, shall we?

Ah! A long weekend with our good friends John and Lou Ann at their lovely home in the Outer Banks.  Leisurely days spent relaxing, beaching, eating, drinking, laughing, walking and all around having fun. 

Until? Until we decided to go to Jockey’s Ridge and take a walk in the dunes. The very hot, sandy dunes (are there any other kind?!).  On a very hot and humid day. 

Ordinarily, for most normal people, this would not be a problem.  However, my body has a defective cooling system.  Whereas most people perspire, which in turn cools their body and keeps them from overheating, mine does not perspire adequately and therefore does not cool the body and therefore, I overheat. 

This has happened to me at numerous times throughout my life to the point where I have fainted from the heat.  Now that I am 60, this problem is exacerbated.

But we had been to Jockey’s Ridge many times before and I knew what to expect. It was before noon, so I thought it wouldn’t be a problem.  Quick walk up and back should be ok.

Operative word being quick.  Which, as it turns out this walk wasn’t.  Because Lou Ann and I got lost.  J.R.R.Tolkein may have said, “Not all who wander are lost.”  But that did not apply in this case.  We wandered and were indeed, lost.

It was more than a bit of a trek to reach the top of the ridge. We passed one young girl who had just plopped down mid-way to the top.  Like it was just too hot for her to go on any longer and that she would just sit there until the rest of her friends or family came back for her. 

I thought it might not be a bad idea to plop down next to her.  The heat was punishing.  The air was thick and heavy.  I was feeling it all by the time we got to the top. 

The boys wanted to head to another ridge.  The idea of walking even further was anametha to me at that point. Lou Ann knew I was feeling the heat and needed to head back to the car.

“We are heading back guys, see you at the car,” we both said to them.

Off we went.  We were walking.  We were walking.  We were still walking.  We wondered why it was taking so long to get back.  We were already walking further than when we had made the initial trek out. 

Something was amiss. But we didn’t understand what or how we could have gotten off track.  It seemed like a pretty straightforward shot on our way up. 

Lou Ann graciously gave me her water bottle.  I had already drunk my water. I chugged the water like Moses crossing the desert.  The heat waves were shimmering before my eyes and I was starting to get light headed.  I knew the signs.

An older, shirtless gentleman came huffing and puffing by us, moving at an impressively quick clip. His body was tanned and his snow white chest hair stood out in stark contrast. I became more concerned for him that he was going to have heat stroke, but he looked pretty fit for his age and didn’t seem like he was in distress. In fact, my guess was that he was a local and this walk was part of his morning constitutional.

“Excuse me, sir! We are trying to find our way back to our car which is parked by the visitor center.  Do you know how to get there from here? We seemed to have lost our bearings.”

“Oh yes,” he says.  “You sure did overshoot it.  What you need to do is walk in that direction,” as he points to the right, “and go around that mound there and then up that hill and you should then see a path that you can take back to the visitor center.”

The sun was beating mercilessly down on us.  The heat was roasting me like a steak on a grill.  Suddenly I felt like I was no longer in Kitty Hawk, NC, but somehow entered a portal to the dry, dusty, desert planet of Tatooine, half expecting to see Luke Skywalker or Jabba the Hut cross our path.

I felt a little stab of fear somewhere in my innards, but I tried to remain undaunted at the prospect of further dune walking, because walk on we must.  How else would we get out of there? We thanked him and proceeded on our way.

We made it to the top of the next ridge as he described, and I was still upright which was a plus,  but we were perplexed.  Looked like a lot of brush and some forest.   Not to mention no clear path.  Rather, we saw this precipitous decline and wondered if that was what we were supposed to take.  We couldn’t really believe, given the steepness of the decline, that it was the right path. And the sun continued to pulverize us. The silence of the dunes surrounded us as we wondered what to do next.

Fortunately, we saw a family of four standing near by.  We asked them if they knew whether that was the right path to get out. They replied, “Yes, this is the way down and out of here.  We were just evaluating the best way down ourselves.” Ugh. A precipitous path down being the only way out and one so precipitous it required a plan as to how to navigate it. Great.

Homer’s Odyssey had nothing on this trek.  How many more challenges would we face? Any Sand Sirens that would lure us to our death?

Lou Ann and I looked at each other with some concern.  I had recently recovered from an ACL tear, and my knee was still a bit iffy.  I looked down that decline and thought, “Well, here goes nothing.” 

Lou Ann led the way and I followed her down, kind of going down sideways at an angle. I thought about going down on my butt, but wasn’t sure that would really be the best approach. 

Later, Lou Ann would tell me that the thought that popped in to her head as we stood at the top of that decline pondering our way down, was Black Diamond ski trail.  And we all know how well I did on a Blue ski trail, let alone a Black Diamond, if you read the Ski Vacation blog post.  Not good.

However, we successfully made it down without incident but the ordeal wasn’t over yet.  We were now in a woodsy, forested area, which thankfully, was a bit cooler than the open dunes, but I was really feeling the heat by that point.  I was out of water, my face was red and I was burning up with heat.  I was woozy.  If I didn’t get cool soon, I knew I would be fainting.

We followed the trail as best we could amid the underbrush and branches. A machete would have come in handy. Finally we saw it! The parking lot! And there were the boys, standing by the car, waiting for us.  Insert Lou Ann’s call to start the car, here.

“Got lost did ya?, “ John responded.  “We could see from the phone tracker you guys wandered off course. We’ve been here for quite some time waiting for you to come back. We weren’t sure what you were doing.”

“Just start the car!” we both respond.

I staggered towards the car and the lovely air conditioning which was blasting and drank some more water.

I felt my body start to cool.  Heat stroke averted.

The guys did their best to not laugh too much about our unintended detour.

We will be joining our friends again this summer.  One item that will most certainly NOT be on the agenda? Climbing Jockey’s Ridge.