We are women! We are warriors!

I wonder if there comes a time in every woman’s life where she is sitting on a hill in the middle of the woods in only her hiking boots, a bra and shit-covered leggings with her bloody hands wrapped in her siblings’ clothes. When that moment came for me, I was an unsuspecting victim.

My sisters sat there with me in the dirt, also in their bras and leggings. To be clear, when we left the cottage, we all had shirts. Yet, as with many things in life, the day was not to go as planned.

This was the 8^th annual Bezrel sisters’ trip. Each year we had a much-anticipated weekend getaway in the pacific northwest where we would meet to spend some time connecting. Translation: we’d spend 3 days getting stoned and drunk together in rental homes around Canada, Washington, Idaho, Oregon and Montana.

We would immediately abandon our normal, reasonably healthy lifestyles for the pleasurable callings of gluttony. We would eat enough chocolate, cookies, and chips to feed a classroom of hungry third graders for a week, much of the time at the prompting of the munchies we got from being constantly high. In the evenings, we would supplement our weed and food binges with shots of tequila or rum, like true 30-year-old college wannabes. I don’t know if it was out of pleasure or because it made sharing our deepest feelings with our loved ones that much easier. Either way, it has always been a tradition.

Each year we would take turns picking a place and planning activities and each year we wouldn’t do 80% of our planned activities. Clara had planned last year when we had planned to do a tour of 11 Oregon lighthouses. We did two. This year was my year to plan and I had found this adorable cottage in the woods that was near the middle of Washington. We had plans to go swimming in a nearby lake, go hiking, tube down the river, get high in the hot tub, oh – I didn’t mention – the cottage came with a hot tub! And share all about our latest romances and adventures over the fire pit. It was going to be an incredible time.

We sent voice messages sharing our excitement and our hopes for the weekend while we traveled from our different corners of Washington and Idaho to meet for our long-awaited getaway. The timing worked out perfect. I was the first to arrive. I stepped out of my car into the sunlight as my baby sister, Callie arrived. She was followed almost immediately by our middle sister, Clara. They jumped out of their cars and we all ran toward each other for hugs and excited exclamations.  

“Look at this place, Cambira!” Callie exclaimed, raising her pierced eyebrows in surprise. “It’s gorgeous!”

We decided to start heading inside with our bags. We had each brought a bunch of groceries so we wouldn’t have to go shopping. Before we had even selected our rooms or unpacked our stuff, Callie was pulling out the weed. “You guys! I want to get high!” We all eagerly agreed and downed some edibles.

“Oh my god! It has a hot tub! I forgot it had a hot tub!” Clara exclaimed as she ran out on the back porch. “Let’s get in the hot tub, now!” She immediately began putting her reddish-brown hair into a messy bun and taking off her cat eyeglasses.

We all agreed, quickly changed into our swimsuits and jumped in the hot tub. Over the next two hours we joked and bonded and shared over glasses of wine, edibles, and snacks. We learned that Callie had started seeing someone new. Clara filled us in on the details of her long-term relationship with her girlfriend and the love of her life and I shared about how I had been contemplating having a threesome.

The views were incredible. The cottage was high up on a hill and overlooked a lake, while being nestled in the trees. It was everything we had been waiting for the last year; a precious time of connection with our closest blood bonds. After a few hours in the hot tub, we decided we would make some plans for the following day.

“So we have reservations to go tubing down the river at 12 pm tomorrow. But we can cancel without a cancellation fee if we don’t want to go…” I trailed off.

“What time do we need to leave if we go?” Clara asked. Clara was known in the family for loving sleep and sleeping all hours of the day.

“We’d have to leave by 10:45 to find parking and get there in time.” I answered.

“I VOTE WE CANCEL!” Callie said excitedly. “Then we can spend tomorrow high too!”

“I agree!” Clara answered back with similar excitement.

“Ok. I’ll call them and let them know. You guys won’t be disappointed?”

“Nah! We never do half the shit we plan to anyway. It doesn’t matter and look at these woods and that mountain and this fucking hot tub is incredible!” Callie said gesturing around.

“I would love to go hiking if we aren’t going tubing tomorrow, like after we sleep in late.” Clara said.

“I agree!” I exclaimed. “A few miles?”

“I am cool with hiking if we don’t do more than like two miles. My ankle is still really weak from the fall I had last year.” Callie says. She had slipped on ice and fractured part of her ankle.

Clara and I nod in agreement and we have a plan. We will go on a two-mile hike after sleeping in late. For the rest of the night we enjoy the massive amounts of junk food, more weed, a few shots and deep, connected conversations. This is exactly the stuff that sisters’ trips are made of.

