The X-BCC'ians in Northern California and some of their friends planned for a forest hiking on a sunny
day in the Marin county. It was the day after Thanks Giving day in the US. Weather was at it's best on
that day, considering the neighbouring days and the forecast for the day. Some of those who participated
in the trip were tired already due to the previous day excursion to Lake Tahoe. Eventually, this made
everybody reach the woods very late.

Hold on!

Let me introduce the gang to you first. B alaji. T. T, his wife Priya ( BCC Student ), Suresh R.V, Prakash D.,
Krishnan S., Jagdish S.K, Prakash's friend Swaminathan and his wife, Prakash's cousin Mahesh and his
wife, and my friend Varadharajan from St.Louis were those fortunate and unfortunate members.

Why unfortunate?

You will see as the exploration unfolds. Muir Woods forest is in a deep valley and the mountains around are
located in a way that the Sun can't have a peek at what's going on inside. But the trees are fortunate. They
grow and grow until they can reach and have a look at the sunlight, exposing only their heads to the light.
Poor Sun, grows mad, not having gotten a chance to look at the beauty of the trees completely, burns even
the small mounds that it can lay it's rays on. So, you can imagine, how dense the forest would be.

Among other things, the silence inside the forest is with capital S. There are no insects ( atleast flying ones ),
no flowers which attributes to no bees or squirrels and as a chain reaction, no birds. So quiet as quiet can be.
There are some exclusions to the rule of no sunshine. Very little part of the woods has been exposed to the god
of light. As I mentioned earlier, true to the standards of IST, we all set out for this adventure, very late. The
state park closes at 0500 PM and we were there at 0400 PM. So, we started our adventure immediately. It
was sunny and bright initially and in few minutes got dark, but manageable darkness. Like a 40W bulb at it's
last moments (when the low voltage prevails everywhere and all the tube lights off, except the bulb).

Since I had been here before, I recommended to take Ocean View trail, which leads to a point, from where the
view of Pacific Ocean, not an ounce less than gorgeous. Prakash and Swami were very skeptic about the
whole ordeal since they did not find anything interesting in the woods during their last visit.

The time came when the wives became tired. So, husbands did not have a choice, but to get back the way they
came with their beloved. We continued without the two couples, Balaji and his wife and Swami and his wife. So
four down. We all came by 3 cars. Balaji took my car keys, Swami went to his and R.V carried his key along.
And we ventured further. The way darkness was spreading it's blanket into the woods was little scary, but the
group members' mere existence gave strength to each other. Varadharajan got tired too often, and he had
difficulty catching up with us. But he did with great difficulty.

We walked past the stream, listening to every drop of the stream as it hit the ground. Only we know how
negligible the sound became, once RV started speaking!!! The trail went in all possible directions, with a
complex geometry. Some places were slippery too, due to heavy rain on the days before. The trail was wide
enough for a person to comfortably walk. Two persons can go together with great difficulty. With three persons,
it is not very difficult to see one of'em falling down through the shrubs and between trees, to make a final
exploration of the roots and balks before death. This is on one side of the trail. On the other side, it was the rising
mound and continuing mountain, walking along with us. To give an analogy, it's like going upstairs, with stairs
not properly laid, and some barricades along and no hold on either side, with wall on one side and hell on the
other.

We were little late for the sunset at the ocean view point. But the twilight was gorgeous. The natural seamless
weaving of colors between two mountain peaks, and ocean reflecting the ornate weaving at the bottom made
us speechless. Next few moments we could see the flash lights of all cameras on, and continued until, all
combinations of our group were captured and a picture with all of us in, of course with the twilight. We all felt,
every step to this place was worth this sight. We did not know, what was in store for us. It was already quarter
past five.

"Walking down is easier than going up", someone commented.

As the gravitation, invited us to move fast down the mountain and forest trail. Within few minutes, all we could
see was, very little light, which also started to recede. Few more minutes, we were in complete darkness. RV
was wearing a white jacket and Prakash's white shoes were the only things that were faintly visible. Soon that
too could be seen only when you let your eyes pop out. Those who were wearing spectacles, everything was
completely dark already . Now fear covered all of us like the blanket of darkness.

We did not know how far we have to go to reach the ground. Through the slippery surface, not-too-wide paths,
everyone of us walked at a speed where even snail would've won the race with us. A little later, it was darker
than darkness and we all stopped. We did not know what to do? One wrong step, we will have one more down.
How far is the end of the trail, nobody knew. We did not have flash lights with us. I guessed, weren't even half
way down. I was walking ( or standing ), behind Krishnan and I could see a faint green light on his wrist. His
watch had Indiglo and it emitted a thin streak of light, which disappeared at his fingers. I reached my watch,
gifted to me a year back, a Timex Indiglo, and pressed the button. The emission of light was so little, but it was
so much. It could show not only time, but also where I was. I started taking the lead. We did not want to waste
this source of light completely, as it was the only source. With the little light, all we could do was crawl and know
where we're crawling. But that in itself was a great sign of relief. I thought, watches should be built with flash
lights. You would have thought too. So we walked down, slowly and carefully, like a bunch of blind tourists, lost
in woods. Blind leading the blind.

Everyone was asking me, "Have we reached the end point?"

"In few minutes", I said.

Few minutes became, many minutes and seemed to us like hours. It was a half mile walk, down the mountain, in
complete darkness. We even hoped for cops to come in search for us. We thought, TTB and his wife must've
called cops already. The journey in the darkness continued. At the end we could see steps with hold on both
the ends and we realized, we walked through this earlier. But this too continued infinitely.

"We're probably in the wrong route", I told myself.

I was also confident, as I could see the path of the trail, on every step I took and the indiglo, glowing in my hand.
Atlast, we reached the bottom, without anyone of us knowing that the hardship has come to an end. It was dark
everywhere. After few steps, we realized we're near the entrance. We all shouted with joy, congratulating each
other in making this possible. Now you know, why some of us who started the trip with us were fortunate and
most weren't.

We saw TTB and his wife, not saying anything to us, but pushing us to leave this place as early as possible. Since
I had given my keys to TTB, he took my car out of the parking space. RV's car couldn't be moved out. The
ranger out there gave ticket to RV for parking the car outside the hours of the limit. TTB had tried his best to
make him understand that his friends were lost. But he warned them once, went for one more round of checking
and before doing that he indicated that, if his friends were not back by then, he would give the ticket and
eventually in further absence, tow the car away.

TTB and Priya, his wife were worried about us and when the cop noticed that, he told them, any kind of search
can be carried out only when somebody was missing more than five hours. When we came back, we told our
story to TTB and Priya and they were rightfully mad at our madness. But everything ended well and we traced
our way back. This adventure will stay with us as long as we live, and will be a nice adventure story for our next
generation. Atleast we can do that as we are still alive.