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I was born and raised a city girl. A sushi-eating style-wise city girl. An escape to the country had always sounded appealing. Sure I had been to resorts in the middle of no-where with horseback riding and canoing but neither of which could be considered any kind of hardship. One year my parents had finally allowed me to go to a very rustic camp about 20 minutes from the rocky mountains.

I adapted quickly to the atmosphere, never went more than a few feet without a heavy layer of bug spray and a swiss army knife just in case my cabin was challenged to some form of fire-building activity, or just in case someone was stalked by a mountain lion or a bear which were common visitors to the area. Most of the time I thought very little of the wildlife, I was constantly in a group with a lot of experienced outdoorsy people, except for one night, that I will never forget. Although years later I would love to say there was one specific lesson I learned from that night, there was so many, but the gist would be that I am so much stronger and braver than I've ever given myself credit for but I am terribly headstrong and I should really think wisely before becoming so hell-bent and determined to go a certain way in life.

It was late at night absolutely pitch black, and all the campers were asked to participate in an in-the-dark scavenger hunt. So I started out with a couple of my cabin-mates trying to find the 'lost' councilor in the woods. Simple as that, they went left because they thought that going a certain way was better than the way I wanted to go. So I found myself alone. I had little concern, even though I was without a flashlight, there was a lot of people still in the area screaming and giggling, so I hardly felt as though I was alone.

There was an unmarked gravel path that was leading downhill, I figured I would follow the path for a while playing it by ear, waiting until my gut-feel of which way to go next came into play. I knew I had been walking for a while, at least a few kilometers but the camp was huge and the scavenger hunt covered a lot of ground, so I figured there still must have been others in the near vicinity. It was only kilometers later that the screaming and giggling faded and I then knew I was truly alone. Perhaps this was where the councilors were hiding, so I took a left into the dense bush thinking I would just do a big loop and make my way back to the main camp building if I didn't find anyone.

I walked for a short way pushing aside tree branches,

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