Afterglow 2005 - Day 4
A lot happened between the final picture on the last page and the first picture on this page. Now I will attempt to bring you up to speed. After about a 1/2 hour of non-stop loud explosions, we finished shooting off fireworks because we basically ran out. We began the walk back to Afterglow, and were torn between taking the dark and muddy path or the well lit and stable road. For once I wish that we took the road less traveled. Along the walk home, someone in our party thought that it would be a good idea to light off a firework in the middle of the road as a car approached. They lit it and we ditched into the woods, and the situation went from bad to extremely worse when that car just happened to be a Vilas County Sheriff, out on patrol following up on a noise complaint that some kids were setting off fireworks at 11:00 pm on a weeknight. This cop stopped his car and shone his light into the woods, and caught a glimpse of me hiding in the brush. All of the other kids took off running, but I panicked and stayed still, hoping he wouldn't see me. I wasn't about to get shot fleeing the "scene of a crime" so I complied with the officer, to a point at least. In the confusion that followed and my inexperience with cops, I managed to give away too much information about our activities, as well as where we were staying. He interrogated me and then threatened me with jail time, which is a load of crap because it was something as stupid as fireworks, but we were engaging in illegal activities and endangering human lives. He forced some names out of me, and then he let me walk back to Afterglow alone. I didn't catch up with the other kids until I got back to our cabin. We were worried that the cop would come to Afterglow looking for us, so we all sat next to the campfire discussing how to modify our story so that I was the only one who could be connected to the scene. We all sat around and freaked out for a while. then decided to stay up all night in case he came by. Susie, Tim and Jenny went back to the cabins and Gary, Matt, James and I pulled an all-nighter.
When it began to get light, I realized that this was a stupid decision. Why were we waiting around for this sheriff to come and hand us citations? We were overly worried about this entire ordeal, so we refused to sleep because we wanted to be around when sheriff Podunk of Villas County came knocking on our doors. As you'll see in the coming pictures, Afterglow looks a whole lot different in the wee hours of the morning, something few people have seen with their own eyes.
Since I inadvertently named Matt (left) and Gary (right) as co-conspirators in this fireworks debacle, they felt the need to stay awake all night in order to defend not only themselves, but to also share their side of the story if in fact the police officer did show up to question us. This meant plenty of Mountain Dew and a well-stocked fire to combat the body's natural urges for rest and warmth. They both performed admirably, and toughed it out the entire night.
In the next few pictures you can see this crazy mist hanging over the lake, which was nature's way of telling us that we were wrong. Wait a second, that doesn't really make sense because everything was so beautiful, so it's more like it was God's way of forgiving us for our actions by providing us with this beautiful spectacle. If we hadn't of been worried about our impending doom, then there would be no reason for us to be awake to witness this event. The Lord works in mysterious ways I guess. Someday maybe I'll understand just what the heck was going on there.