The next morning, we leisurely awoke, enjoyed a slow and lazy breakfast while admiring the views on the patio and prepped for our hike. We looked at some maps with local trails and found one that seemed exactly what we were looking for.

Clara offered to drive and I agreed. We left the house full of adventure and excitement. After about 20 minutes in the car, while on a dirt road toward our destination, a sudden feeling came over me and I yelled, “Oh my god, stop the car!”

“What?!” Clara exclaimed as she pulled over on the side of the abandoned dirt road.

I jumped out of the car and yelled, “Don’t look at me!” Immediately and with great urgency, I pulled down my pants and stuck my ass out over the guardrail on the side of the road. I did this just in time as my bowels exploded. Too much junk food! My stomach can’t handle this! I thought to myself. My sisters kindly shut the doors, rolled up the windows and played music while I relieved myself on the side of the road.

In that unlucky and vulnerable moment, there happened to be a group of college-aged boys driving down the road in a bright red jeep. This was unfortunate for a few reasons. First, my bare bottom was still on full display, readily available for view by any unanticipated passing parties. Second, the amount of dust one inhales when situated at the level of the tires of a passing car on a dry dirt road is never enjoyable.

Callie saw the jeep coming and hastily jumped out to come to my aid with a blanket that had been in my back seat. I closed my eyes to pretend it wasn’t happening but based on the laughter I heard as the vehicle passed, I think she may have been a bit too late, but I still appreciated the effort.

One of the most challenging parts of explosive diarrhea is the splashing. Normally, when one goes hiking, perhaps they end the hike damp due to sweat and the effort of hiking, but they rarely start it that way. On this day, due to my roadside experience, I was the exception.

A few miles later we parked the car, grabbed our shared backpack and began our hiking adventure. We had hiked up a steep and slippery slope and arrived at a plateau. We kept walking along the plateau until we had been walking about a mile.

“Hey guys, my ankle is really starting to hurt. Can we turn back?” Callie asked.

“Yeah, definitely.” Clara answered. I nodded, slightly disappointed, but not wanting to push Callie further than she could safely go.

We turned around and began the trek back. We rounded the corner, coming off the plateau and onto the steep part of the trail.

As we began our downward descent, I was watching Callie, trying to make sure she was doing OK with the steepness of the trail and her ankle, when I suddenly felt myself slip on loose pebbles. I caught myself and exclaimed with a laugh, “Wow! That is slippery, I almost biffed it.” Immediately upon the escape of these words from my mouth, I felt myself slipping again. I tried to correct to keep from falling on my butt and ended up over correcting and felt myself falling forward. I turned my leg to try to catch myself and I lost traction. I fell with a sickening crack and slid several feet down the steep hill. In looking at my right leg, I immediately knew something was off. My toes should not have been pointing that way.

Clara and Callie were laughing. “You spoke too soon, bud. You did biff it. You OK?” Callie asked with concern.

I sat there for a moment, stunned. Not only had I fallen awkwardly on my leg, but I had scuffed up my arms on some rocks during the slide and my back was in pain from landing on the backpack in a weird location.

“I don’t think so.” I murmured.  

Clara went into full nurse mode. “Try to move it slowly.”

I did as she commanded and let out an agonizing sob. “No. I can’t.”

Clara knelt next to me. “Where does it hurt?”

“I feel like I can’t lift my leg. Oh my god. I’ve never been in this much pain. Oh my god, what if I can’t walk again and I have to quit my job –“ I began to panic.

In a calm, collected voice, Callie stopped me, “Cambria, pause. Breathe. Everything will be OK.”

Clara began to examine me. “I can’t tell for sure without any imaging, but she might have a broken bone.”

Callie looked at me. “Camb, I need you to try to stand up. You can do this.”

Clara grabbed her phone. “I’m calling 911…shit. I have no reception here. Callie– do you have reception?”

Callie got out her phone and looked, “No bars.”

I checked my phone and confirmed I had no reception either.

By this point I was feeling sorry for myself and sobbing. As I contemplated my choices, I was slowly becoming convinced that the best choice would be to sit there, covered in shit, sweat and tears and die a slow death in the forest, while my sisters lived out the rest of their years in happiness. “I can’t do this. Just leave me here to die.” I have always been the dramatic one.

“Camb – come on – you know there is no way we leave you to die in some godforsaken forest in the middle of Washington. But you’ve gotta try to stand up, so we can help you out of here.”

I wiped my tears off my face, with my dust covered hands, leaving behind streaks of mud and decided to give it my best try. I knelt on my good leg and attempted to keep my bad leg straight and propel myself up. This did not work, and I soon collapsed back into the dirt with screams of pain.

