Feeling green

The fogged windows and the scraping of the tiniest windshield wiper blades made me cautious as we bumped along an unmarked trail through fog and sideways rain. We sat four across, criss-crossed seat belts strapped tightly across our chest and waist. You thought we were headed for the moon, rather than a trek up a forested mountain in a chartered Hummer.

We were at Whistler, B.C. for what we imagined was going to be a beautiful, sunny summer week adventure. The beauty was there, the sun was not. We saw the sun only on the first evening we arrived, and it lasted some time between 5 and half past five; and then it disappeared, never to return until about a week after we were home. Little did we know it was to be the wettest summer on record in years.

Our guide, a Canadian young twenty year old, was our driver. We were following another Hummer into the back country. Perhaps a bear sighting, but mostly a trip through rough terrain. My husband and I were book ends to our children. The Hummer floor was muddy soup, the seats and belts were dripping wet before we climbed in, and our driver complained that his seat wasn't quiet right; just as it popped out of alignment. And we are headed where in this contraption?

Before long we were winding up unmarked trails, breaking bushes and branches left and right, over boulders, through mud puddles which covered the front windshield like a waterfall as we sped through, and breezing by cliffs that made my head spin. We were not even half way through when I got that funny feeling; when the ears start to go a little dimmer, you feel a little bit of a cold sweat breaking out under your coat, your mouth feels like cotton, you look to your left and your right in a panic with shallow breaths as the stale warmth from the heater closes in. Yes, I was feeling a little green.

Just about the time I was about to .... we stopped at the top of the mountain, socked in with fog and a heavy mist. Get out quick and walk, I thought! But mind you that we were outside in the middle of bear country, and the guides have just told us to stay close to the Hummer, and I'm surrounded by 10 people. I just want to be in my hotel, alone, in bed. Ugh. A long ways down from that dream.

I narrowly held it together; even on the way down as the two guides played Hummer Chicken on a deserted bluff. Our young Canadian guide could care less about this American about ready to hurl on the floor of his muddy Hummer. But I made it and I'm proud to say I have been on a Hummer ride; in thick fogged windows, rain dripping through the ripped cover, plowing down the forests of Whistler. With one bear sighting to top it off!