The Continental Divide Trail Coalition MagazineConnecting the community that supports the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail

Volume 7, September 2015

Trail Writers Edition

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Stories from the TrailCDTC BOARDBryan MartinPresident

Josh ShuskoVice President

Kerry ShakarjianSecretary

Matt HudsonTreasurer

Don OwenCDTC Board Member at Large

Paul MagnantiCDTC Board Member at Large

Jan PotterveldCDTC Board Member at Large

CDTC STAFFTeresa MartinezExecutive Director

Val SokolowskiTrail Operations Manager

Liz ThomasInformation Specialist

Peter SustrCorporate Relations Manager

Dana Foulks Passages DesignerCover image: Starry Night over Ghost Ranch by Nathan MathewsThe CDTC is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization.

It’s often said that on the Trail, everyone has a story. Some stories are sad, some are happy, some are funny, some are all of the above, and others are simply the experience of being human in a world that too often moves at an incredibly fast pace. Many of the stories associated with the Continental Divide Trail and the Divide itself, occured long before there ever was a Trail. They are the stories of ancients, native peoples, Lewis and Clark and the settling of the American West. Today’s stories about the Divide most often connect us to these stories of the past, and sometimes help us move from our present, to look toward the future. It’s our stories that also keep us connected. Sometimes we find ourselves in the stories of those first explorers, because we are truly walking in their footsteps. And other times, we are simply affected by these stories as we find meaning to our own surrounded by the awe-inspiring and humbling landscapes along the Trail. In all of them, the Trail and the landscape come alive, and hopefully inspire us to continue to explore and experience the Divide and the Trail along its spine.

As we celebrate the end of the 2015 CDT season, we thought it would be a great opportunity to share with you just a small sampling of some stories from the trail. Some of these stories are haunting tales of self-discovery, others, are lighthearted reflections of the spirit and culture of the American West, and others are deeply personal accounts of the Trail Experience itself and its long lasting impact on our lives. From Chilton Tippin, a 2015 thru hiker, to Philip Connors, M. John Fayhee, Cindy Ross, and the newest book about the CDT, “Married to the Trail”, by Mary “Speedstick” Moynihan, we hope you enjoy our first Continental Divide Trail Writers Edition. But, most of all, we hope in these stories you will be inspired to get out and experience your own story on the Continent Divide Trail.

The CDTC

Photo by Robert “Banana Pants” Kristoferitsch

3Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

4 May Phillip Connors

6 The Bright White Light M. John Fayhee

10 Drowning in Blueness Gail Storey

14 A Peruvian Shepard in Montana Cam Honan

15 Crossing Divides Foreword Katie Gibson and Scott Bischke

17 Trail Dogs Francis Tapon

20 A Day to Remember Justin Lichter

22 Thoughts on Life in the Hills of Cochetopa: Lake City to Salida

Chilton Tippin

25 A Long Way from Nowhere Julie and Matt Urbanski

28 Wyoming: A Test from the High Heavens Mary “Speedstick” Moynihan

30 Of Mice and Men Lawton Grinter

32 The Great Divide Basin Cindy Ross

A Family’s Journey Along the Continental Divide Trail

“This is both an epic adventure of the first order and the heartwarming story

of the family who accomplished it.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

SCR APINGHEAVEN

CINDY ROSS

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FIRE SEASON Field Notes from a Wilderness Lookout excerpt:

May by Philip Connors

Human contact here is the more cherished for its rarity, and my favorite encounters have been that peculiar subspecies known as a thru-hiker. Their aim: 3,000 miles on foot in five months, a hike along the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) from the Mexican border to Glacier National Park before snow flies in October. Twenty-miles a day, every day. I know them instantly by their fancy walking sticks, their sunburnt skin and general air of dinginess, and the scratches on their shins if they’re wearing shorts, which comes from having bushwhacked through the thorny brush to my south. By the time they arrive on my peak they’ve walked a hundred miles on a shortcut from the Mexican border, headed for a junction with

the Continental Divide just northwest of me. The actual divide runs north out of the bootheel of New Mexico, but that way lies desert, road walking, and a land of dangerously scarce water. By heading straight from Columbus, New Mexico, site of Pancho Villa’s 1916 raid across the border, the thru-hikers save perhaps forty

miles- two days of walking-and can reach the true divide within a day of seeing me. There’s no such thing as a day off in their lexicon, only what they call a “zero day.” For these people walking is joy, not work, yet daily mileage remains an axiom of progress. Their resupply points have all been planned in advance. Falling off the pace can mean going hungry. Sometimes friends or family back home will mail them boxes of good trail food, which await at rural post offices spaced between seven and ten days of walking apart. Others take side trips or hitch rides into little towns near the divide, restocking on gas-station food: Doritos, beef jerky.

I find these folks unfailingly gracious and cheerful, with their lightweight equipment, their hard legs,

and big smiles. They’re a self-selected bunch, at ease in the out-of-doors, but for people who’ve been walking close to a marathon every day they appear almost goofily invigorated. Within moments of their arrival they shed their packs and ask to climb the tower. They’re a week into their five-month journey and want to see where they’ve been and where they’re headed. I’m always happy to show them what I can: a couple-hundred-mile stretch of their walk, from the Mexican border to the country up and beyond the Middle Fork of the Gila River. It’s a land of stark vistas and rough country they’re traversed- dry, wind-scoured, humming with ancient mystery, dotted with hidden petroglyphs.

With most CDT hikers I find a sort of mutual envy. I admire their courage and stamina and sheer gumption, their tolerance for every sort of backwoods discomfort. They admire my solitude, my view, the countercultural weirdness of my hob. Each of us has a taste for wild country. I sit above it, letting it come to me in color and shadow and light. They pass through it on calloused feet, stopping to make camp each night in a strange new slice of the world. Their challenges are profoundly physical: rattlesnakes, biting flies, blisters, screaming Achilles tendons, thunderstorms, extremes of heat and cold, all the pleasures and pitfalls of life outdoors on the move. Mine are existential: time, space, the sweep of geologic epochs written on the view out of my windows, which reminds me I’m but a mote in the grand saga of Earth’s history.

When they leave, I often wish I could go a little ways with them.

The CDT is one of the three long north-south walks in America- the others being the Appalachian Trail and the Pacific Crest Trail- and by far the most difficult. For those who undertake these cross-country treks, nicknames are virtually obligatory. The first to greet me this year are a pair who go by the names of Reno and Slouch. Reno is a slim woman, dark-eyed and olive-skinned; Slouch is a tall, pale, sunburned Brit with a growth of a bright red beard. They are amiable visitors, grateful for fresh water, happy to step inside the cabin and drink a cup of coffee from my French press. I offer a snack of crackers and grapes. Reno reciprocates with some hand-rolled cigarettes. Slouch says he’s from South-ampton, in the south of England, and because he has a book-ish look I offer him a recent copy of the London Review of Books, for which he seems both shyly grateful and a little bit stunned: if you had told me, before I began this queer odyssey, that I’d meet someone in the

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woods of New Mexico with a subscription to LBR, I’d have told you you were stark raving mad,” he says.

Having seen no one in days, they are eager to tell me the story of how they were shadowed by a Border Patrol agent on the very first day of their walk. He came crawling out of the brush in the desert behind them, just as two guys in a Border Patrol vehicle pulled ahead, all of them armed with pistols and wearing wrap-around shades. The agents took one good look at their quarry and realized their error; they expressed bafflement that anyone in their right mind would take a stroll to Canada for pleasure. Earlier Reno had taken a few pictures of the Mexican town of Palomas from the American side of the border. This aroused suspicion of the authorities, and she and slouch were forced to show papers despite not having crossed into Mexico. Reno worried about her passport smelling of marijuana, having kept the two together in the same little bag. She hadn’t expected an ID check in the lightly inhabited desert of the American Southwest. Luckily, the border agent did not have a first-class sniffer, or her journey might have ended before it began.

“We’re not going to see any more of them, are we?” she asks, and I tell her that from here on out they should be in the clear.

A few days later a CDT Hiker appears at 9:00 a.m., another red-bearded fellow, this time named Dave. I know what he’s up to before he even opens his mouth, partly because if the week-old beard, which is de rigueur for male thru-hikers. Dave camped the previous night at Wright’s Saddle, not far from my truck. Like most of his kind, his first question is: Have you seen any others? They’re always interested in the progress of their fellows, whom I’ve seen and when. Many announce their intentions over the winter on Internet forums, asking for advice on routes and logistics, so a certain camaraderie exists among people who’ve never met but are undertaking the same grueling journey. When I mention Reno and Slouch, he smiles and says, “I bet I can catch them within the week. One person’s always quicker than two.”

Dave is the most philosophical of the thru-hikers I’ve talked with. He tells me how he worked on an organic farm in Hawaii with a woman he loved deeply until their relationship curdled for reasons he did not understand. Having been with her sometime, having lived in a little hut with her, built a life with her, the sudden loss of it all was like a punch to the gut. He set out on the Pacific Crest Trail last year seeking – he knew not what, exactly. A connection with wilderness. A means of forgetting. A means of remembering. A means of making peace with

pain. The metronomic quality of walking allowing him to feel or not feel as he wished. The attainment of a state like trance. Coming down off Fuller Ridge in California, over a landscape charred by wildfire, he felt himself overcome. He leaned against a dead tree, gripped it for balance. The tears began. His nose ran. He felt every emotion at once: sadness, anger, joy, horror, love, hope, despair; every cell in his body quivered in anguish and ecstasy. He both lost himself and felt himself more intensely than at any other moment in his life. And in the aftermath of this moment-this vision, this transcendence, this coming into the world, this death and rebirth- he felt emptied and calm. Ready to begin his life anew. Open to mystery and beauty, reconciled in some ineffable way to loss.

“It was as if I had tapped the source of some divinity,” he says. “Our language does not contain the words to describe it. Perhaps a better way to say it is that some divinity coursed through me; I became the conduit. I was holy and I was nothing and I was inseparable from the world around me, no boundary marking the charred landscape and my self and where they met and merged. I’ve never experienced anything like it without the aid of psychedelics. Now I can’t imagine doing anything else but walking in the wilderness. I’ve shed every worldly and material ambition; I have no desire for anything but that complex register feelings I can only get on a months-long- walk alone in the desert and the mountains. Boredom, ecstasy, hunger, thirst, blisters, sunburn, mania, longing-the whole crazy carnival.”

And then, having bared his soul to a stranger in the middle of the woods, having queried me about good sources of water in the miles ahead, he shakes my hand, wishes me well, marches across the meadow, and disappears into the trees.

About the AuthorPhillip Connors has worked as a baker, a bartender, a house painter, a janitor, and an editor at the Wall Street Journal. His essays have appeared in n+1, Harper’s, the Paris Review, and the Best American Non-required Reading Anthology. He lives in Silver City New Mexico, and every summer

you can find him keeping watch over the Gila National Forest from his post as a Fire Tower lookout.

