Sleepwalking.

I suppose I should mention something that affected my trip pretty significantly, and something I do often. That thing is, as you might have guessed from the title, sleepwalking.

I sleepwalk, if not regularly, than fairly often. And even when I don't actually go anywhere in my sleep, I often sit up and say something. For example:

At girl scout camp: "I was petting it and now they want me to eat it!"

At home, after my mom came in to check on me after I had been shouting quite a bit: "A bucket was chasing me around the backyard." My mother asks, "In your sleep?" And I reply, "No." And give her this odd, eery smile before falling back asleep.

There have also been times when I've merely woken up with random objects- a paintbrush, a teapot, a potted plant, the iron...

And, the odd occasions where I actually communicate with others. One particularly memorable event involved me getting up, walking into my parent's room screaming, shouting "I need a pencil! Help me! I need a pencil!" Of course, my dad responded, "You don't need a pencil, dear, it's the middle of the night!" Already very grumpy, I say, "I'll take a stinkin' pen then!" and grab the sheet out from under them, carry it to my room, drop in on the floor, and climb back into my bed, where I promptly drift back to sleep.

However, the most terrifying and potentially dangerous nighttime escapades I have had have been the ones where I'm actually trying to go somewhere, and all of them have been while I've been traveling.

The first such adventure took place in Washington D.C. I was staying in a hotel with my parents, and my grandma was just down the hall. I was in a separate room connected to my parent's room, closer to the door. As my mom tells it (I don't remember any of this) I got up in the middle of the night, and she, fearing that I was asleep, walked to the door to check on me. And good thing she did, for I was in the process of unlocking the door to the hall when she stopped me. Curious as to what she thought I was doing, she asked me where I was trying to go. My response? "I'm going back to my bed." She asked again, and told me I couldn't go back to my bed, since it was hundreds of miles away. I told her again, "I'm going back to my bed." Finally, she pulled me back to the hotel bed and pushed me into it. Stern, she told me not to leave it again. "Now, you're not going to leave again, are you?" "No, I'm not allowed to." "That's right. Now stay!" In the morning, I had no recollection of this at all.

The most recent happened this summer, night 7, at Trinity Camp, in the Grand Canyon. For those of you who don't know each and every camp in the Canyon, Trinity is below Phantom Ranch, and is down in the dark, black schist. It's deep, and narrow, and rather scary, but very, very pretty. It's a kind of small camp, so space is limited, and people are all around you, no matter where you camp. This time, I actually kind of remember leaving camp, as you might remember a dream when you woke up- unzipping the tent, climbing out of my sleeping bag, carrying it with me, and setting out in search of something. I went downstream first, still most likely asleep, and didn't stop going downstream until I woke up, still scrambling. It was a little bit before I realized what was going on, and started to panic. Wouldn't you? I went downstream some more, unaware of where I was, before deciding camp couldn't be down in those huge boulders, and I headed back upstream. I think I must have gone right through camp (above where everyone was camped) and past it without noticing, and I ended up far upstream of where I should have been. Then I really started to freak out, and I stopped on a rock and tried to figure out where I could be. Then, realizing I must have passed camp, I turned back around and was heading in the right direction (or so I hoped), shouting all the while for my parents, for anyone to help me. No one came, and I had just decided I would curl up in my sleeping bag and wait for morning when I saw a flashlight, and my dad came to help me. I was on top of a huge water polished boulder, maybe 20 feet up, without a light, or my glasses, or shoes, or anything but a sleeping bag over my shoulders. I was, however, entirely uninjured. I was helped back to camp, and for the rest of the trip was forced to sleep between my parent's paco pads for fear that I would leave again. Any time I sat up, my mom tackled me to the ground, and I was had to shout "I'm awake, I'm awake, i just want some water!" to keep her from pushing me back to the ground. I must say, it was one of the scariest experiences I've ever had, and one of the scariest for my parents, too- waking up to find my paco pad empty, no sign of me, in the middle of the Grand Canyon. Oh, and did I mention, my pajama pants were soaked up to my ankles? I had been ankle deep in the river.