There and back again

The first day, I thought I'd made a mistake. I had expected to hurt in a lot of places. But my arches? My flipping arches? Somewhere in the early afternoon, in the 6th hour of hauling 42 pounds on my back up and down dusty mountain trails, I thought, "Oh god. Is it going to be like this every day?"

But by the third day, the pack was a little lighter. My quads were steelier. I figured out that on the trail, food wasn't food, it was fuel, and that I needed it about every 2 hours. I stopped thinking I should check my Blackberry when I woke up and when we stopped for breaks on the trail. In fact, I stopped thinking about anything that wasn't before me, and began to think like this: "Now I'm breaking camp. Now I'm eating food. Now I'm putting on my pack. Now I'm walking. And walking. And walking. Now I'm drinking water. Now I'm setting up the tent." Very zen.

And the scenery got lovelier and lovelier. We would start hiking around 8 each morning, get to our next camp by early afternoon, which always involved an alpine lake. Almost everyone went swimming (even me!) in the afternoon after we made camp. Then the kitchen crew would set up for dinner, and after the meal, we'd watch the sun set from some perch above camp.

The thought of being disconnected from all media and forms of communications had made me somewhat anxious in the week before I left for vacation, but after a few days, I didn't give it a second thought. When Double M and I were driving back, I felt like we had stepped outside of time. We could have been gone a day or a year, there was no way to tell. It was the most refreshing thing EVER. I felt totally at peace. Things -- heck, life! -- were going to work out. Whatever came up, I would handle when it came. And I would be able to handle it just fine.

The zen feeling lasted a few days, until the second day I was back at work. Then it went away.

Well, at least I have some pretty pictures to look at. And the next vacation to look forward to.

Buck Lake, where we stayed the second night on the trail:


Emigrant Lake, where we stayed for two nights. I believe this is the scene from my preferred cathole location at that campsite. Catholes were the topic of more than one conversation on the trip, it being a leave-no-trace kinda deal. There was a 15-year-old boy on the trip, and one of the few times he voluntarily and animatedly spoke was when he described his fantastic cathole, which he had dug in a place where he apparently had a magnificent view. It wouldn't occur to me to aim for that, but having accidentally done just that, I could sort of see why.

The REI Calendar shot: Double M looking at the sunset over Emigrant Lake:


Another REI calendar shot: me climbing up a rock face on our day hike to Frazier Lakes, which most of the participants went on during our layover day.


Hikers! The day trippers look over the incredible view of Shallow Lakes:


A lady lawyer (not me), considers Shallow Lakes:


The clean, clear waters of Frazier Lakes:


An arty shot of two dead trees:


The sunset on our last night. The little people below are the members of a lovely Swiss-German family living in Tennessee whom I wanted to marry. All five of them. The kids were the smartest, politest, non-complaining-est, cutest, funniest kids I've ever met. I want them to adopt me.
Cowbells rang faintly in the valley below, which we walked through the next day. The cows were less than happy to see us. But the Swiss-German-Tennessean family's Swiss friend, Regi, went into raptures. Turns out that when she was 20, she lived on the farm of a cousin in France and took care of about 50 cows, whom she grew to love. There's something charmingly surreal about walking through a lush green valley by a herd of cows, with a Swiss ice climber rhapsodizing about cows she has known.
The valley at sunset seemed like the kind of place you would expect to find elves and unicorns. It was sublime. Talk about being disconnected! This is the only reality worth being connected to.
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