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Smoke Signals excerpt:

The Bright White Light by M. John Fayhee

Those of us who have spent the majority of our lives traveling by hook or by crook through lofty and wild realms have many things in common. We have all been directionally discombobulated. We have all been tired and hungry and bug-bit and blistered and grungy beyond belief. And we have all faced both objective and subjective danger, whether that danger has visited us on our back country forays via gravity, ice, roiling white water, flash floods, avalanches, wild animals, heat, cold, wind or, my personal sphincter-puckering favorite, lightning.

The first time I hiked the Colorado Trail, I found myself camping near the old Beartown site in the San Juans in the midst of, not the Swedish Bikini Team, nor even the Bud Girls, nor even the Jagermeister Girls, nor even the Senior Ladies Bridge Club, nor even my most debauch, scummiest drinking buddies, nor even a crew of fellow CT thru-hikers. No, my life does not set up that way. What I found myself camping in the middle of was a large and boisterous Boy Scout troop.

After the Scouts FINALLY!!! had begun to settle in for the night, I enjoyed the company of one of the Scoutmasters at a dilapidated picnic table. As we spoke, a seriously mean storm swirled in from several directions simultaneously, and, in the gathering twilight, proximate flashes and deafening booms began to re-define what until that point had been a relaxed vibe, the boisterous Boy Scouts notwithstanding. The Scoutmaster, who had already told me he was a professor of meteorology at Colorado State University — whose specialty was, yes, lightning — did not so much as flinch or wince. His calm demeanor was the only thing that prevented me from assuming a teeth-chattering fetal position under the picnic table.

I believe I eventually said words to the effect of: “I guess you are well versed enough regarding the vagaries of lightning to know if we were in any imminent danger.”

His response will stick with me forevermore. “No one knows enough about lightning to know if they are in imminent danger during a storm. All I know is that we are right now in the middle of a lightning storm, and nothing we do will effect whether or not we get struck. Lightning is defined by its unpredictability.”

He went on to say that, based upon a full career of statistics-based, peer-reviewed professional academic studies, he had pretty much concluded that just as many

people get zapped while doing all the supposed “right” things we read about in the popular outdoors press, while scads of people doing the supposed “wrong” things venture upon their merry way untoasted.

“It’s almost like lightning has its own personality,” the professor/Scoutmaster said. “Most times, that personality is, though intimidating, fairly benign. Other times, however, it seems vindictive, like it really wants to kill someone, like death is its goal.”

Great. So much for Nature being indifferent toward our fate.

After the professor/Scoutmaster hit the sack, with the flash/booms still pummeling the biosphere in every direction, I rolled a joint and managed to get said joint lit despite the wind. I kicked back, clad in Gore-Tex from head to toe, and pondered the Scoutmaster/professor’s words from the perspective of my own personal greatest-hits lightning-based stories, from a perspective that at least entertained the notion that there’s this all-powerful Sky Daddy consciousness — for the sake of clarity and expediency, we’ll call him “Zeus” — way up high making mortality-based decisions about whether or not to zap such-and-such hapless person down there on terra firma or just scare the living bejesus out of him or her. And perhaps ascertain why.

1) Though I grew up in the climatologically agitated area where the Chesapeake Bay meets the Atlantic Ocean, a place where almost every home sported a lightning rod atop its roof, the first time I ever seriously considered the concept of corporeality in the context of lightning was during my thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail. At that time, the AT meandered its way through much of Connecticut by following the Housatonic River. Like most thru-hikers, my day-to-day itinerary was planned in advance by studying the hyper-detailed AT guidebooks. It was a bit on the early side when I arrived at my pre-determined destination one day, but, given the fact that it was a pretty little riverside campsite, I opted to park it for the evening anyhow. There was one tent already pitched at the far end of the cleared area, and, soon after my arrival, a head popped out. I know how this is going to sound, but I’ll say it anyhow: That noggin belonged to a very homely woman who, I learned later, was a retired elementary schoolteacher who, I also learned, was a seriously proficient

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long-distance backpacker, having completed just about every noteworthy named trail east of the Mississippi. But, her backpacking acumen did not mitigate the woeful reality that she was challenged on the physical-appeal front. Big time. And I guess I should point out that AT hiker standards in that regard are usually not very high.

As we chatted, a squall blew in. In those days, I did not carry a tent, only a small tarp, which I suspended over a rope tied between two tall pine trees. As darkness descended and sheets of rain began to fall and thunder began to rumble, the homely elementary school teacher asked repeatedly, with quite a bit of enthusiasm, if I would like to take refuge with her in her diminutive tent, which she also shared with her hyper little Sheltie. I politely declined, babbling something inanely Muir-ish about preferring to experience the heart of the storm on its own terms.

She finally gave up and retired to the relative comfort, if not safety, of her four nylon walls, while I hunkered down under my little tarp, which was being whipped mightily by the suddenly ferocious wind. I was soaked clear down to my skivvies in mere minutes, a reality that negatively affected my comfort level as it simultaneously positively increased my conductivity factor. Just as I began to second guess my decision regarding the homely schoolteacher’s invite, a bolt flashed down from a sky that looked more like something out of “The Wizard of Oz” than it did anything I would expect from, of all places, pastoral Connecticut, and vaporized the top half right off of one of the tall pines lining the campsite. The simultaneous BOOM shook the ground. Before I had even begun the process of regaining what little composure I had, another bolt vaporized the top off another pine — this one closer to my tarp than the first. Then a third bolt vaporized the top off a pine even closer to where I sat urinating my pants. The strikes were progressing in a very orderly fashion right toward me, with just enough time between flashes and booms to allow me to consider how death by lightning would actually feel, whether it would be quick and painless or whether it would involve lots of undignified screaming and writhing on the ground for 15 minutes in searing agony.

Then a fourth bolt vaporized the top off one of the pines to which I had my tarp tied. The sizzling remnants of branches rained down upon me as fine as sawdust. The resultant thunder knocked my water bottle over.

Then a fifth bolt vaporized the top off the other pine my tarp was tied to.

Somehow, Edvard Munch peered into the future, to the

shores of the Housatonic River, for his inspiration when he painted “The Scream,” for I’m certain that’s the form my visage took as yet another round of blackened mulch fell atop my tarp. Matter of fact, I believe I sported “The Scream” expression for some weeks following.

When the storm passed, the homely schoolteacher slowly emerged from her tent, almost as shaken as I was. All she could see in my direction was a partially collapsed orange tarp, with two boot-clad feet sticking out, toes pointed skyward. “You dead?” she asked, very, very tentatively. “I don’t know,” I answered. “Is this heaven?”

“No,” she chuckled, “it’s Connecticut.”

She suddenly seemed beautiful.

So, what was Zeus thinking during that squall? I had spurned what was probably a perfectly sincere invite from the homely schoolteacher to share her shelter during a frightful storm, an invite probably based upon primordial genetic encoding that makes terror easier to cope with when you huddle close to a member of your own kind, in this case, another stinky AT thru-hiker. Yet I had spurned that invite because I wondered if there weren’t perhaps ulterior motives at play. I made a probably unfair pre-judgment, and that pre-judgment was further contaminated by my utter inability to look past this woman’s unfortunate appearance.

But Zeus, though peeved enough to near-bouts scare me to death, apparently did not consider such inexcusable transgressions on my part to be capital offences.

OK. Lesson learned. Next time a homely woman offers me shelter in her tent, my ass is in, face first.

2) My wife and I were in the middle of an eight-day backpacking trip, mostly along the Continental Divide Trail from Wolf Creek Pass over to Elk Park, through the heart of Colorado’s San Juans. When you’re hiking through the heart of the Rockies in the summer, it is always extremely prudent to not be, as but one random example, in the god damned middle of an endless sea of 12,000-foot exposed tundra at the exact moment that the storm front that has been obviously building up for the previous several hours settles in directly above not only yourself, but more importantly, your spouse. More to the point, though, it is important — and here I should stress that this is one of those trail truths that easily translates to non-trail life — to not get so tied up with one’s established itinerary that one fails to scrutinize, and act upon that scrutinization when appropriate, that very dark and ominous sky under which one finds oneself standing helplessly.

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According to my plan, we were supposed to be down to Weminuche Pass by lunchtime and, by god, that’s where we were going to eat our lunch, come hell, high water or risk of what would clearly amount in a court of law as wife-o-cide. Despite Gay’s trepidation, I marched us across one last exposed section of tundra, after which we would descend into the trees and the psychological salve the forest provides during a storm. With full packs and tired legs, we literally sprinted across the tundra, into the sparse foliage of the Krummholtz Zone, then down into the spruces. The trail was steep, rocky, muddy and very slippery. The going would have been treacherous under the best of circumstances, which, given the acrid smell of ozone permeating our nostrils, these assuredly weren’t.

At one point, just as I was starting to relax the teeniest little bit, I rounded a bend, just out of view of my wife, when a rogue bolt struck a tree not 50 feet in front of me. The percussion knocked me on my ass so hard there was dirt in my crack. I do not exaggerate when I say that I was separated from my bearings. I did not know my name. I did not know where I was or how I got there. Just then, Gay caught up with me and, in the nurturing, empathetic way that defines the feminine gender, she asked what the fuck I was doing taking a break at such an inopportune, to say nothing of uncomfortable, juncture. Her words scarcely registered. Hell, whatever language it was she spoke those words in scarcely registered. Then she looked at the smoldering remnants of what had been scant seconds before a healthy blue spruce and the love of my life exclaimed, “Look, that tree just got struck by lightning!”

It’s obvious what Zeus was thinking: If you’re going to tempt fate, make absolutely certain that your spouse is not in the line of fire with you.

But there was another, perhaps less-obvious, lesson I think Zeus was trying to drive home by way of that near-miss. That very day was our tenth anniversary, and the place we ended up camping (as per my writ-in-stone itinerary, I would point out) was one of the most wonderful we have ever visited, and we have visited beaucoup wonderful places over the years. The wildflowers were in the height of bloom, and every inhalation was a veritable interface with a perfumerie. Though we of course did not know this before the fact, had we not dashed through the heart of that storm, we would not have arrived at the best anniversary spot any couple has ever in the history of marriage enjoyed. I think Zeus was trying to drive home the point that, sometimes one ought to tempt fate. And, if you make it to the other side, the rewards are often well worth the fear factor. Of course, that’s easy to say when catastrophe was not part of the post-experience rumination.

But Zeus stayed with me on this one for several decades. I have passed that blue spruce twice since I was knocked on my keister there in the middle of the trail. I have pointed it out to people who have heard the story. I have shown those people where I was rendered even more senseless than I am usually. That spruce has long since begun the inevitable process of decomposition. A week before these words hit print, Gay and I will have celebrated our 29th anniversary. Lot of water under the adventure bridge. But it has been a long time since we last sprinted through the tundra during a storm. Our life together has become borderline sedentary. I cannot help but wonder if we too have not begun the process of inevitable decomposition. Maybe it’s time to go back out into the storm.

