#tgmap

NEW TRAIL GENIUS MAP

Winter is in full swing and so my efforts turn to snow based sports. One of my first Trail Genius projects this winter is to map the Michigan Tech University Nordic Ski Trails.

As it turns out the 2015 U.S. Cross Country Skiing Championship are being held at MTU and as luck would have it I got introduced to a MTU Nordic Ski Athlete, Alice Flanders, and we got to talking and the wheels started to turn and a plan was hatched to map at least one of the race courses before the event.

NEW TRAIL GENIUS MAP

Earth. Rain. Leaves beginning to rot and return to the soil beneath. The distinct smells of being outdoors filled her nose as Piper began to stir. Smells incredibly familiar and completely foreign at the same time. Those were the first things the girl became aware of as her mind began to pull away from the blackness that surrounded her. Then came the feeling of the ground beneath her, nearly frozen but not quite. Even so, it was firm enough to communicate that wherever this was was not her bed nor was it anyone else's bed.

The feeling of being vaguely disoriented was something she'd known twice in the recent days, though both times that brief unease had been chased quickly. Each time the weight against her had reminded her of where she was as she woke in Maxxie's bed. Now there was nothing to anchor her, nothing to stop that confusion from deepening. It seemed like silence surrounded her. No birds, no bugs, nothing but the occasional sound of the wind and maybe some traffic in the distance. It was strange, strange enough to make her wonder if she was dreaming despite all her other senses insisting she wasn't. There was no way that her head would ache the way it did or that there'd be a searing pain in her joints and down her side if she were dreaming. 

Finally, Piper forced her eyes open for no reason other than to confirm what she already knew. It seemed bright, though after a moment she realized that it really wasn't. Wherever she'd ended up was deep enough into the woods of Musgrave that what little sunlight they got probably didn't filter through the branches and any artificial light was far from reaching her. Struggling to sit, the girl noticed with vague dismay that the chill she felt wasn't the result of the cold seeping through her clothes but rather the lack of them all together. From there, it seemed like one piece of information turned into a landslide of it. Her fingernails caked with dirt, the foul taste in her mouth, smears of dirt on her skin, the shallow scratches along her legs and arms, the deeper one running from her stomach and curving around the back of her hip.

Her stomach was churning and for a moment Piper was afraid she was about to be sick. Still, she tried to force her mind to forget the confusion and remember how she ended up like this. All she could come up with was blackness. Giving up her struggles and dropping back to lay with her arm tucked beneath her head, the girl tried to call up any memory of the previous hours. Movement, she remembered that, but she couldn't remember why or how. The previous night was blank, almost as if it had been erased. She remembered pouring herself a drink from one of the many bottles Spencer had stashed around his room. Had she really had that much? Enough to strip her clothes and pass out here? Closing her eyes in attempts to focus, Piper tried to slow her panicked breathing. She'd felt sick, like she was getting the flu, and angry. Maybe scared. Definitely claustrophobic in the apartment. The last thing she could picture was running down the stairs of the building, phone in hand. Calling Max for reasons she wasn't sure of and then blinding pain. Then… blackness.