My Unforgettable Place

My incredible friend, Siv over at Been There, Done That is celebrating the release of  her short story, Secrets of the Ash Tree with the Unforgettable Blogfest. Secrets will be released September 4 in the fantasy anthology Open Doors. Yay Siv!

Now, what makes this blogfest so brilliant, aside from celebrating Siv's story, is that we each get to share the person or place that is absolutely unforgettable to us. How awesome is that? To check the other incredible participants, click here

I'm going to share with you a place that I hiked to with my best friend in the entire world, Brenda. It was 1995 and I had just gotten vacation time from my first job after college. Brenda had invited me to go camping with her and I was nervous as heck. Hell, I watch horror films. Give me a hood rat with a gun or blade any day rather than some backwoods scary redneck with plans to skin me and eat me. Then there was always the distinct possibility that a Jason Voorhees type would likely come at me with an axe or machete.

I digress.

She took me to Porcupine Mountain State Park in Michigan. I had never gone hiking in my life. I'm South Side Steel Town girl and to me hiking was what one did when having to walk about 10 blocks to catch the bus.  The last time I had actually been in woods that weren't a city forest preserve was age 10 in Scouts. My troop and I had gone to Butternut Springs, a huge Girl Scout camp in Indiana. Cabin, bus, indoor plumbing... not exactly roughing it.

So Brenda and I set out on this immense trail with backpacks and tent. Now, I am voluptuous chica to say the least, even more so back then. But I had been slowly starting to lose weight, so I was eager to push myself. We started off high above the park at Lake of the Clouds, then we hiked down through some rough trails. I was a sweaty, rotten mess, but I was still feeling all right. Then fatigue started to hit and just when I was hitting pain, we came upon this scene on the trail. This is the Presque Isle River, which runs through Michigan's Upper Peninsula and empties out into Lake Superior.

Beautiful, isn't it? I couldn't believe that I, Melissa Bradley, had hiked miles into a forest and was able to see this amazing scene. It was like being in my own nature film. Scary bear encounter aside, this is one memory that will stay with me always. I was so happy to be able to share it with Brenda.This woman has always been my rock and my instigator. If I'm going to get into trouble not of my own making, she's behind it. No wonder she's on my team when the zombie horde comes.