3) I once hiked the 850-mile Arizona Trail from the Utah border to the Mexican border. The very night before I commenced that on-foot journey, I camped near Jacob Lake with my late dog Cali. The weather had been so intense that the nearby town of Kanab, Utah, had received in one three-week period in August more precipitation than it had ever received a single year in its entire history. That was the year 15 people got swept to their deaths in two flash floods in Arizona. Though I wouldn’t claim it for a fact, I’m pretty certain that earlier in the day, my truck got hit by lightning as I traveled down the highway at 80 miles per hour. I saw the flash, heard the thunder instantly, and then it felt like the back of my pick-up was raised up, like when you’re boogie-boarding and a wave passes beneath you.

Cali and I ingressed my tent just as the sun was setting. Then it came, like some shit out of the nastier, wrath-of-god sections of the Old Testament: A lightning storm like no other I’ve experienced or even heard about. After more than an hour of lying on my back, teeth-clenched so badly my jaw ached for days, I decided to start counting the flashes. I stopped at 800 — and a high percentage of those were of the multiple-simultaneous-strikes variety. The storm continued unabated for at least an hour after I stopped counting. It is no exaggeration to say that more than 2,000 strikes flashed in my immediate here and now. I came within a whisker of panicking. It was everything I could do to resist dashing out of the tent and into my truck. But I knew — I just knew — that, if I did, I would get fried. So I just stayed in my tent and had a chat with Zeus, something I only seem to do when shit’s hitting the fan.

He said nothing.

When I finally left my tent the next morning, the air was post-precipitation sweet. The birds were tweeting. My

9Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

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dog ran hither and thither enjoying the earthly aromas. And I sat on the tailgate of my truck, shaken to my core, and the only thought swirling in my head, and it swirled and swirled and would not leave, was this: I realized how much I loved my life and how blessed I was to have had the million experiences — good, bad and ugly — I have had and how it said something probably too profound for my lizard brain to comprehend, much less articulate, that, despite all those visions of the bright white light, I had come through the other side of the tunnel unscathed.

Later that day, I shouldered my too-heavy pack for the umpteenth time and started yet another long walk into the great unknown.

Zeus has been pretty mellow ever since.

About the AuthorFayhee, a long-time newspaper reporter, was a contributing editor at Backpacker magazine for more than 10 years. In 2000, along with two partners, Fayhee helped re-launch the iconic Mountain Gazette, where he worked for 13 years as editor. He also wrote Along Colorado’s Continental Divide Trail.

Fayhee lives in New Mexico’s Gila Country, where, despite his increasing decrepitude, he still gets out into the woods almost every day.

The Gila River in New Mexico, photo by Ryan Choi

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I Promise Not to Suffer: A Fool for Love Hikes the Pacific Crest Trail excerpt:

Drowning in Blueness by Gail Storey Four hundred miles long and sixty miles wide, the High Sierra was the most remote wilderness of the Pacific Crest Trail. For our two hundred miles close to the crest, there would be no roads out of this alpine winter in June, no vehicles, electric wires, telephone lines, cell phone access, or stores. Instead, we would hike through a glaciated wonderland of glittering pinnacles, jeweled lakes, and polished rock formations above the forests that made the High Sierra the Range of Light, one of the most luminous in the world.

Soon after Crabtree Meadows and a mile north of our ford of Whitney Creek, the Pacific Crest Trail joined the John Muir Trail. We hiked past solitary foxtail pines, some over 3,000 years old, with red-brown trunks and green needle clusters. We tramped past lodgepole pines foreshortened by avalanches and whitebarks blown into weird shapes by the wind. Their branches clutched at rocks, like us struggling

toward timberline. Our breath came in shorter gasps as the air thinned.

I learned new words for this strange landscape. We scrambled hundreds of feet over and around terminal and lateral moraines--piles of rocks left at the front and sides of glacier paths. We gaped down into cirques, eroded bowl-shaped cliffs encircling tarns, high green alpine lakes frozen over with aqua tints.

But it was the word “pass” that began to glow in my interior lexicon. More ominous than the “switchback” of the previous seven hundred and fifty miles, a pass was our only route between thrill and fear. All of our energies would focus on climbing and descending a succession of mountains via their narrow passes: Forester, Kearsarge, Glen, Pinchot, Mather, Muir, and Selden. Each ascent and descent had its own set of terrors. But each pass opened to the top of the world, a place to stand and touch the brilliant blue sky, survey the world beneath--white snowfields plunging down shelf by shelf into mile-deep canyons and valleys.

The only creatures we saw now were pikas and marmots, found only in climates like that of the Ice Age. We heard the squeak of a pika--a small, tailless mammal--more often than we saw one. But marmots, sunning like fat woodchucks, sat high on their haunches to get a look at us. They loved a good photo-op as much as I, they posed and vogued. “Waaaait,” one seemed to squeal from his rock, “I’m ready for my close-up.”

The silence deepened around us, until we heard the distant roar of a waterfall. I watched snowmelt pour down the mountain and hoped for a chance to redeem myself. The trail led us through one rushing stream after another. It’s just cold water, I told myself, don’t freak out. I boulder-hopped across streams where rocks broke the surface. From the bank, I planned my route by the width of my stride and the weight of my pack. Once I committed to it, it was best to keep going, rather than wobble on a sharp or mossy stone. Sometimes when I got there, the space between rocks was too wide. I had to search for another or backtrack, waver while my trekking poles sought purchase in the rocky creek bed. If the rushing current grabbed the basket of my pole, or its tip got stuck in the rocks at the bottom, I plunged in and got wet to my waist, along with my gear.

We came to a creek so deep no boulders reached the surface. All that was available was a fallen log, and I was

11Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

Brave the CDT

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still shaken from Porter’s catastrophic log-crossing a couple of days before.

“It’s all about momentum,” he said.

I watched in awe as he bounded onto one end, bounced a little to test its strength, then strode purposefully across. He was most magnificent the last few yards, when he ran and jumped to the bank.

I could straddle the log and scoot, but the bark would tear up my pants and inner thighs even if I managed to hang onto my pack as I pushed it ahead of me. So, pack on my back, I stepped up with shaky legs.

“What’s the worst that can happen, right?” I called to Porter. “I could fall off, be carried away by the current, and drown.”

“Please don’t drown,” he said.

You can do this, I told myself. I took a deep breath and inched across, one foot in line with the other. I kept my eyes on the log’s knots and bark and watched for slippery

smooth spots. I tried not to look down into the water, afraid I’d lose my balance in its flowing motion.

“You’re doing great,” Porter encouraged me from the other side. I felt him psychically will me across. The most frightening moment was the leap from the end of the log to the bank. By then I was exhausted from courage.

He braced one foot on the bank. “You’re almost there.” He reached out his hand and I grabbed it. There was a grace to it, this wilderness minuet, one we’d do over and over again. The love with which he thrust out his arm, the trust with which I took it, would become the defining gesture of our hike of the Pacific Crest Trail.

Many of the streams lacked either boulders or logs, so we had to ford them. We stopped first to take off our boots, peel off our socks to keep them dry, then put our boots back on to keep our balance and not cut our feet on the sharp, slippery rock-bottoms.

After each crossing, we paused on the other bank to pour the icy water from our boots, dry our feet, and put our

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13Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

socks back on. Our socks got soaked, so after each ford we alternated to the slightly drier pair, airing under straps on our packs. Some of the kids forded streams in rubbery sandals, but we couldn’t carry their weight and bulk.

I had no idea we’d be fording so many streams, up to twenty a day. Twenty.

“The guidebook says Tyndall Creek is ‘formidable,’” I fretted that night at our campsite.

“You’re doing fine at crossing creeks,” he said.

“More formidable than what we’ve been through?” I asked.

“We’ll ford it somehow.”

We had no alternative, this high in the High Sierra.

The next morning we pried open our socks, frozen and stiff as boards, and forced our cold feet into them. Our boots were frozen too. Even the laces were stiff, hard to tighten and tie with our freezing fingers.

After cold fords through Wallace and Wright creeks, we arrived at swollen Tyndall Creek. It looked even more dangerous than reputed. I held my breath as Porter crossed first to test the power and depth of the current.

“Undo your pack’s hip belt,” he called from the other side. “If you lose your balance in the current, shrug off your pack so its weight doesn’t drag you downstream.”

“And lose my pack?” I hollered back.

“Better than losing your life.”

Frozen on the bank, I stared into the deep rushing water.

Finally I stepped in and lurched drunkenly even with my trekking poles. Facing upstream for balance, I slowly

sidestepped across. But my foot got caught between two rocks on the uneven bottom, and the rapids knocked me down.

First there was white, the cold foam of swirling bubbles. I sputtered and gurgled, fought hard to get up, but I couldn’t. I thrashed harder, and the water gave way beneath. My legs flailed above me. I sank, butt-heavy.

I landed softly on the bottom, half-reclining on my pack. I watched my sun hat rise above me to the surface. It was bright up there, but deep down here, everything was blue. I was drowning in blueness. I bounced in the upwelling, downwelling. I slipped into a blue-shift of time running backwards. I saw my mother, leaning into a troubled smile.

But someone was parting the air. He was a shadow, head to water, leaning from the sky. I looked up through web-work under water, saw the fine lace of trees, sunlight latticed through their branches. The world was halved by sunlight.

Porter plunged in and dragged me out, body, pack, and all. I sliced the air with my icy bones. We collapsed on the rocks. Water poured from us in rivulets. A waterfall of snowmelt myself, my teeth chattered like clacking pebbles.

I sat there reeling with stillness. Inside, I felt like the river, a wider, deeper version of myself. My skin tingled from the bracing cold, my eyes opened at the brightness of everything around me. Nature, much more powerful than I, let me live.

About the AuthorGail Storey is resupplied her husband, Porter, on his CDT 2015 thru-hike, and blogged about their respective CDT adventures at http://www.gailstorey.com.

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You can’t have a cowboy story without a ‘riding off into the sunset’ photo to finish... please overlook the fact that Cristian was on foot and it was only 1.30 pm.

Cristian & Cam

The following meeting took place during my Continental Divide Trail thru hike of 2012:As I descended towards Morrison Lake, I was approached by a Latino man on horseback. He greeted me with an enthusiastic, “Hola Amigo! “Much to his surprise, I responded in Spanish. Upon suspecting that I spoke even a smidgen of his native tongue, the cowboy dismounted his horse and invited me to join him under the nearest tree for a meal and conversation.My newfound acquaintance was named Cristian. He was a shepherd from Peru.In the United States on a 12 month working visa, Cristian was employed by a nearby ranch to herd some 2,500 sheep. He spent 95% of his time alone in the hills with his flock, and not being able to speak English, conversation opportunities were few and far between.

