No Show

An hour before my online hiking date, I went to review his profile

and found his account had been canceled.

Not a good sign.

The plan was to meet at high noon,

at the Travel Town parking lot in Griffith Park, southwest corner.

His suggestion.

He'd be in a black Mercedes. 

To go or not to go?

I had a strong feeling he wasn't going to show,

 but I went anyway.

Drove straight from a meeting in Santa Monica, and arrived early.

Crouching in the front seat of my car, I peeled off my Rag and Bone black jeans

and shimmied into my yoga pants.

I hadn't explored this part of the park before so
I thought, worse comes to worse, I'll experience a new trail.

As the minutes accumulated past noon,

 I wondered what makes someone just vanish from an online dating site.

Not interested, not ready, not available, not who you say are, in some type of crisis?

The possibilities are limitless, but why not send an email and properly cancel?

 Why just disappear?

Somewhere, was someone looking at the clock aware that they were standing me up?

At 12:10, I headed up the path from the parking lot.

It was steep, but I assumed it would connect to a trail.

It didn't.

 I kept ascending, vertically.

I would recover from getting blown off, but scaling the side of the mountain

was something that could have lasting consequences.

My heart racing, I cursed my anonymous date for

leading me to a trail head that, in fact, wasn't.

Sliding down the dry dirt I tried to secure my footing.

Looking down, I knew retracing my steps would be worse.

  I had no choice but to keep moving forward, or in this case upward.

I caught myself on the brink of panic, took a deep breath and forged ahead.

With dirt under my nails and a few splinters in my palm

I finally climbed onto a path, unscathed,

except for a slightly bruised ego

from being stood up.