Dear Trail Friends
I am sitting in my tent so exhausted I don't know how I will manage to write this. I am sad that there will be no cell coverage on the trail between here and Stehekin (unless AT&T's coverage is significantly better than their coverage map indicates). That means I can't upload any of this week's blogs until I arrive in Stehekin next Friday, August 19. It also means no email or phone contact with Chrissy (or anyone else).
So I am a little more solo than usual this week and inevitably it brings up the memory of the last time I was out of cell coverage for a week. That was summer 2013, when I hiked into Red's Meadow (near Mammoth Lakes). I will never forget arriving there and having Chris tell me that my cousin Jean and our "sister-in-law" Lynne's son-in-law Ken had both died. It was impossible for me to get down off the mountain in time to attend either funeral.
Family members and friends, will you please please please not die this week?
I am sitting in my tent besieged by yellow jackets flies and mosquitos buzzing and bonking against the tent. They were driving me crazy (just the sound) until I thought of playing music. Now I am listening to Chopin's Nocturnes and feeling much more relaxed.
The day started out beautifully. But wait - before I tell you about the day I have to tell you about how the plan to have Chris drive me to the trailhead at Stevens Pass fell through. We had a ferry ticket for the trip to Anacortes but not for Chris's return. (Fridays in August ferry tickets to Orcas are in high demand). But I assumed I could get on at 7am two days before, when the last 30% of the reservations are opened, and get the tickets. It had always worked before. But it didn't this time. The website was clearly jammed with customers and we simply could not get through.
So I messaged my friend Meander (the retired Bellingham sheep farmer who kicked off with me at Campo at the Mexican border in 2013, and who showed up magically to meet me at Stevens Pass last year when I bailed because of the fires and trail closures. [So glad I did. Why hike miles of road detour when I could come back this year and hike one of the most beautiful sections of the entire trail?]) I knew it was a long shot but I asked if Meander knew any trail angels who might be able to drive me from the ferry landing to the trail Friday.
Meander answered right away. He was leaving for Holland Saturday, but if I could come Thursday night we could camp in the yard of a Skykomish trail angel and he would drop me off at the trail early Friday morning.
Being with Meander is magical in many ways - the shared memories of our time together on the trail, the shared love of the trail and the people who walk it, and many other subtle ways our lives overlap and resonate.
Here is a selfie of the two of us just before I begin my hike. (Photo 1).
It looked to be a near perfect first day on the trail. A morning hike up to a big view of mountains, then down to a lake where I hoped to swim and lunch, then up again to a peak where I would camp for the night.
Only things didn't go quite the way I hoped they would. The morning hike was beautiful and the views took my breath away. Photos 2, 3, 4 and 5 show some of the high points, including the "Here I am!" feeling, the "I am so little and this world is so big" feeling, and the sense of Mt Baker as a beautiful guardian spirit presence, the last of the great glaciated mountains that have handed me along from one to another on this journey.
That's the end of photos for the day. I got to the lake around lunch time (and I was thinking I was spending a little too much trail time chatting with other hikers and presto, I didn't meet a single other hiker since noon), ate lunch, set out my wet sleeping bag and ground cloth to dry in the sun and walked down to the lake.
Then the sun went away. I looked up and my sunny day was threatened by a lot of very big clouds, some forbodingly gray. I was feeling a little vulnerable because I blithely cowboy camped last night (though the trail angel warned me about dew - I wanted to see the meteors and I did, at 1:00 am, saw 10 or so flash across the sky in a period of about 15 minutes) and was shocked how wet dew can get a sleeping bag. I dried it with my towel before packing - but it was still quite wet.
And at that moment my clean water bag fell down from the contraption I'd created so that my water filter can use gravity (instead of squeezing the bottle of dirty water, which is something my arthritic thumbs and wrists really do not want to do). My water filter system was broken.
So - I didn't feel comfortable swimming with the sun behind clouds and a cold wind whipping up. I had wet sleeping bag and a broken water filter system and the sky looked like the weather might get bad, despite optimistic predictions. I went on hiking with no swim.
Needless to say, no sooner did I begin my big and quite challenging uphill hike (not easy footing, I had a couple near trips and slips and one fall - after which I slowed down and really kept my eyes on the trail) than the sun came out and stayed out and the day became ruthlessly hot. In addition I was having my first day at high altitude (or first day of all day hiking) malaise and feeling all around yucky and totally deprived because I had missed a swim in a beautiful lake ( it even had lily pads).
But now the sun is setting. I'm listening to Mozart and the winged critters seem to toning down the ferocity of their assault on my tent. Mozart is really beautiful. Sometimes a phrase comes along in the music and I feel it in my body and it's just one big wow like seeing Mt Baker up there.
And by the way I was quite proud that I had the foresight to pack some extra plastic tubing so I could repair my water filter system, which I did a few moments ago in the tent.
So alls well with the world again. Sweet dreams and I will see you on the trail tomorrow. (Yes I know you won't get these until the whole week's hike is done and if you are like Chris you will read them backwards so the whole arc of the story, in the unlikely event that there is an arc to the story, will be in reverse. But we can pretend, can't we? Out here on the trail it does my spirit so much good to imagine and trust that you are with me. I'm not going to let a little thing like no cell coverage get in the way of that good feeling)..
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