For more than two hours we chatted about family (he is the father of two month old twins whom he is yet to meet), life in Montana and most of all about his homeland of Peru. He couldn’t believe that I had actually been to his family’s village of Chiquian, during a trip that I had made to South

America some sixteen years before.Indeed, in regards to that visit, it turned out that Cristian and I may well have run into each other back in 1996.Say again?Between the ages of 6 to 13, Cristian worked almost daily selling sweets/candy around the Chiquian plaza. The same town square upon which I spent numerous hours writing in my journal and watching the world go by during my two day stay. He would have been 11 years old at the time, and the chances are very high that he would have been doing his vending rounds whilst I was there.How cool is that?!It never ceases to amaze me what a small world we live in. A Peruvian shepherd and an Australian hiker who may well have met some 16 years before, reunited on Montana’s Continental Divide Trail!When it was eventually time to head on my way we exchanged addresses, and I offered to take his photo and email it to his family. Cristian didn’t have electricity, let alone internet access at his camp. His face immediately lit up as he

said thank you. Then he gave me a big hug.Seeing that beaming smile and hearing those heartfelt

words was one of the highlights of not only my CDT thru hike, but of the entire 12 Long Walks.It was also a timely reminder that whilst tangible considerations such as mileage, gear and logistics are all important unto themselves, it is invariably the intangible moments, the serendipitous encounters such as my meeting with Cristian, that have marked my journeys as memorable over the years.

A Peruvian Shepherd in Montana by Cam Honan

Cristian & his three companions.

Upon finishing university in 1993, Cam “Swami” Honan moved to Mexico. His intention was to spend a couple of years working, travelling and learning another language before heading home to his native Australia. Sixteen years later he still hadn’t left. To check out

more stories and musings from Cam Honan visit his blog: http://www.thehikinglife.com

15Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

Crossing Divides excerpt:

Foreword by Katie Gibson and Scott Bischke

It’s been a month since my husband Scott and I got home from another summer of hiking—this time down the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) of Colorado. We completed the Wyoming CDT last year, and now we only have to walk one more state—New Mexico—to complete the 3,100-mile trail. During this summer’s hike we had some amazing animal encounters, including seeing a herd of 150 elk running over the grassy divide, and spotting bears, coyotes, a few moose, and a badger. Our hike through Colorado often followed right along the divide ridge and took us over peaks of 13,000 and 14,000 feet.

After cancer and recurrent cancer, I feel lucky just to be alive, much less able to hike down this wonderful trail

through the Rockies. At first it was hard to accept that cancer had been thrust into my life. Once, after I was diagnosed, I walked out of a movie theater feeling happy, then suddenly remembered that I supposedly only had a short time to live. My heart sank to its lowest possible level and I felt a sense of hopelessness. There was no way to prepare for such a drastic change in my outlook on life. I wanted a reason to be happy, but the cancer acted like an anchor, weighing me down.

Some doctors suggested that I consider not having treatment because they believed my cancer could not be cured. Others advised that I pursue various treatments. There were both optimists and pessimists around me, and in the end I had to weigh all the research, opinions, and my own gut feelings in order to decide which direction I wanted to go in. That is one idea I hope you will take away from this book: You and only you are responsible for deciding your path.

Because several of the cancer books I read while exploring treatment options suggested doing visualization, I thought I would give it a try. One day I visualized myself getting well—I saw all of the cancer cells dying, my body’s health taking over, and visualized myself completely healthy again. All of a sudden I felt a wave of freedom, as though I could actually do something about getting well. The something I could do was to believe in the possibility that I could get well. After that realization I felt so much happier. I decided that living with possibility was better than living without hope.

Scott and I received a lot of support from the people around us. The doctors and nurses who took care of me during cancer treatments acted in truly kind ways. Our friends spoke to us from their hearts, making us feel loved. Our family members visited regularly and checked on us to see if we were okay. All of these things helped us to be strong. Scott was in this with me from day one. He never spoke in a way that separated him from my medical problems. He always assumed that cancer was his problem to solve, too. I felt his incredible support and that he was part of the ups and downs with me. (Although I do admit feeling some jealousy when he got to go out for Mexican food at dinner time and I had to stay in my hospital bed. I try not to hold it against him.)

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In our lives before cancer, Scott and I loved doing almost anything outdoors. We felt enlivened and recharged when we came home from a hike or a canoe trip or a bike ride in a beautiful place. Memories of these kinds of places provided me with a mental refuge when I was working toward getting well. In times of pain I mentally escaped to my favorite places in the outdoors—hiking in the Rockies with the sun on my back, pedaling my bicycle on a dirt road through the New Zealand bush, or sea kayaking down an awesome river in Alaska seeing bear, salmon, and seals. If I could get back outside again, I thought, breathe fresh air, and feel the warmth of the sun, I would appreciate it even more than I ever had before.

People get their strength in many different ways. Sometimes remembering a great experience, thinking of a peaceful place, or dreaming of how you’d like things to be in the future can make you feel better. I hope that you will find your own dream to hold on to and that this dream will help you get through treatment and on to living.

It was a blessing that we were able to hike down the Continental Divide Trail of Montana after my cancer experience. The hiking parts of this story show the joy (and sometimes exhaustion) we felt as we made our way through Montana. In the first few days we were in awe of just being out there. After a couple of bear encounters we felt fear and questioned why we were there. Maybe it sounds crazy for us to have spent years getting me well from cancer, only to go out into grizzly bear country. But we wanted to be back in the wild country that I dreamed of when things were at their worst.

So many events and emotions are tied up together in my cancer experience over the last nine years. I want to share that experience in an effort to help others, especially those who might be dealing with cancer or supporting someone with cancer. You may feel hopelessness, fear, impatience, and anxiety over your treatment, as I did. Please know you’re not alone. In the story that follows, Scott shares our emotions and dreams; perhaps you will relate to them. Scott tells our story carefully, at times humorously, reflecting as closely as possible what happened. He shares his thoughts and feelings through the story and weaves in mine. My hope is that reading about our experience will help you better deal with how cancer has affected your life.

When battling cancer, I wished for a simple set of rules to live by, but there were none. I had to find my own path, and I continue to do so today. I wish I could hand you a recipe for getting well, but I can’t. What I can do is, with Scott, share our story in hopes that you will find similarities to your own situation and somehow gain hope and inspiration. My biggest hope is for you to be

empowered to find out the information you need, to make decisions as best you can, and to not be afraid.

I realized during my cancer experience that each of us has a hundred times more strength than we realize. This strength helps us get through seemingly impossible moments. May you find this strength and use it to guide you along your path to well-being.

About the AuthorsCrossing Divides speaks to two defining events in Kate Gibson and Scott Bischke’s life. The first, Kate’s recurrent cancer, continues to be a focus of the life we live, and to provide the limitations and opportunities we are blessed to live within. The second, long distance hiking, walking 800+ miles across Montana, was a direct outgrowth of

our desire to live substantial lives again once the moment-by-moment ravages of cancer had abided. The book has been an incredible rallying point for us, a way for Kate and me to meet and talk with others fighting to live on in the face of cancer. And we have continued to hike, completing the full Continental Divide Trail now from Canada to Mexico, working on the Pacific Crest Trail, and building almost every time of travel we have--be it Down Under, Europe, England, South America, and beyond--around a long distance backpack trip.

Scott Bischke and Kate Gibson live in Bozeman, Montana. Scott has published four books (with two more in the works!), all of which are available on Amazon.

Visit Scott’s website at http://www.emountainworks.com/scottbischke for photos, book descriptions, blogs, videos, and more!

17Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

Trail Dogs by Francis Tapon

I’ve finished walking the Continental Divide Trail (CDT) in New Mexico. The trail lives on the extremes:• It’s either incredibly obvious (a dirt road) or completely

non-existent!• Its water is also extreme: the water is either perfect

(e.g., from a well/windmill) or most foul (e.g., I’ve found water tanks with cow feces floating, fishes swimming, algae growing out of control, and even a decomposing bird).

• The weather is also extreme: either very windy or incredibly windy!

I’ve walked across New Mexico in less than a month, been snowed on three times, and now I’m in Colorado. I’ll share my most memorable story from New Mexico.

A tale of two DogsAfter leaving Cuba, New Mexico, I stopped by the Circle A Ranch at 7 a.m. Although the hostel was still not open for season, one of the workers was outside. It had snowed the night before and the entire town was covered in snow.

Snow obscured the trail, so I asked caretaker for directions. After he told me where to go, I set off to climb 1,000 meters

to the summit of the San Pedro Mountains (about 10,500 feet). Just as I left him, two dogs started following me. One was dark brown with black hair and looked like a husky Dalmatian (white and black spots).

“Are these two dogs going to follow me?” I asked the caretaker.

“Oh no they won’t,” the caretaker assured me. “They’ll walk with you for a little while, but they’ll eventually turn around when you go too far.”

“You sure?”

“Oh yeah.”

Having seen only day hiker in the last three weeks, I was happy to have company, even if their English was a bit

weak. The dogs led the charge through the light snow cover. They relished the walk in the winter wonderland. However, after an hour of walking, they still hadn’t left me and they were as enthusiastic as ever to walk with me to Canada. I yelled, “Allez de nouveau à

votre maison!” They didn’t speak French either.

After another hour of hiking and with fresh snow beginning to fall, I had enough. I love dogs and I wish I could take them with me, but I didn’t want the responsibility of caring for them. I turned to them and yelled profanities and screamed, “Go home! Find your own pack! You’re not my posse! You’re fired!!!!”

The verbal abuse seemed to work. Their tails stopped wagging and their ears drooped. I felt terrible being such a brute, but I was worried about the deteriorating conditions and that we were getting too far from their home. The snow levels kept rising as we gained altitude. I was knee-deep in snow in my Inov-8 running shoes and thin liner socks. I was wearing all my clothes: a GoLite Drimove T-shirt and a 3oz GoLite Ether Wind Jacket. I was carrying a GoLite Chrome Dome umbrella though. All this is not exactly winter gear. I must have looked funny climbing up a mountain in a snowstorm with an umbrella.

This was dangerous enough for me and I didn’t want to endanger the dogs. I left the dogs behind.

I had hiked two hours without the dogs as the snowy blizzard continued. I reached a summit of one of the 10,500 foot San Pedro Mountains. The winds were disagreeable. The visibility was about five meters. I hadn’t seen the trail since I left the

Circle A ranch, four hours ago. I was simply slogging through the snow, heading northeast, figuring it would

Zelda (left) and Red posed for me in the snow, eagerly awaiting my direction

Zelda and Red

Zelda sloshing through the snow

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take over the mountain range. Then I turned around and couldn’t believe my eyes.

The same two dogs, that I had last seen two hours before, sheepishly reached the summit. They trudged through the snow and avoided eye contact with me. They had a meek attitude, looked around, and gave me the impression of, “Gee, nice day for hike, no? Hey! Look! It’s that same guy that we were walking with two hours ago! What a coincidence!”

