Tag: outdoors

Day 85 – Inspiration

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The first thing I notice after the silence of the evening is the loudness of the morning – a low-grade hum that seems definitely out of place. It’s definitely not hummingbirds. There are so many bees, and not the fluffy, bumbly kind. I stay in bed as long as possible, assisted by Meer donating some hot coffee to the cause, before running out and tearing down, bees investigating, but not stinging. I have to pee, but don’t want to expose my delicate ass to the bees, so I hold it and move on along. Continue reading →

Day 84 – Resistance is Futile

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The night continues to be dead silent – emphasis on “dead” particularly when, in the dead of night, I hear walking outside my tent. Slow walking. Step. Step. Step. None of the others are camped particularly near me, so my brain automatically interprets this as something trying to kill me. You’d think that’d make me spring up out of bed, alert and concerned, but my brain won’t let me move my arms or legs. Welp, I guess I’ve had a good run – I’m back asleep before I can think much else.

Continue reading →

Day 83 – SC CA

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I’ve left the fly off my tent, so I wake in the morning staring at the tree-mottled sky. I’m a little spooked at first – one of the trees is leaning RIGHT OVER ME HOW DID I NOT SEE THIS BEFoh it’s just the seam in the mesh. I take some time breathing, relaxing, soaking it all in. A brief moment sans anxiety; I’m just an animal, man. An animal breathing deep under the trees and the mesh and the down of my bag.

Welp, that’s about enough of that. I’ve got a town to get to. Continue reading →

Day 79 – Mountain Chicken Day

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I wake pretty early, with a love-hangover from yesterday. I have the best people in my life. While I hear Bill and Kelsey rustling around, they tell me they’re just off to get coffee, so I decide to stay in bed. It’s not for long, though – Pineapple said she wasn’t trying to make it far, and I think, if I haul, I can catch her. I think. So soon enough, I’m up doing stuff – last-minute calls and texts and emails, and I’m sitting by the door by the time they come back with a friend in tow. Said friend is rad, and they’re rad, and it makes it hard to leave, but I have a lot to do today before I go. Continue reading →

Interlude: And I Must Go

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The drips from the roof of my apartment – dulled, distant, metallic – sound nothing like the drumming of drips from the pine trees onto my tent, but they keep me awake anyway. I’ve been having a hard time sleeping, sheets feeling strange on my skin, my pillow alternately my favorite part of civilization and just another accoutrement that I don’t need. I’m either too cold or too hot, and while I control the climate now, changing it’s not a simple matter of zipping or unzipping my sleeping bag. So I lie in bed, uncomfortable with comfort, and listen to the persistent plunk of the outside trying to get in.

I’ve been home just under two weeks, and everything I experience is this strange same-not-same, similar in ways, but muted in others. It’s pretty much been town chores on steroids: I’m constantly working, writing, doing laundry, eating food. Too much food. More food than is tenable for this new, sedentary, hunched-over-a-computer-writing lifestyle I’m living. Still, for whatever reason, the real world – what we call the real world – seems much less real than the world I left behind, the world of moments defined by distance, miles, steps. Here, the days just blur, one right into another.

It’s been hard to keep up with a writing schedule – I’m doing a lot of writing for Backpacker still, and I’ve found that writing for myself is harder than I expected. I think the post-trail blues are settling in, and writing my daily entries means exposing myself to my feels. I miss it, miss the trail, miss hiking. Even my body’s conspiring against me in that regard: muscles have memory, too, and they miss being sore, being challenged, seeing new things as much as my mind does.

So I’m headed off to Rocky Mountain National Park to spend a couple of days out. Work all my muscles, jog my physical and emotional memory. Maybe deal with a little bit of snow, although it’s not supposed to be terrible. I’ll have Day 75 up for you folks on Monday – and maybe I’ll even post a schedule I can stick to.

Thanks for understanding.

Day 70 – Half Dumb

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My alarm goes off at 3:15, and it’s basically like Eye of the Tiger is playing in my head. I’m awake, I’m focused, and I am going to get up Half Dome for sunrise. I’m just gonna. There’s not a doubt in my mind. Weeell, enough of a doubt to push me up and out of my warm sleeping bag in the dark, stride over to fetch my bear can, pack up as quickly and quietly as I can. I’m out just before 4, right on schedule – and as I run into the second trail junction for Cloud’s Rest, it turns out I’d camped exactly where I thought I had. Everything’s falling into place. Continue reading →