The story behind the picture

Jesse and I were heading out for one last walk on the farm when we realized it was our third walk that day, to the exact same spot. The sun was already fading. "We could hike Old Rag tonight..."
We grabbed some quick supplies, walked Humphrey and headed out the door. We zipped through Rappahannock to the sound of Concertina and soon found ourselves in the familiar parking lot of Old Rag. The moon shown clear and crisp through the trees overhead. There was a group of college students, decked out in North face and Patagucci, about ready to start on the trail. We slid past them and we BOOKED IT up the mountain. Near the summit we passed another group of college guys and dusted them too. Jesse took me to a spot with an incredible view of the summit. He took some twenty second exposures with his Nikon and then as my fingers started to swell from the cold we decided to go down the back way.
When it came time to go left or right at the fork, we went right. We were supposed to turn right. We just didn't see the other sign off to the side a ways down that pointed to the parking lot. Three miles later up another agonizing nine hundred feet we realized our mistake, and three miles back we were kicking ourselves for not realizing sooner. We got back to the sign and sure enough there was the other sign pointing to the real fireroad that would take us the two point five miles back to the car. A hike that started at eight pm, ended at one am. A fifteen mile round trip, and we were booking it the entire way.
At one point on the trail, I'll never forget, close to when we were about to turn around on that incredibly steep "fireroad" I was tired, sore, hungry, and cold, but mostly just cold, and I said to Jesse that I was starting to get tired and I wondered if we were going the right way, and he said "You just have to suck it up, because we may have to turn around and hike the three miles back to the sign at the fork to see what we did wrong." 5.5 miles later we got back to the car.
Damn we're tough. That was the best weekend I've had in a long time.