I stared at them, but they didn’t look at me - they knew they were so busted. But what could I do? We were four hours from the Circle A Ranch, I had yet to see the trail, my tracks were getting covered by the continuing snowfall, and I was halfway through the mountain range. Like it or not, the dogs were now my responsibility.

I’m not sure why they had followed me two hours after I had left them. Three possibilities:

1) They were more lost than I was. Although they would pee and leave their marks throughout the walk, I’m not sure if they knew how to get home. They followed me hoping for salvation.

2) They came back to protect me. At the beginning of the hike the dark dog (I called Chocolate) would be in front of me and the white/black one (I called Salt & Pepper) would walk behind me. Sandwiched between them, I felt like they were trying to protect me at times.

3) They were out for a joyride. They had no fear of hypothermia or the dangers of the mountains. They just followed me because it’s more fun than hanging out back at the ranch! “Let’s play in the snow!” they thought. “Woo-hoo! Road trip!”

Whatever their true motivation was, they were my dogs now. I was determined to get them back to their owner safely.

“Are you guys hungry?” I asked the dogs.

They wagged their tails excitedly. Surprisingly, I wasn’t carrying any dog food with me. I threw some trail mix on the snow. They eagerly devoured the nuts and M&Ms.

“Maybe you guys are thru-hikers after all…” I told them.

By now I was clearly the Alpha Male of the pack. The dog I called Chocolate no longer led through the snow. Both dogs followed my deep footprints. At times I

would turn around and just see their heads peeking out of the snow. They seemed to be swimming through the accumulating snow.

Salt & Pepper never took the lead; she faithfully followed me. Occasionally Chocolate would boldly lead if he could tell that I was consistently hugging the contour of a mountain on a northeast bearing. But whenever the terrain got tricky, he would get behind me and follow my lead. Twice we encountered bear tracks in the snow and the dogs sniffed and followed them until I yelled, “C’mon you idiots! That bear will kick your ass! Get back here!”

Finally at 3 p.m. the snow stopped falling. However, I had yet to see a sign of the trail thanks to five feet of snow cover. I did find a creek heading north, so we followed it, figuring it should take us down the mountain in the right direction. As the sun set, my goal was to get low enough so that the dogs didn’t have to sleep on snow, which could lead to frostbite on their paws or even death.

At 6 p.m., after nearly 12 hours of stomping through heavy snow, we had descended to 8,000 feet and found a trail sign next to a forest service road! We were saved! I screamed in triumph! I hugged the dogs and they shared my excitement by vigorously rubbing against me and wagging their short tails. They probably didn’t know why I was so happy, but they were just happy that I was so happy.

We hiked a bit more to find a snow free piece of dirt under a tree. “Guys, this will be our home for the night. OK?”

They stared at me, trying to understand me. I set up my 3.5oz Mountain Laurel Designs tarp that I had brought “just in case it rains” in New Mexico. I never expected it to provide protection against snowfall. Meanwhile, the dogs scouted the campsite area, peeing everywhere to establish their new territory. Once in my sleeping bag, I opened a jar of peanut butter, scooped up a big helping with my finger, and yelled out, “Hey guys! Dinner time!!!”

They ran over and started licking the peanut butter off my fingers with great gusto. One finger for Chocolate, one for Salt & Pepper. Soon they had consumed over half my jar.

Their thick coats were soaking wet from the snow and their hair fibers were freezing in place as the temps continued to fall. I rubbed them vigorously with my MSR PackTowl and invited them to sleep at my feet under my tarp, but they preferred to rest a few feet from my head.

I wished my loyal companions a good night: “It’s going to be a cold night folks! Wake me up if you need anything or get chilly. Keep watch and I’ll see you at sunrise! Tomorrow, you’re going home!”

Soon I heard the dogs snoring.

I fed them trail mix during the snow storm. They gobbled it up.

19Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

At sunrise I was relieved to see the dogs still breathing. I got up and they sprang up with an excitement in their eyes that said, “This is fun! Where are going today?!?!”

I checked their paws and they were in good shape, no frostbite. I knelt next to them and put my hands on their heads and said, “Fellas, you’re going home today. We’re taking this forest service road down till we find civilization. Then I’m calling your owners so you can get back home. Sound good?”

They licked their chops.

For their breakfast I threw some Bob’s Red Mill granola on my plastic groundsheet. The dogs preferred eating it off the dirt.

I told them, “You must have been thru-hikers in a previous life…”

The sun finally came out by the time we came to the tiny hamlet called Gallina. I knocked on the door of a mobile home. A robust and kind man named Roberto answered. He let me use this phone and two hours later the Circle A Ranch owner showed up. She was grateful that her pooches had fared well. She said she was going to “kill” the caretaker for telling me that the dogs would only follow me so far.

The dogs resisted getting into the truck. The owner put a muzzle on Chocolate fearing that he would snap when she forced him into the truck. I had to get into the truck to encourage both dogs to get in and stay put.

I hugged and kissed these beloved dogs goodbye. They licked my dirty face. I whispered to them, “Don’t worry, I’ll be back in October.”

I waved goodbye to the truck. The dogs stared at me through the truck’s windows as they drove away.

Their sad eyes communicated everything.

I miss them too.

About the AuthorFrancis Tapon is an author, global nomad, and public speaker. He has walked across America four times via its three major mountain ranges. He also walked across Spain twice. Perhaps his most notable accomplishment was that he was the first person to do a round-trip backpacking the Continental Divide Trail. In addition, he

thru-hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and Appalachian Trail southbound. You can read more from Fancis Tapon at: http://francistapon.com/Travels/Continental-Divide-Trail

Are you a CDT thru hiker?Section hikers and thru hikers who complete the CDT can report their journey to the Continental Divide Trail Coalition by filling out the Continental Divide Trail Completion Form. Those who complete the CDT can report their adventure along the CDT will be added to our official completion list and will receive a certificate of recognition and a CDT Patch. Also, each year’s thru hiker roster is published in the Passages newsletter. In order to be included in the magazine, regardless of the year of completion, applications must be sent to CDTC by December 31st of the current year.

Link to Completion Form2015 CDT Northbounders

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Short Stories from Long Trails excerpt:

A Day to Remember by Justin Lichter

The day started out just like any other day. I woke up at 4:30 AM, ate breakfast, packed up my tent and my backpack, and started walking. The morning light was still a few hours away but with the cool air and scarcity of water, I had to take advantage of this time of day. Finally the sun came up over the tall grass and the flat savannah, so I hiked a bit farther by map and compass and then decided to take a little snack break. I was about 1,500 miles (2,400 kilometers) into my solo hike southbound across Africa. I had already hiked across Ethiopia and was almost to the Kenya/Tanzania border. The scenery and terrain was changing, like it had done several times on my trip. It was sort of like being in the San Diego Wild Animal Park, but without the park aspect. The animals were wild, and I was a visitor on their turf. In two days I had seen water buffalo,

giraffes, gazelles, okapi (a big grazer with spiral-shaped horns), serval (a cheetah-like feline but a little smaller), and some other animals that I couldn’t even identify. I wasn’t afraid of them, though. After gawking at me, the locals had told me in broken English and hand gestures that the animals I really needed to watch out for were elephants (their number one fear), lions, and solo buffalo. The locals never go out anywhere alone without a spear or machete and never leave their homes at night. I was completely unarmed, alone, and walked in the dark. The locals thought I was crazy.

Before long, I spotted a family of elephants that had moved a bit close to me while I was taking a break. I started to alter my direction to walk around them and give them a safe distance. Apparently they thought I was a little too close. One of the elephants charged at me. I took off but I could feel the ground shake with each thunderous step. I started to run in zigzags like the locals told me (because of their size, elephants can’t make quick turns). The elephant was still gaining on me when I made my second quick cut at one of the zigs. I didn’t notice at first that there was a lion sleeping in the tall grass. I spooked him and he sprinted off to the left. I cut back right and looked back over my shoulder to see the elephant had decided to charge after the lion instead of me. I ran to a safe distance and stood there to catch my breath, adrenaline rushing through my body. From there I could see the elephant defending its family and chasing off the lion. I made a wider girth around the elephants and the lion, realizing that I was very lucky to have survived and been able to witness this firsthand. I hoped, though, not to experience that again.

I continued walking and saw more buffalo, gazelle, a leopard, and hippos, but was fortunate to avoid any major excitement. I kept thinking about the elephants and the lions and how lucky I was to be alive.

I don’t know how many times I replayed the memory in my head in the remaining hours of the day, but the hours passed uneventfully as I kept walking. As the sun set, I pitched my tent in the tall grass and made dinner. I read for about an hour in my tent and then decided to look outside before I went to sleep. I shined my battery-starved headlamp around. A large female lion was sitting in the grass about 30 feet (9 meters) away, directly in front of me.

21Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

Oh crap, I said to myself. I began yelling and shining my light to try to scare it away, but it just kept staring at me unmoved. I then shined my flashlight along the tall grass around me. I stopped at something moving slowly behind me and about 35 feet (10 meters) away. Another female lion was stealthily creeping up behind me through the grass. They were hunting me, I realized.

I grabbed my trekking poles that were lying next to me and started screaming and banging my poles and trying to act intimidating. No response. The cat behind me was creeping closer. I continued yelling and banging and shaking my tent. It wasn’t working. She kept creeping closer, until she was sitting right in front of me. I grabbed my camera and tried to use the flash to scare them. Nothing. The lion was now coming up from behind and only a few feet to my left. It turned its head to the right and glared at me while it walked past me. I could see its huge canine teeth and the strong muscles contracting in its hindquarters. Then about four feet in front of me, it turned and walked directly past me. I tried to flash it again with the camera (which resulted in a pretty crazy lion photo), but the lions were still completely unfazed. Lions are the king of the jungle for a reason. It continued to walk past me until it turned and walked away. The other lion watched for a moment and then decided to join her hunting partner. I don’t know what happened and why they decided to spare me, but I am not complaining.

I didn’t sleep at all that night and decided to change my plans and leave the area after that. My intended route continued and headed into more game reserves, where there would be even more animals. On my hike to the nearest road, I saw those same lions eating a buffalo that

they had taken down sometime after they had visited by my tent. While I laid awake and restless the rest of the night I came up with a few ideas about the lion’s choice of meat. Maybe they were curious what the heck I was in the middle of their savannah. They may have decided that I was too skinny and not even worth the effort to kill; they would all be fighting over what meager meat I had on my bones. They realized (or knew?) that human meat probably wasn’t as tasty as buffalo meat, perhaps. They may have initially thought that I was an injured elephant. I don’t know how good their eyesight is, but maybe they thought I was bigger than I am because I was standing in the vestibule of the tent and they thought the tent was part of my body. Because I didn’t run, unlike every other animal that gets stalked by lions, I might have thrown them for a loop. I think I just got lucky, and it wasn’t my time to go. No matter the reason, I sure am glad to live to tell the story.

