CDT Day 25 (6/12/13)
Miles 526.3 (Red line 641.1)- 558.3 (Red line 673.2) (32 miles)
Verbatim
Hey! Longest day yet on trail. How bout that. Overall it was a pretty good day although the morning started off really angry. I get so angry when I —. I actually yelled “Fuck you L” in the woods this morning. I was startled, and wondered if anyone heard me.
This morning held a very gentle walk through many marshy parks at about 10,000 feet. They were flat and open and wet! Aside from the wet feet it was super enjoyable. Water flowing everywhere. Prairie birds and Chipmunks. Shade and a bit of snow. Really nice. I also started walking at 6am this morning, which certainly heralded such a long mileage day. I hope to make many more 30+’s happen this trip. It’s good to know it just sort of arrived when I walked at 6am.
The marsh water could be pretty thick with mud and debris. Some of it got inside the cavity of my blister, which I don’t like at all. This is the blister I got from a volcanic roller between my left big and index toe. I think there may be a second blister forming underneath.
I also saw a Black Bear today!
I was just walking along after encountering the most beautiful spring. I had some strawberry breakfast essentials at that spring and it was nasty... Anyways. I was walking along and boom, sixty feet away is a pretty large Black Bear crossing the trail. I had a good look at it from the side for about two seconds before it turned to face me. I said, “Hey Bear”. It whipped around the way it had come and got out of there real fast. It must have accellerated to 20mph in a matter of seconds. I could hear its thumping up the hill. It makes a different sort of sound than Elk do when they’re spooked. I saw two Elk today too! But they were just up the trail through the trees. They spotted me and ran off. I also saw three different Ptarmigan (mountain chickens). They are so funny when spooked. Their flapping makes a lot of noise!
I also met a guy named Wolf Man this evening. He got his trail name in the Sierras when he would howl like a Wolf in the evenings to help geolocate campsites with his partner. There was another hiker nearby who got so scared they packed up and hiked two miles back the way they’d come to be with other people. Later in town they learned it hadn’t been a wolf, but was instead the Wolf Man!
Post Note
Ah yes, there were many more beautiful mornings clouded by resentment, feelings of betrayal, and anger. It may not have been the first, but it certainly wasn’t the last time I would scream “Fuck you” into the woods and then wonder if I’d been heard. Which would you prefer to hear? Fuck you? Or a Wolf’s howl?
I’ll tell you right now I’d rather hear wolves in the woods than an angry human. Wolves are not dangerous. Humans are. If you, and this isn’t going to happen, were to be savagely torn apart by wolves I suggest you consider it an honor. Of all the ways to die in this world, being killed by an animal is a good one. The animal has a good reason to attack, though it’s likely built off a misunderstanding you and I aren’t likely to understand. Put simply, the animal is claiming space to live from you. That’s ok! Think of all the space we humans have claimed to live from the animals? Pretty much all of it. So yeah. I’d rather hear howling than some rando in the woods yelling obscenities. If a human attacks you it’s just assault, abuse, rape, murder. I wouldn’t hike back two miles to hide from wolves. I would definitely hike twenty miles to hide from a human.