CDT Day 55 (7/12/23)
Miles 1306.5 (Red line 1519.5)- 1325.4 (Red line 1538.4) (18.9 miles)
Verbatim
I’m sitting in Encampment at The Divide and am charging my things. It’s been a good stop here. Efficient. Although there was some worry about finding a hitch down to town this morning. The flies were biting and it sucked. I slept really well though, and that was comforting. I’m in WY now, and will be facing the basin this evening. It will be strange to come across trail I’ve previously hiked. I remember road walking out of here yester-year. It sleeted and rained on me the day after town. Then it really snowed that night in the basin. This time it will be hot and dry I think, though I hope there will be lots of water out in the basin. In the restaurant here there’s music playing I recognize from John Z’s YouTube videos. It’s putting me in the mood haha. Though, my hikes don’t feel like I would have expected them to feel after watching those videos. I like the feel of Zelda music on trail much better.
I’m writing from the evening of the 13th now. It’s been such a push to make miles towards Rawlins that I haven’t made time to write. The snow on Bridger(?) Peak was really frustrating. Not so much climbing the snow, but rather the descending. It was a road walk down the north side of the mountain for quite some way. The snow banks piled high on the road were annoying, yes, but worse was the wet and slick mud formed by the snow melt off. I fell over at one point while looking at my phone. That made me so pissed, haha. Descending the single track after the road while still in the forest was beautiful, soft underfoot, and efficient. The cross-over zone between forest and basin was filled with so many flowers! It was really stunning. The density was intense. The mosquitoes in this section, however, were murderous. I’d like to come back to this cross over zone and spend more time here, ideally when there’s weather. The fall maybe. Or spring?
I camped at about the same spot I joined the CDT last year! My perspective is so different this year, so I wasn’t able to locate the spot. I stopped to camp at 9:15. It was dark! I hope, when out in the basin, to camp later. It was nice arriving after dark. The evening hours are the best for walking. Even in Maine it is this way. And more evening walkings means longer siestas! I just need good places to siesta.
Post Note
Ah man. I remember that fall. It’s funny how you forget the generally bad, though maybe not the absolutely worst, parts of trail. This fall I could have remembered without the prompting of the journal. I was just walkin, trying to check instagram or change a song or do something stupid on my phone because I was so sick of being on trail. And then my foot went whoopsies out from under me. I tried to compensate by spinning a 180 real quick and ended up sliding around so that my side and back was pretty saturated with the wet cloying mud. It was real clay slop. I wouldn’t have fallen otherwise. I picked my head up and could see the few feet of slip and slide marks my twisting feet had left in the road. That would evidence (until some ATVer destroyed it) my mishap. A warning to following hikers perhaps. Maybe they could take some amusement out of it.
I picked up my phone, covered in mud, and tried to brush out and off the mud from the various nooks and crannies of the case and audio/charging port. That’s dangerous. My phone is my map, my lifeline, and my “this would be really frustrating and expensive to replace” item. The phone was spared, thankfully, and I got up and gooped off enough of the mud plastered to my back and side to move satisfactorily. The mud wasn’t a problem. It would dry out and flake off during the rest of the day. Turns out dirt really isn’t dirty. It’s actually quite clean I think.
Sometimes trail is just like this. It’s unavoidable. Sometimes it’s the scrapes and bruises from blowdowns. Other times it’s volcanic rock which just chews and chews at your shoes, feet, and ankles. Or it can be snow melt too, making every step swampy or sitting in large four foot high piles which you’ve got to climb over and then let yourself down into gloop from the other side on a steep descent without falling.
Oh! And an important note on mosquitoes, flowers, and cows. Did you know mosquitoes are pollinators? They’re good! It’s only the females who want your blood so they can develop strong babies to be born and to fly and to pollinate and do other good things! Donate your blood, and save America’s natural blooming vegetation. Where there’s water there’s mosquitoes. But also, where there’s flowers there’s mosquitoes. They work together. They are beauty. I’d take flowers and bugs anytime over cows.
Free range cattle is the bane of the west. If you want a book about the corruption of ranching and the degradation of land it causes in the west please read Christopher Ketcham’s This Land. It gets slow after the first 100 pages. But, those first 100 pages are essential reading. Where the cattle go all else dies. Cows are the apex predator of the west. They’re too damn big for any other animal to kill. The few animals desperate enough to try (because the cows have pushed what was the animal’s natural and plentiful prey away) we end up killing in response. The cattle proliferates and expands and stomps. That stomping, and their incessant consumption of plant life, means that they decimate wild flowers, natural grasses, and other plants. They stomp out streams. They stomp out diversity. They stop out everything that other animals need to maintain the complex, regenerative, and intricate ecosystem. The desert is fragile. It can’t handle ranching. Stop the stomp! Someone should do a through hike and kill every single cow they come across along the way. An eco-terrorist! Wouldn’t that make an interesting story… On the run from the law. Burying the knives they use for the murder in the dirt so as to keep clean on the pat downs the receive from the cops. Crushing forties every day to keep one step ahead of the vigilantes. Edward Abbey would be proud, I think. Cattle cannot be the future.