About the AuthorJustin grew up in Bri ar cliff, NY, about an hour north of New York City. After col lege he quickly shunned the tra di tional career path and lived in south ern Ver mont, Dil lon, CO, and Truc kee, CA, as he fol lowed snow and his pas sion for ski ing. When he is not hik ing, he works as a ski patroller. Recre ation-ally he enjoys back country ski ing,

Nordic ski ing, snow shoe ing, moun tain bik ing, surfi ng and any thing else active and outdoors.

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Thoughts on Life in the Hills of Cochetopa: Lake City to Salida by Chilton Tippin

We camped the first night on a ridge near San Luis Pass with a plan to wake and hike the mountain.

My alarm went off at 4:30 but I was already awake. We ditched our packs, left our tents standing, pocketed granola bars and departed in darkness for San Luis Peak – a side trip, right off the divide, a snowy cap at 14,014 feet.

The night before, we had the discussion.

“We’re right here, camped right at the base of the ridge,” I said. “There’s no way I’m not bagging that 14er.”

Toast and Chimi were of a like mind. Chimi suggested hitting the peak before sunrise. So that’s what we did.

We walked a long ridge of broken rock called talus under a sky Chimi described as cobalt. I was the last one to the top. There, we stood in the cold and admired the sunrise.

“Sunset is easy,” Chimi remarked. “Sunrise, you have to work for.”

The high snowy San Juan Peaks – the ones we labored to walk through over the past few weeks – were lit behind us in a pinkish glow. To the east, the sun splintered in violent orange and red off mountains I could not name.

“I think this is my first sunrise on a mountaintop,” I told my friends. “It’s absolutely beautiful.”

From the top of the world we descended, down and down, dropping below 10,000 feet on good tread into the Cochetopa Hills – a chain of upland hills which bridge the La Garita Mountains with the Sawatch Range.

We stopped for a break at 10 a.m. and checked our mileage.

“We’ve already done 14 miles,” Delightful said.

This news was astonishing.

Before, while we were in the snow, we fought like dogs to get 11 miles before nightfall. The snowplowing undoubtedly conditioned us. When I started the hike, I weighed 155 pounds. I was in decent shape, too. I weighed myself in Lake City. I’m down to 139 pounds, according to that specious scale.

When I told this to Chimi, he said, “You’re like a 10-year-old boy.”

“I’m going to have to start shopping at the Baby Gap,” I said. “And if this keeps up I might even check out the Oshkosh.”

Every day I roll the band of my shorts to keep them from sliding off my hips. All of it is really quite ridiculous.

I attribute the weight loss to my body battling the cold in the San Juans, as well as the relentless postholing – a full-body workout that involves wrenching your lower body out of snow pockets as deep as wells to China. Okay. That’s hyperbole. But you get it.

“Football coaches in the off season should tell their teams to go postholing up mountains,” Chimi told me.

For this section of trail, however, we were mostly out of the snow.

We walked in the range of 25 miles a day – just throwing down marathons on top of marathons. It’s amazing the

23Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

adaptations your body can make in the midst of a thru-hike. Some hikers even do 30s and 40s regularly. My style, however, is to go slower, take lots of breaks, sit around and swat mosquitoes in the shade as I admire sweeping views of America. If I tried to walk 30 and 40 miles, it would hurt too much. I’m a crybaby like that. I’d probably need my mommy and my favorite blankey.

For much of this leg, the trail traced alongside Cochetopa Creek, which ran through a valley with the biggest aspen groves I’ve ever seen in my life. We saw butterflies light on wild irises. We rambled in and out of forests and pastures on Sergeant’s Mesa. The Mountains of the snowy Sawatch Range stood in the distance amid a haze. They looked like sheeted ghosts.

These were languid summer days – hot and long and lovely – like the days of June when you sit by a stream and talk to friends or read a book. Let the breeze circulate and bugs crawl around on your arms.

At night in our tents – or cowboy camped beneath the stars – the song of the wood thrush lulled us to sleep.

“It has a flute-like song,” Maine Man said of the wood thrush. “It usually comes out right around nightfall. It’s one of my favorites.”

I decided, while walking, that I’m afflicted with a great physical and mental restlessness, almost an agitation, really, which can be sated solely by strenuous mountain walks, writing, and admiration of things pretty. The key is the movement in combination with the beauty. It makes me extraordinarily happy. In the mountains, you can daydream for days, lost in a reverie so complete you are unaware of all that surrounds you, lost in the woods of the world, of the mind – yet still the surroundings seep in, if not through osmosis, then by the sounds of the riffle run or the rolling thunder or the aspen leaves quaking; or even the brush of the wind against your skin.

The reverie is healthy – a delight. How could it not be? There is no doubt in my mind, the thin mountain air – breathing it – pumps life and vitality into a deflated soul. I for one would be a hopeless madman without it. And besides … the prospect of a morning adventure to a mountain lake is about the only force powerful enough to keep me from the bar.

When we camped in alpine tundra I found my favorite flower. The Alpine Forget-Me-Not. Royal blue. Smaller than a shirt button. Tiny clumps of beauty in stark rocky environs. And a poetical name to boot. I try to avoid stepping on them or pitching my tent upon them. I think of it as the most infinitesimal way to uphold Aldo Leopold’s land ethic, which is:

“A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.”

The trail took us to Monarch Pass, a hundred-mile walk in five days. We hitched a ride from the pass into Salida, a ride which took about an hour to get. Maine Man and Delightful stood at the road – beaming faces, thumbs extended. I went to the little store and got shot down time and again as I asked nicely for lifts to town. I felt like a beaten salesman. But we got here, and the people who gave us a ride were nice.

24

Whenever I get to town I always feel downright triumphant, and within the group there is a general sense of bonhomie, so we celebrate, and I sometimes tend to celebrate hard. Not always, but sometimes. And. Well. I’m ready to admit I got a little carried away in Salida. A celebration of what? … Well, living, of course.

Sometimes life deals you a hand of cards such that you find yourself dancing with a beer in the midnight streets in front of a cop car. This is risky business. We all know some police, depending on mood, can be a bit overzealous to give tourists a tour of the jailhouse. And I’ve seen the insides of those places. They’re either boring as hell or full of drunk and dangerous people. Always uncomfortable. Usually cold, dirty, rank and expensive. They’re places to be avoided, in other words. Places where freedom is removed. In fact, jail may well be the antithesis to this whole walk, actually, which is epitomized in almost absolute freedom.

In my mind, at least.

Anyhow.

This particular officer must have been either nice or reasonable and besides I made the smart decision anyway, after a bunch of dumb ones, locked it up, went home, ate someone’s pizza out of the hostel refrigerator, woke up the next morning in my bed in my hiking shorts.

I feel bad about eating the pizza. The rest of it I’m okay with.

I hope by now you don’t think I’m a degenerate. But it’s impossible to control how people think about you, anyway.

The best I can do is just be honest. At least be honest and truthful and genuine, I tell myself. And I hope the theme here is more along the lines of living, not just carousing, because living is what I’m trying really hard to do. Not just surviving, mind you, but living – passionately and fully. Because one day I am going to die and the truth of it is the lack of life – the void of life, the absence of it – is sad and scary. When you love it so much. But the other side of the coin is dying puts the emphasis on living – now.

Where were we?

Where are you?

About the AuthorChilton was born in El Paso, TX. He has got four brothers, two step, two blood, all younger, all taller. As youths, they made a living of raising hell. He spent much time in the Sacramento Mountains near a town called Cloudcroft. Then went away to TCU, drank too much beer, traveled to many

places, studied in the Galapagos, tried to learn the meaning of life, tried to push over the Great Wall of China, and failed on both accounts. He succeeded, though, in eating a scorpion. He think it gave him secret powers.

He’s 27. And. Well. He supposes these are the things he thinks are good to know about people, and so those are the good things to know about him. If you find that boring, the rest is worse, trust him, and you’re probably better off investigating other Internet rabbit holes. To read more from Chilton’s 2015 CDT Thru Hike, check out his blog: http://chiltontippin.com

25Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

A Long Way from Nowhere excerpt:

New Mexico by Matt and Julie Urbanski

Our trees from the day out of Winston disappeared by the next afternoon and we faced a two-tone colored landscape, blue skies sitting atop brown land that stretched for miles in front of us. Such wide open expanses made it easy to spot wildlife, including herds of cows, elk, and antelope. It was fairly amazing that elk and antelope had already become commonplace in our lives, herds of them running past us at times and many more of them visible as silhouettes on the horizon at dawn and dusk.

We didn’t encounter our next water source until early afternoon that day and the source was a mile and a half from the trail. There weren’t any sources for another seventeen miles and it had already been thirty miles since town.

Matt volunteered to run with an empty pack to the water source, a windmill that was reported online as a good source by a

previous hiker. As he took off running down a dirt road, in a wide open expanse with nothing but sagebrush dotting the scenery under the hot sun, I saw him stop about 200 yards later. A herd of antelope had nearly run into him and they too all stopped in unison to stare at Matt, staring right back at them. I wasn’t sure if it was a standoff or a bit of astonishment from both sides and I saw Matt slowly start running once again, the opposite direction the antelope had been heading, and soon they too took off. When Matt returned from the windmill, he was thrilled to have had that moment with the antelope, when the common denominator of running brought them together. He was also thrilled with the water source and brought back enough water for drinking and for washing our clothes. We both performed the rinse, wash, and rinse cycles on our spare set of clothing in a Ziploc, including a t-shirt, running shorts, and running socks. By the time we finished, the water was dark brown.

If yesterday’s trail was forgiving of our pack weight with good tread, the rest of this day seemed to punish us for enjoying it. Once we left easy dirt road walking, we cairn hunted for the rest of the day, mainly walking on the spine of the Divide over rocky, uneven terrain. From afar it looked like we traversed smooth, rolling hills, and yet up close we maneuvered over clumpy grass and patches of sharp rocks. It was hard to keep up a good pace and it took so much more effort than normal, especially in the shadeless, open expanse of windswept terrain, revealing nothing more than an occasional leaning tree or a barbed wire fence.

Looking back, I stayed amazingly positive through that section and even moved relatively fast, as Matt had a hard time keeping up. Neither of us could look around for long, for fear of falling on such technical terrain, but when I did stop to look around and take in the views, the immensity of the land around me, it’s simplicity from afar and ruggedness up close, was overwhelmingly beautiful and harsh, all at the same time. I felt special for having such a unique view of New Mexico, a state I doubted was high on many tourists’ lists, and yet I felt a strong respect for my surroundings, knowing how unforgiving such desolate, dry terrain could be.