Clara looked at Callie. “We are going to have to carry her out. There is no way she is going to be able to walk and especially not down this.” She gestured toward the hill ahead of us.

“Maybe I could push myself along?” I offered.

They agreed. Callie took the backpack and I began lifting myself using my one good leg and two bleeding arms to push myself one foot at a time down the rock infested hill. After about 30 minutes of this and only 150 feet of progress, we stopped for a break.

“We can’t keep doing this. The sun is already starting to set, and we are at least a half mile from the car.” Clara commented.

“Guys, I have an idea.” I jumped in. “I have that blanket in my car. What if someone goes to the car and gets the blanket and then I can sit on the blanket backwards and you can pull me while I push myself with my good leg? I’m thinking the hill is so steep that if we had something to slide along it, it might be pretty easy.”

We all looked at each other and Clara jumped in. “Well, we’ve got no other ideas. I’ll go get the blanket, because I don’t want Callie’s ankle to get re-injured.” She threw her hair into a ponytail and began her descent.

“FUCK!” Callie groaned in frustration several minutes later.

“What?”

“I just started my period.” She removed a bloody hand from her pants. “Dude, I’m covered in blood. Do we have a tampon or anything in that backpack?”

“Oh man, that sucks. I’m sorry. I honestly don’t know.” I sighed and collapsed back onto the hill as she began rummaging through the bag.

“Fuck. No. Nothing.” Callie sighed, exasperated.

I let out a laughing sob, followed by a snort. Callie looked at me and I looked at her and we doubled over in fits of laughter. “Oh my god. This fucking day.” I exclaimed.

A few minutes later, Clara reappeared, red, sweaty and out of breath with the blanket in hand.

“I did it! We are just under half of a mile from the car. Most of it is this steep downhill and only the last part is flat and then uphill. I think this could actually work.”

They laid the blanket on the ground in front of me. I turned around so my back was facing down the hill and backed onto it. After giving Clara a short break, we began our downward trek, Callie and Clara pulling the blanket as I tried to use my exhausted hands and good leg to push myself backwards down the hill.

We had made it about half of the way, but we were exhausted, and I was still in agonizing pain. My hands were bleeding as I had been using them to push myself down the hill, cutting them on the rocks and sticks along the way. I began to cry.

“I need to pause.” I said between the sobs.

“Thank god.” Callie exclaimed. “I need a break too.”

After taking a few minutes to collect myself, I took off my shirt and wrapped it around my right hand.

Clara started laughing. “What are you doing?”

“My hands are bleeding from the rocks, so I thought I’d try to protect them.”

“But you only have one shirt.”

“It’s fine, I can alternate them.” I suggest.

“Here, take my shirt too.” Clara stood up and took off her shirt and handed it to me. She then screamed like a wild woman and pounded her chest with alternating fists. She followed this by pouring some of her water on the ground to make some mud and bent over to rub her hands in it. She put lines of mud under her eyes on her red and sweaty cheeks, framed by her reddish brown wisps and slapped muddy hand prints on her breasts, stomach and arms while screaming “WE ARE WOMEN!!!! WE ARE WARRIORS!!!!”

Callie and I each gave Clara a quizzical look and then our eyes connected and we immediately burst into laughter. Clara was almost always the quietest of the three of us as well as calm and logical, so to see her act this way was a special occasion. Clara joined us and we were all laughing so hard we had tears streaming down our faces.

“I’m going to pee my pants.” I said between fits of giggles.

“HA HA HA Cambria pee-pants!” Callie and Clara yelled, referencing a time from a previous sisters’ trip where I had laughed so hard, I had peed my pants and we all began a new round of uproarious laughter.

As our giggling subsided, Callie ripped off her shirt and handed it to me. “Take mine too.” She proceeded to use Clara’s mud for hand prints all over her body too.

Clara put her hand in the mud and put it on my stomach. “You need this. It will help relieve the pain.”

As we continued our journey, I found comfort in my warrior hand print and my sisters' shirts wrapped around my hands while my shirt acting as a cushion between the hard rocks and my sensitive behind.

After another hour of effort, we made it all the way to the car and they took me to the nearest emergency room, two hours away, where I learned I had ruptured a tendon.

Sometimes there are situations that catch you off guard, like when you find yourself sitting on a hill in the middle of the woods in only your hiking boots, a bra and shit-covered leggings with your bloody hands wrapped in your siblings’ clothes.

The great thing about those situations is that they can unexpectedly turn out to be some of the most unforgettable moments of your life. While we didn’t do 80% of our anticipated activities and things didn’t turn out as expected, this still ended up being the most connected and memorable Bezrel sisters’ trip we’ve ever had.