This happened today, it's still happening actually.

While avoiding work and chatting with my girlfriend the other day it occurred to me that I have been super stressed out and needed a get away. I love to hike and have been putting together a backpack with everything I would need to spend a couple days in the woods if I wanted. I order the last few items I needed and decided to go to lost maples state natural area. I had been once before on a short trip, but didn't get to hike all that much.

On two nights ago I could feel a nerve in my back starting to pinch, I got an adjustment and took some meds hoping to get better before Friday morning. I really needed to get away and would have been pissed if I couldn't go.

Friday morning rolls around and I felt good. I decided to go on my trip and figure that if my back starts hurting I will just head back home early, but at least I could get some hiking in.

I get to the park and check in, park load up and hit the trails. The weather was nice and cool, the trail I went on was one of the more challenging trails but was worth the scenery and solitude. I decided on primitive campsite F since I had some cell signal and there was only only one hammock in a near by camp, but no one was there. I decided to keep an eye out on it, but no one had come by sun set. I decided I would check on it in the morning and call the park to let them know if it was still empty.

Once it got dark I decided to get some sleep and rest up to finish the trail in the morning. That was the plan anyway. This is where things start to get bad. I start to doze off but every time I'm almost asleep my stupid brain would jolt awake, okay that's fine I will watch something until I get sleepy again, I pick up my phone and am now roaming so my data is not working. Whatever, I will just go back to trying to get some sleep, I managed to get an hour or two before the weather decided to be a dick and turn the wind to 11. The wind blowing on me wasn't a problem, my hammock is an Amok Darumr which has a pretty tight weave bug net built in an thanks to the way it's designed the wind causes it to sway in a comfortable motion. The problem is that I could see and more importantly feel the not super healthy looking tree I anchored to rocking in the wind.

The tree looked healthy and solid in the day time, it was mostly bare but most of the trees around here are. It wasn't until I had my head lamp on and I really looked that I could see the tips of the branches were a bit dead looking. In normal conditions the tree would work perfectly fine, but in 20 mile an hour withs with 250 pounds of fat ass tugging on one side it moved more than I liked. No matter tho I could just move my strap to a near by tree that is healthier, I just choose the one I did because it was a little thicker.

Well that's what I thought. I moved the strap and got back in to discover it puts the other strap in a bind against a limb once I'm in it, so now the comforting sway is accompanied by my strap rubbing on that limb making a very annoying noise. I'm to the point that I just want to go home to my bed, but I'm two miles into one of the steepest trails with very loose rocks that was dangerous at times in the day light. Night hiking out of here with 50 pounds of gear in high winds would most likely leave me at the bottom of a valley with some broken bones, and that's a best case scenario.

Plus I still want to check on that other camp site in the morning.

TLDR needed to get away for a while, the universe tried to tell me it was a bad idea by hurting my back, but I ignored it and now I'm stranded camping in high winds, too paranoid to sleep because a tree could fall on my dumb ass. On the bright side I only have 3 more hours until sun rise and I can GTFO.