We finished the day near our second water source since Winston, forty-seven miles out of town, Batton Pond. I still shiver when I say its name, picturing its lime green water, with hoof marks and cow shit surrounding the shore of the pond, and hair floating on top of the water. We had no other choice but to drink it, as we had another fifteen miles until the next water. The strangest and perhaps the grossest aspect of the water? It tasted like iced tea. I didn’t like iced tea before the trail and I am strongly opposed to it now because I’m so scarred from that water source.

We walked another two miles on a dirt road after the pond, trying to distance ourselves from the water source before dusk settled in. We assumed we weren’t the only creatures counting on that water source, considering a deer had been in the shadows by the pond while we were there, waiting for us to leave before taking its turn in drinking the green tea water. Just for safe measures, we hung our food in a nearby tree since we were near water and among trees once again.

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Sometimes when I look back on a day on the trail I think, “Man, that was an epic day. I didn’t know what was coming and I’m glad I didn’t, because I would have been scared to get through it.”

The next two days were such days.

Matt woke up and almost immediately had to poop. Once he had to poop, nothing else mattered and he had about thirty seconds to dig a hole because his body never waited. It released its contents no matter what he wanted; it’s been an issue in the past and he’s pooped in some interesting places because of it.

That morning, he kind of didn’t make it. He barely got ten feet from the tent before he had to hurry and drop his pants, only to look down and see that he was pooping on his pants.

“Ah, man! I just shit all over myself !” he yelled as he continued pooping, because once he started, he also couldn’t stop.

“Don’t worry, we’ll clean up your pants,” I assured him, having no idea when we’d actually do that with the lack of water coming up.

That was strike one for Matt.

After pooping, he got back in the tent to put in his contacts and moaned in agony over all the little particles of dirt that inevitably transferred from his fingers to his contacts. Even after using a baby wipe to clean his hands, he still got dirt in his contacts.

“I’m lying back down and starting this day over,” he grumbled from inside the tent.

“Ok,” I said calmly. I had plenty to do with taking down the bear bag and packing up my stuff, so I just continued my morning as he tried to gather himself and get out of his grumpy mood.

The first half of the day was rough. We mainly followed the spine of the Divide, with little to no trail as we made our way up and down short, steep ascents and descents. The footing was again over clumpy grass and sharp rocks, working in and out of thick patches of trees, and we tried our best to seek out cairns in the distance and to use the GPS to locate waypoints. We were getting better at looking up to find the cairns at the same time of walking over tricky terrain, being careful to avoid falling but cognizant of the need to keep moving, feeling like open-water swimmers that had to keep swimming while sighting buoys in the water ahead. Sometimes, seemingly out of

nowhere, there was a CDT sign in a tree, leaving us feeling relieved that we were on the right track. Several times we got turned around in the process, often following a cow path if we couldn’t see a cairn, only to find ourselves deep in a patch of trees or thick brush, further away from any waypoint. Rather than backtrack we’d simply head straight to the next waypoint, bushwhacking over blow downs and overgrowth in the process to find the “trail” again. It was an exhausting process and made us all the more grateful for real trail.

That afternoon, we looked down from the side of the trail to see a cabin in the distance, about a quarter mile from the trail down a steep slope. Matt went down with an empty pack to get water, only to come back up fifteen minutes later with an equally empty pack.

“No water?” I asked.

“There’s water alright, but there’s also lunch. RB, the guy who lives there, said that we’re both invited to lunch before we leave and he wasn’t taking ‘No’ for an answer,” Matt explained.

I could tell there was no arguing so we packed up our stuff and headed back downhill towards the cabin. Once there, we were treated to a lunch of canned fruits and veggies alongside the instant hummus and pita chips we’d already packed. We sat and talked with RB for two hours about life in his cabin, which was built on private property, smack dab in the middle of the Gila National Forest. He recounted the story of seeing a mountain lion take down an elk, only to have a bear come and take the carcass away from the mountain lion, all in front of his large living room window, which he called his TV. He said he went months at a time without seeing another person. It was our thirteenth day on the trail and we had yet to see another hiker; it was hard to imagine going for months without a human connection.

After lunch we each carried out five liters from RB’s water, as the next source listed was nearly twenty-nine miles away and we felt confident it was a good source. The trail always had a way of giving and taking, and that afternoon it gave a little and we had real, tree-lined trail for nearly all of the day’s remaining miles. It was a continual reminder that things could change in an instant.

That evening, as we got ready for bed in the tent, Matt opened up his glasses case with a gasp.

“My glasses! They’re not in the case!” he said, startled.

27Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

We looked everywhere for them but there were only so many places they could be with us carrying such few belongings. With all the commotion of the morning, he must have taken his glasses off while he was packing up and never put them in his case. They were gone forever. This was a major blow to Matt as he was nearly blind without glasses or contacts. Though he often slept with his contacts in, it was damaging to his eyes long-term. I would have to be the eyes at night in case we had any encounters with animals or people.

The next morning was chilly. We’d camped near the top of the ridge and it had been windy all night, though we found a calm spot tucked in among trees. We started early and walked quietly on the spine of the mountain that morning, walking from cairn to cairn over patchy, rocky ground.

Ten minutes into the morning, Matt turned back to me and said in an eerily calm voice, “Julie, I think there’s a mountain lion bedded down right in front of us.”

As he said it, I looked over his shoulder and saw a large mass of an animal jump out from the side of a bush and run to the right of us, only to circle back and head up the trail in the direction we were headed, all in a matter of less than two seconds and three strides.

Since Matt was turned towards me, he didn’t see the mountain lion run. He only saw its head pop up from out of the bushes as he approached it and he knew it was a mountain lion by the way its cat-like ears perked up. We had woken it up and since we were downwind of it in fairly strong winds, it hadn’t smelled or heard us. We’d camped within a half-mile of it.

About the AuthorOriginally from Cincinnati, Ohio, Julie has traveled through much of the U.S., whether on foot, via bicycle, or in a car. She has hiked the Pacific Crest Trail, the Appalachian Trail, the Colorado Trail, and the Continental Divide Trail, and bicycled down the Pacific coast from Portland, Oregon

to the border of Mexico.

Julie and Matt currently live in Seattle, Washington. To read more about their past, current, and upcoming adventures, visit their website at http://urbyville.com.

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Married to the Trail excerpt:

Wyoming: A Test from the High Heavens by Mary “Speedstick” Moynihan

With no dominating feature to reel me in and guide me north, I strolled timelessly along the topography’s simple, subdued gestures. A 360-degree view revealed a landscape that blended into itself, a composition of simple earth tones and minute subtitles as far as the eye could see. Orange paintbrush, mariposa lily, purple larkspur and a dozen small white and yellow composite flowers lingered amongst the ubiquitous sagebrush and grass. Without any tread, and only a few rock cairns and CDT blazes, I hiked through the wide-open meadows with ease. Vastly different than the miles to the south, it is here that a gentle backbone of America exists. 

I spent all morning and the early afternoon hours in a state of bliss. Descending down from Colorado’s high-divide, I was drunk with the abundance of air and stunned by the simplicity of the world around me. It was everything I could have asked for and there wasn’t a single thing that could dampen the moment. At least that’s what I thought

before I looked back.  While seated beside the last reliable water source for the next twenty-four hours, a voluptuous cumulonimbus barreled over a nearby ridge. The heavy, dense, dark clouds released a few raindrops that quickly turned to grape sized pellets. After filling up five liters I pulled on my rain jacket, make-shift pack cover (which was nothing other than a garbage bag at that time), and walked through the featureless desert.  That storm brought a different tenor than those I’d seen over the last two weeks. It was far from the short, intermittent spurts I’d so far experienced. This was a torturous, full-bodied, aggressive storm that would make a grown man’s legs tremble. It boomed and flashed and sent electrically charged arms

flying amuck. Lightning struck at an exaggerated rate, unleashing its relentless fury and destruction on the

nearby surroundings. It struck the dirt a mere distance from my vulnerable, human flesh. Simultaneously, thunder crackled so loud I thought my eardrums would burst. I tried to focus my attention on my breathing, now heavy from a combination of hastened pace and fear. I starred at my feet trying to distract myself, but the lightning reflected into my periphery. As I walked, I started to wonder what it would feel like to die from lightning. Would it be quick? Would my body be found lying face down, backpack still clipped in around my shrunken waist? Or would it be painful as an intense, sharp strike filtered throughout my body? I picked up my pace to a near-run, just to distract my mind from the deadliness of the storm. But I knew that out there, along the gentle divide, I wouldn’t find any suitable shelter. It didn’t exist. As I ran down a jeep track surrounded by nothing other than sagebrush and grass, the lyrics from a Joe Purdy song played over and over in my mind. His warm, soul-searching voice sings, “I love the rain the most, when it stops.” I couldn’t agree with you more, Joe. I really wanted it to stop. But it wouldn’t. This storm didn’t have the predictability of those Colorado showers. This one didn’t seem to have an endpoint. The distant horizon was being terrorized by bolts of lightning too many to count. Whoever said that lightning doesn’t strike

Mary Moynihan

Hiking the Continental Divide Trail

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oynihan

The Continental Divide Trail (CDT) is a 2,700 mile trail that walks the length between the Mexico and Canada borders. It traces the Continental Divide north through five states—New  Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, Idaho and Montana. Leaving New Mexico on May 4th, 2011, Mary would begin a four-month long journey traveling the length of this trail, con-necting the dots between the two termini, and hiking through some of the most exceptional land of America. She’d travel solo much of the time, as the CDT is often more of a route than a trail. Whether solo, or in the company of the few other hikers yearning to reach the trail’s opposite termi-nus, she’d defy the elements, the obstacles and ev-erything that stood in her way in order to achieve the goal to hike the Continental Divide’s entirety.

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29Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

the same place twice needs to go stand out along the divide because it does strike twice. And sometimes it strikes several times.  A few miles later, too exhausted to continue, I gave up the hopeless search for shelter and settled for a dip in the terrain that I prayed would deter my demise. As lightning struck with a vengeance in all degrees of a compass, I wrestled my tent up in the frenzy of wind, rain, boom and flash. It was after seven when I stood outside my tent, drenched, and roaring at the top of my lungs. With the muscles in my arms tense, my temple throbbing and the rain stabbing at my face like shrapnel, I yelled words of anger and frustration until my voice was hoarse. I then crawled into my tent—which was a speck in the middle of nowhere. 

About the AuthorMary was born in Warwick, New York—in what was once a smallish upstate town along the Appalachian Trail. She didn’t grow up outdoorsy and for much of her life was just a normal kid—at least a shy one anyway. After graduating from the Art Institute of Boston with a BFA in Graphic Design, she decided to

postpone the obligatory route in which her life was headed. Instead, she left for the Appalachian Trail—solo. Having never backpacked and having only camped in her parent’s backyard, it was quite the endeavor.

