CDT Day 63 (7/20/23)

Miles 1526.4 (Red line 1745.2)- 1553.1 (Red line 1771.9) (26.7 miles)

Verbatim

Well. So far today has been a miserable day. I slept really poorly because of mosquitoes. I also woke up thinking it would rain, and another time thinking I’d heard a bear. It was in that moment I realized my bear spray was somewhere with my backpack stashed in a tree. I woke up at six but was exhausted so I “slept” in until seven. By slept in I mean cowered from mosquitoes. I’m exhausted and I can feel it. My pack is so heavy with food and yet I worry I don’t have enough. Even if I run out of food, my bag will still be heavy with plastic.

It’s 11am and I’ve gone 7.2 miles. The blowdowns have been horrible. My feet are wet from a swamp. I’ve been incessantly harasses by mosquitoes, and still am as I write. I broke my pole whacking the ground with it because I’m so angry at L. This girl still texts me. I cried on the ground for forty minutes. I’m so tired. I’m afraid I won’t be able to hike the AT afterwards, and I so want to be done with these trails. Fuck life.

I’m in the most beautiful place on the CDT having a bad day. Damnit.

The rest of yesterday (now writing from the 21st) turned out to be pretty ok. the broken pole was frustrating, and I’ve thought today about how I’ll need more duct tape (plastic) to remedy the broken plastic I have. Huh. I’m using plastic to “clean up” or “not make a waste” of plastic.

The mosquitoes last night were atrocious. The worst of the trip for sure. I’ll need to hike later and sleep when it’s windy or cold. I was only able to sleep once I’d put my tarp over my head. Not set up, but literally like a blanket over my torso and head. Before that creative solution was two hours of incessant buzzing. I should have bought a tent. I did sleep well, however, once I’d fallen asleep. And there was a lightning storm quite a ways into the heart of the mountains that was really cool.

Cirque ——— is epic. enough said. I met some hikers right as a hailstorm came in. So, that was a pleasant ten minute break.

Post Note

Yeah… I remember this one. haha. It honestly was so beautiful. And I was feeling so stressed. It had been my first night sleeping in “bear country”. Grizzly Bears, and maybe the errant Mountain Lion, are the only big fauna that people feel afraid will kill them in the mountains. A Moose is more likely to kill you I’d imagine. Certainly more likely than a cat is at least. But no one spreads terror about the Moose. You’re supposed to hang your food in Bear country. Or tie it to a tree with a special UrSack. Well. My whole bag was “food”, or at least smelled like it. So, there was no use tying it to a tree. There wasn’t really a reason to hang it in a tree either. I only ever did one bear hang and that was in Glacier NP because I had friends to do it for me. I just stuffed the whole pack in some tree or under some bush and then broke and rubbed pine needles on top of it to freshen it up. Worked like a charm for me.

But understandably, and as evidenced by my midnight wakefulness, I had slept stressed. I’d thrown big miles to get through the desert and now was in a taxing, demanding, and long section. The long sections are often the most rugged on account of their distance from town and the difficulty that implies for trail maintenance. And because of their distance from town they’re the least forgiving when you don’t make the miles your food bag is prepared for. So. I had to work hard. 7.2 miles by 11 is an atrociously slow pace under those pressures.

I’d finally made it into the valley on the Cirque of the Towers. I was there. In the Winds. And the first thing I could do was break down, break my pole, shout obscenities, and then cry by a stream on the grass. It’s incredible I was alone for the whole duration of my tantrum. I probably saw sixty hikers over the next nineteen miles that day. But for this hour I was alone. I joked with a friend back home about that sometime after trail was over. They quite seriously looked at me and said, “No Andrew. They probably just heard you and turned around”. I hadn’t thought of that.

It’s always a delayed reaction. I was fine when L texted me in Rawlins. But what, six days later? I was crying my heart out right on the trail. I can remember breaking my pole. It’d broken before on my last dinner in Colorado. But then I’d fixed it in Rawlins with the duct tape I found in a hiker box at the motel. I didn’t put enough on. It couldn’t really support weight. But, to put more tape on would have made it heavier! Despite its lack of stiffness, I really annihilated that thing there on the grass in the Winds. I went ham. Throwing your body around with a overpacked backpack on is no joke.

The fact that I have the capacity for this, for deep physical violence, somewhere inside me in terrifying. I feel really sad right now. Just sort of defeated. Like I’ll poison the well.

I’m remembering one time when I hit Mochi, one of the many family dogs I’ve been lucky enough to love over the course of my life. Mochi was a pup, and quite a wild one. Mochi was an “independent dog”, which is to say she didn’t listen very well. At least not to me. But Mochi is also an intelligent dog. I’m pretty sure she knows. Yeah. She definitely knows. Anyways. In a point of frustration that Mochi wasn’t following my directive (who am I to presume Mochi should have been following me anyways?) I slapped her across the face. I can’t remember if that helped her listen to me… I almost wrote that it did, but I stopped. I don’t think hitting Mochi helped. Not even in the moment.

I was horrified. Mochi never forgot it either. She’d learned something about me. That I was dangerous. Sometimes she’d cower when I raised my voice or leaned forward to take hold of her scruff or collar. That cower was always a rebuttal. I always felt ashamed of myself when I saw it. Mochi was not shaming me. Mochi was protecting herself. But I did feel ashamed when I saw her have to do that. I’m sorry Mochi.

Here’s what I learned from hitting Mochi. I get really angry when I feel like I’m not heard. Especially when the capacity is there and yet it’s refused. Words aren’t working. I’m a words person. I studied people using words to say silly things. If words don’t work I don’t know what to do. I’m willing to go, apparently, to physical lengths to get the point across (which never ever gets the point across in a helpful or constructive way). “The trees, shrub, sage, grass, snow, dirt, rock can take it” Philip said.