Tuesday, June 20th had been a normal day thus far, all things considered. We’d spent the previous day hiking up and down 13,000 ft peaks and ridges, and I’d woken up Tues. morning feeling a bit sick. We had decided to take it easy, spending the morning relaxing and reading Kindle books, before hiking in the afternoon (and looking at all the cool old mining ruins along the way).

In the evening, we set up camp. It took a bit of time to find a good location, because everything was at a bit of a slope. But eventually Britta found a spot which was only minorly slanted, and not at all bumpy.

“It’ll work!” I said.

We got the tent up just in time to avoid a quick smattering of raindrops, courtesy of the dark clouds passing overhead. I climbed out of the tent some minutes later, only to freeze in disbelief. Surely I was seeing things. But I wasn’t. Where before there had been dry ground, a small stream was now trickling merrily straight down towards our tent. “Um, Britta?” I called out. “That quick rain must have soaked some already-saturated ground or something, because there’s a stream headed right for us.”

“A what?” came Britta’s reply.

“A stream.”

I stared at the water coming closer, closer, expecting the trickle to slow any moment now that the rain had passed. It was quite a lot of water, too, for such a small amount of rain. Britta soon emerged from the tent to gawk at the sight as well.

“Perhaps the rain dislodged some debris and it’s coming from the nearby creek,” I suggested.

Britta took off, following the trickle upwards and pushing through a cluster of dense bushes, hoping to find a way to redirect the water before it swamped our tent. A second later she called back to me, incredulity tinging her words, “It’s a spring!”

Now it was my turn to say “What?!” It was impossible, and yet.

“I’m not kidding,” said Britta.

“But it wasn’t there before.”

“I know. Maybe I can plug it with a rock?”

“We don’t have long,” I said, staring at the water nervously. “We have maybe two minutes before we’re flooded.”

The rock plug proved unsuccessful, so we did the only thing left for us to do: we evacuated. Quickly shoving our things ​back into our backpacks, we carried them up above the newly minted stream, and out of the danger zone. We didn’t bother trying to take down the tent. Instead, we hoisted it above our shoulders. “If anyone’s looking over from the road right now,” Britta smirked, “they’re just going to see a tent moving through the bushes. I still don’t understand how a spring just spontaneously started right above our tent.”

“The Gamemakers, who else,” I said, shaking my head. It was the term we’d taken to calling the imaginary keepers of the trail, modeled after the insane and sadistic gamemakers in the Hunger Games books. Trail following the snowy north side of a gully when the opposite side was clear? Blame the Gamemakers for building the trail that​ way. Snowmelt turning the trail into a river, or the trail lacking a bridge? It had to be the Gamemakers, trying to drown us. And a spring just randomly appearing right above our tent? The whole thing stank of Gamemakers, through and through.

Once our things were all hastily piled up on dry ground, we began the task of finding a new spot to set up. This time, every bit of ground looked suspicious. It took awhile before I found a flattish sort of ridge, where any sudden water would run to either side. “Not quite as comfortable, though,” I said a bit sadly, staring at some lumps of grass. Once again, we set everything up. This time, we were more fortunate. The only other disturbance that night was a distant thunderstorm, and we got up the next morning ready for the next stretch of trail, and anything else the Gamemakers decided to throw at us (which happened to include a Fourteener. But we made it to the summit!)