CDT Day 27 (6/14/23)

Miles 582.8 (Green line 23.2)- 615.6 (Red line 732.6) (32.8 miles)

Verbatim

I saw lots of animals today! I saw Coyotes! There were three of them moving swiftly across an open field. The one arcing furthest away from me saw me first and really took off. Man they can run! They moved amidst a heard of maybe 20 cows and calves spread over an acre. The cows didn’t mind the Coyotes at all! Not even in light of the calves.

There were lots of beautiful fields on parks today. It was cool, windy, and sunny. My face feels burnt and dry despite it being a lot more comfortable than in the desert. There’s some snow above 10,000ft which is unfortunate. Snow, even in patches, is just so dang annoying.

I also saw a Stoat! I was siestaing by a tree in an alpine zone. I was reading Blood and Fire and out pops this little “mammal worm”. It was an even brown with a slender neck and tail. I had been so still reading I’m not sure it recognized me. It started making its way across the field, almost like an inchworm. It was so skinny and nimble and made these little hops. I have no idea how it could take out one of those Prairie Dogs or Chipmunks. Needless to say it was awesome, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Stoat before.

Four people and a dog walked by while I was at that siesta spot. it’s amazing how easy it is for people to fail to notice someone in bright orange sitting just 20 feet from the trail. The second group of two had a dog. A pure bred German Shepherd. The dog noticed me! I greeted it and welcomed it over and then struck up conversation with the owners Chris and Bretta(?). They were super nice. They’re from Montana but just brought some property in CO. Now they’re on a 500 mile loop of Northern New Mexico. They teach hide tanning and butchery in Montana. Apparently two 16 day long classes a year makes enough money for them each year. Crazy! They were very kind.

I also met someone named Dragon Sky today. She was very eccentric and seemed more intent on camping and smoking weed than hiking. I first saw her coming down the side of a mountain bushwhacking and claiming there was a forest road up there somewhere that was a three mile shortcut. She said she’d spent an hour looking for it. She also asked if I’d seen her headphones or bong that she dropped. She said she’d been smoking out of a tin can she found beside the trail since the loss. “It’s wild man!”.

This evening’s hiking was beautiful. It’s reminding me of the majestic biome that was the transition from CO into the WY basin (a section of the CDT I hiked in 2022). So many twinkling aspen.

(Good Morning George- Veggie Tales)

Good morning ____, how are you? I hope you’re feeling fine!

I’d love to stay and play but I gotta walk all day and it isn’t very fun..

Because we walk real far all along the CDT. I start at six and I don’t take lunch til three.

I walk the whole day through to make a mile or two, so I can get back home to my family!

I hope you’ll come and join me. We’ll walk in harmony!

We can walk all day and later we can play as we walk along the CDT!

Post Note

I’d started singing to myself. I started singing to cows. I dreamed about making friends and then singing to them each morning. Maybe I was going crazy! But, the only people I’d met were walking different walks. Dragon Sky was awesome! But, after just a mile of our journey together she was ready to take another break by the lake. She was pulling out that tin can and I had to crush miles.

I felt an immense pressure to keep moving during my hike. I like to keep moving. But I don’t want to feel like I have to keep moving. I did feel that way, however, and that kind of sucked. If I didn’t move while my backpack was light I was afraid it was going to be an insufferable weight and bulk, being full of plastic, by the time I’d made it far north into my journey. Not that sitting by a lake to smoke from a tin can was my idea of a good time. But, I definitely longed for some people to hang with. I was experiencing a lot of anger and loneliness. Having someone else to talk to and think about was a desperation I couldn’t really climb out of my mental fog to realize I was feeling. In small moments my loneliness would surface, like when I grew really tired a mile after walking with Dragon Sky. I had to sit down for lunch, and then sort of just numbly sat there. I looked at the Nutella. took a bite. looked at the gold fish. ate some. looked at the trees and thought I’d seen them before. read a bit of my book because worrying about someone else’s life, even if it’s a fiction life where dragons eat people and lords and ladies backstab, was so much more easy than my own.

I would try singing to myself to bring a smile to my face. I reworked the lyrics of a childhood tune I heard growing up to fit the CDT. I think the lyrics are a bit telling, “we can walk all day and later we can play”. I was just walking all day. It didn’t really feel like play, which it can certainly feel like. Play at the end of the day looked like writing in this journal, being thankful I was alone, and then wiping out with sleep. Also, who was this “we” I was singing about?

I was talking with Jonathan while he was home for Christmas. He shared that he worried that all my time walking was isolating me. Yeah. Thanks for seeing me Jonathan. Sometimes it really is.