CDT Day 69 (7/26/23)

Miles 1679.3 (Red line 1903.2)- 1709.9 (Red line 1933.8) (30.6 miles)

Verbatim

There are mosquitoes in number tonight. This may be brief (There’s a large blood splotch on this page from where I’d caught a mosquito against the paper and then smeared). The mystery of Pepé is solved! Contrary to what he said he would do, Pepé camped a mile before the river. It was windy there and with a view of the valley. A perfect site, really. He walked by at 6:30am and didn’t wake me because I was having “doe doe”, or sleeping like a baby. Well there you go. Pepé is fine.

I saw a dead Porcupine today! I almost stepped on it. There wasn’t any flesh left, and no real bone structure either. Just a pile of quills. I wonder how many hikers have stepped on it!

Well. I started at 8am and still did a 30. Feels good. If I start on time tomorrow I can do a 30 to Grants Village in Yellowstone. Maybe even in time for dinner. There’s hardly any climbing tomorrow.

Here’s to the mosquitoes! Oh, and I met like seven SOBOs today.

Now it’s the 28th and I’m still catching up writing (I had stopped writing two evenings before because the mosquitoes were so bad). I’m sitting in the all you can eat Buffet at Grants Village until it closes at 10:30. The food here is ok. But I can keep eating and that’s nice.

Some other highlights from passing the South Fork of the Buffalo Creek include the cold river crossing that was the buffalo creek (I was tired. I couldn’t even English). It came up to my knees, which means that last year it would have been well up to my shoulders. It would have swept me away. Good job surviving Andrew (In 2022 I’d come into the Yellowstone Ecosystem just as the National Park closed for only the second time in its history due to flooding from rain and snow melt).

There was a section of really annoying blowdowns. That section was horrible, and revealed to me just how terrible my shoes grip has become. Rocks are getting in my shoes and have torn up my socks. I need new shoes and new socks

After the blowdowns was a cool cabin. Forest service has cleared the blowdowns up until the cabin. Not after. haha. I think I saw an Ermine here poking its head out of the porch boards. Its face was ovular and had a wide mouth in the way Ground Hogs or Marmot don’t. But then it scurried away and I looked around the side and saw some sort of Marmot. I was very confused. Maybe I interrupted a hunt?

Later in the day I saw a line of orange tents and horses on a hillock. A guiding group was out! I also heard from Stevo (a SOBO hiker) that Pepé was up ahead. It was motivation time!

I forgot to mention I hung out with a Ptarmigan today! For like five minutes. It was really curious. I played it The Choir at Your Door and then it started calling for its mate.

Post Note

I have a favorite album. It’s called Work Tapes by Choir at Your Door. It’s probably got 400 views average on YouTube. I’m a quarter of that view count for sure. You should look it up. You won’t regret it. The Ptarmigan liked it too! The last time I’d listened to it before sharing it with the Ptarmigan, that I can remember, was with L while driving to my graduation. I was driving and she’d pulled it up on the car’s system. I started crying when I heard it. I cried because her pulling up my favorite album on a favorite day made me feel known. So much of the conflict that had arisen had made me feel unknown or feel that my perception of her was unfounded and incorrect. She, to me, had begun to feel unknown. I hope that’s clear. What I’m trying to say is that I felt like I didn’t know her anymore and was encouraged by her playing the album which evidenced at least one thing she knew about me. I don’t actually know if any of this language would fit her own subjective experience.

It’s a beautiful memory, thinking about that car ride. But it’s also emblematic of how even the most beautiful totems in my life (like my favorite album) had all begun to take the color of what ended as such a bad experience. I hadn’t listened to it since then. I’m almost sure of it. I didn’t have it downloaded in any music app. I didn’t have any music app on my phone. I went into Google Drive to find it. Crazy to think that I did that.

I’m sitting on the trail with this Ptarmigan and what comes to my mind? I’ll show it my favorite music. The Ptarmigan responded by starting to coo through the music. It started to search; looking in the grass here, cocking its head to glance over there, pattering a few feet for a new angle. I think the music evoked something inside it. Maybe I felt like what I projected the Ptarmigan to feel. Maybe I was also needing to respond by calling out. Wondering, glancing, walking around hoping there’d be another one like me around. I do think I feel that way. If I didn’t on the trail I do now.

Ptarmigan are stupid. You see lots of em on the CDT and they let you get ridiculously close. Sometimes they jump scare you, the first time this happened was in NM, because they let you walk just a foot or two before away before suddenly bursting into a ball of feathers as they make for a bough or down the mountainside. They camouflage so well you don’t see it until it’s happening. You can get close, but not that close. You get too close and I’ll burst away. I’ll freak out. Is that stupid? Or is that just anxious and fearful? Desperate for one to come close, to know, but not too close.

There’s some Ptarmigan rambling. Or it could be Grouse rambling. I never really learned to tell them apart.

Squirrel.