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iHike excerpt:

Of Mice and Men by Lawton Grinter

There comes a point on every long hike where the will to continue no longer exists. Sometimes these moments are fleeting. Sometimes they last weeks and are enough to send you looking for the nearest Greyhound station. When things get bad, and typically it’s a mental bad in addition to a physical bad, you can convince yourself that any other possible endeavor in the world would be better than continuing your hike. Things like going back to a job you hated, going back to a significant other you left, taking that underwater basket weaving course you had previously considered pointless or any host of other aspirations that weren’t even on your radar a week ago now seem urgent.

There is much in the way of adversity on a 2,000+ mile hike, some real and some perceived. There’s heat, cold, rain, snow, humidity, ants, flies, gnats, mosquitoes, wildfires, bears, mountain lions, porcupines, skunks (yes skunks), tarantulas, scorpions, a surplus of poisonous snakes, deer flies, horse flies, black flies, yellow jackets, hornets, giardia, cryptosporidia, Montezuma’s revenge, Lyme disease, Rocky Mountain spotted fever, babesiosis, Colorado tick fever, ehrliciosis, West Nile virus, eastern equine encephalitis, plague, hantavirus, staph infections, chafing, blisters, boils, poison ivy, poison oak, poison sumac, allergies, loneliness, home sickness and a broken heart to name a few. Any one of these misfortunes usually is surmountable. The problem comes when you get multiple hardships occurring at the same time for weeks on end. They slowly chip away at you until you break.

On the Appalachian Trail in 1999, I had hiked from Georgia to Connecticut… some 1,500 miles and almost ¾ of the trail’s length and mentally I was done. It had been incredibly hot for multiple weeks - mid-90’s everyday and humidity so thick you could swim through it, like hiking through molasses. Thick, sticky, syrupy molasses. The mosquitoes were relentless and attempted to drain my blood whenever I stopped moving and stood still for more than a half second. This went on for weeks. I was lonely too. I missed my girlfriend more than I can tell you and was wondering why anyone in their right minds would voluntarily choose to be out here right now trudging up and down hillsides, swatting mosquitoes and deer flies in 96 degree heat?

On July 4th, I camped by myself at Pine Swamp Branch Lean-to, a three sided shelter in a lowly spot surrounded

by marshy vegetation somewhere in western Connecticut. The nighttime temp got down to 73. As I lay in my tent as still as possible completely in the buff hoping for any type of breeze to waft through and cool me down, I could hear the sound of fireworks going off in the distance. For hours the bang and pop of great Fourth of July celebrations rang in my ears. I had visions of cheery people standing around barbecues, stuffing their faces with smoked pork, coleslaw and potato chips while drinking from kegs of ice-cold beer. They were high-fiving their buddies and oohing and aahing over the roman candles and bottle rockets making their way skyward. And they would retire in a few hours to cool and comfortable air-conditioned homes, completely oblivious to the heat and bugs that had taken over the great outdoors where I resided.

I could do nothing but lay there and listen to the high pitched whine of half a million mosquitoes that would do anything to grow fingers with opposable thumbs to unzip my tent door and come in to dine. Why was I out here? What was I doing? Any remnant of the excitement and anticipation that I had that fateful day back in March when I set off from Springer Mountain to walk the Appalachian Trail to Maine was gone. I was well behind my self-imposed schedule by some two weeks and had been skipping town stops to try and catch up. I was trampled and beaten both physically and mentally. I was ready to quit.

The next morning I gathered my gear, packed as quickly as possible while swatting mosquitoes, and literally ran

31Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

out of Pine Swamp. By the time I reached Highway 44, I knew that I needed to do whatever I had to do to get off the trail. I needed a few days off to evaluate my decision to quit. I ran into a few AT Ridgerunners in Salisbury who agreed to give me a ride to the town of Kent. Once in Kent I called my friend “Dogman” who was also thru-hiking the AT that summer. His parents lived near Kent and he had been taking some time off to recoup at their house. Within 30 minutes he picked me up in front of the local outfitters and whisked me back to his house. I was filthy dirty and smelled like a cattle pen.

We pulled up in his driveway and I immediately noticed the sparkling clear swimming pool in his backyard. Without hesitation I shut the door to his car, walked over to the pool and jumped in with all my clothes on. The cold pool water was possibly the most refreshing thing I had ever experienced in my entire life. I spent the next three hours in the pool just sitting there soaking my body and chlorinating my vile hiker garb. I devoted the better part of the next two days to Dogman’s pool. It literally changed everything. The heat wave broke and I got back on the trail a few days later right where I had left off and hiked to Maine.

In the end I didn’t need to quit the AT. I simply wanted to because I was physically worn out by the heat and mosquitoes and had beaten myself up mentally about being behind schedule (schedules are for the workaday world and it was ridiculous that I had brought this taskmaster mentality onto the trail in the first place). I had convinced myself that I could no longer go on. All I really needed was a bit of time off… in a pool… out of the heat and the bugs. I needed some time away from the madness to regain my perspective on why I was out there. My two days at Dogman’s did exactly that and when I hit the trail again, I couldn’t help but wonder what I had made such a fuss about.

Most hikers experience some type of low point like this while hiking for months on end. It’s almost inevitable. It’s not always butterflies and rainbows. Quite the contrary. My friend “Buck-30,” a seasoned long-distance hiker, developed a rating system during his CDT thru-hike in 2005… a misery index of sorts. He concluded simply that there were six specific things that really pissed him off on the CDT:

1. Bugs

2. No Existing Trail

3. Hot Sun

4. No Water/Cow Shit Water

5. Allergies

6. Very Steep Trail

He told me that any of these by themselves or paired with one other was no big deal. Basically these things were more or less to be expected while hiking in the summer. Three of them at once meant things were getting tough, four is rough, five really pissed him off and six made him cry. And if you’re curious about the “Cow Shit Water,” well that’s exactly what he’s talking about: water sources fouled and polluted by cattle herds dumping directly into them. Sometimes that was the only water available for miles on end. Bottoms up!

The day he came up with this index, he was at the tail end of Montana on the CDT during a 2005 southbound thru-hike from Canada to Mexico. Oddly enough, I would find myself at a breaking point almost a year later at the same exact spot.

About the AuthorLawton Grinter is an author, documentary filmmaker, forester and veteran long-distance hiker having completed end-to-end hikes of the Appalachian Trail, Continental Divide Trail and two hikes of the Pacific Crest Trail. In addition to the “Big 3” he has also hiked the John Muir Trail and Colorado Trail in his 10,000+

miles of long-distance hiking since 1999. He filmed, edited and produced the trail documentary entitled “The Walkumentary” which covered his 2006 southbound Continental Divide Trail hike. He currently lives in Denver, Colorado with his wife and fellow long-distance hiker Felicia Hermosillo and their dog Gimpy. I Hike is his first book.

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33Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

Scraping Heaven excerpt:

The Great Divide Basin by Cindy Ross

Some say there is nothing in the Great Divide Basin, but I beg to differ. It's devoid of what we are used to seeing- telephone poles, electric lines, pavement, buildings, and people. There is a lot of sky and sage and wind and sunlight, and I like it this way

In central Wyoming, the Continental Divide splits to form the rims of a basin a hundred miles wide. Since the bowl is so huge and the soil so porous, all the water running into it sooner or later dries up. The dry land is vast and open; it is not entirely flat but has gentle rolling hills covered with sparse, sweet-smelling sage. Wyoming is our least inhabited state, and this Great Divide Basin is the least

inhabited place in the entire country.

During the day, we watch lizards scurry at our feet and pronghorn antelope run on the plains. No matter what direction you look you see antelope, dozens and dozens in a day. By afternoon, rain clouds build up, and off in the distance you see the rain falling through the sky in great grey sheets. But the air is so dry that it absorbs all the moisture before it ever hits the ground.

Being in this wide, open land with all this sky has a way of exposing you. This sparse country makes me feel raw and very emotional. I don't feel like myself this summer. I feel

lacking, incomplete, restless. Maybe it’s my age and the TIME of life I am in. Part of my heart is at home, and I search the landscape for answers to questions I'm not sure I have the right to ask.

…When we reach “reliable” water sources, they are usually large mud puddles that are completely overrun and trampled by cows. Bryce happily obliges as he finds a sagebrush stick, then runs and yells to chase the cows off...These puddles and pools are the kids' greatest source of fun, so we usually let them go into the larger, clearer ones and just close our eyes. They smell like cows, of course, but they don't seem to mind. We're grateful to find any water, no matter how muddy.

The kids are learning valuable lessons. They have come to love and revere pure, clean water. Sierra says that water is her best friend, followed closely by shade. To find refreshment and entertainment in a mud hole is a gift. You can't truly appreciate something until it's taken away; to our children, tall sagebrush and a mud hole are reasons for delight.

When you think of our ancestors who crossed this Great Divide before us, the problems we struggle with seem minor in comparison. We're not freezing our feet off like the Mormon handcart pushers, or burying our dead spouses and babies,or having our children carried away by Indians, or delivering babies in rickety wagons. The basin puts it in perspective.

At Independence Rock, the pioneers climbed the 136-foot bare sandstone rock that looks like the back of a

A Family’s Journey Along the Continental Divide Trail

“This is both an epic adventure of the first order and the heartwarming story

of the family who accomplished it.”

—San Francisco Chronicle

SCR APINGHEAVEN

CINDY ROSS

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great whale and carved their names in the stone. Some signatures have dates, the places they came from, their ages; they were so hopeful at that halfway point. After examining their names, I grasp my little son's hand. The wind whips our clothing and I think of those women, long skirts flapping, holding onto their bonnets and their children's hands, the wide-open desert stretching on all sides. Their hearts had to burn with longing: for a comfortable place to give birth; for something to fill the huge hole left after burying their children; for a home and a better life on the other side of the Continental Divide.

Although now this trail is empty, between 1841 and 1869 nearly half a million people followed this route across the continent. For the next dew days we will be following parts of the Oregon, Pony Express, California, and Mormon Pioneer National Historic Trails. For two thousand miles and six months these pioneers crossed prairies, forded rivers, and battled storms, Indians, mountains and sickness. They were the restless ones, the determined ones, the ones looking for a better life, and I can't get them out of my mind as I retrace their steps.

…Here in the Great Divide Basin, I'm beginning to realize it isn't who your husband is, or where you are, or what your job is, or what church, if any, you attend that will finally make you happy. Out here,we are so close to heaven that we can reach up and scrape it with our fingernails. I look down from Independence Rock at my husband and realize that heaven is under my feet as well as over my head. It's inside me and all of us. This is one of the reasons I have come to the Great Divide Basin, with all its harshness and desolation. It has made me feel. A place this big and open and devoid of man-made things rips your heart open wide- for there is no place to hide- and then it fills it back up with hope.

For the past 30+ years, Cindy has found peace, happiness, and a sublime sense of contentment while walking and cycling the endless trails that are sewn into the fabric of the North American continent.

35Passages – The Continental Divide Trail Coalition Magazine

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