Watching the first of the weather crash into the high country above Twin Lakes had proved to be a fierce, 24-hour game of hide-and-seek with giants.
From Leadville, I had come first off a US highway to a Colorado highway, then to a smaller county road, then up a winding forest service road that was still easily accessible in October, even in my rear-wheel-drive pickup.
I backed up towards a bare ridge overlooking the lakes and with the broad, distant slopes of Mt. Elbert to the West protruding dryly at first through the swirl, only to resurface later as white as could possibly be, with only speckles of granite protrusions peppering the corners and amongst the drifts high above me some four or five thousand vertical feet.
I had not seen another vehicle since the pavement ended.
My truck tent felt massive compared to my Duplex, which had already felt massive throughout the duration of the hiking season.
I’d often referred to myself as a princess while on trail in regards to the tent and its spaciousness, or made light by cracking a recycled joke about how being a single person with a two-person shelter was a lesson in wishful thinking, in and of itself. As if anyone in their right mind were to crawl into a sweaty little shelter with another dirt-encrusted human at the end of a thirty-mile day of kicking up dust and sweat.
Anyway, both tents had been dreams in their own rights. This new one was only the slightest bit overwhelming, like moving into a warehouse after having spent five months in a shoebox.
In all of my dreams I was still on the PCT. I’d wake in a rush at morning’s first light, listening for the rustling sounds of my companions. I’d reach heavily to release the valve on my air mattress, producing the most dreaded sound to any long-distance hiker, an indication that the day had indeed begun and that it was time yet again, to exit the womb. Each day for months I had been mortified upon waking to discover my actual whereabouts, wherever they had been, none of them being on trail.
Suddenly I was on three foam mattresses in the back of my truck, facing a vaulted ceiling and a swaying, soft blue lantern light. To my left was more food than I could physically carry, more small luxuries than I could count, and more space than I had any idea of what to do with.
My ultralight pack lay in the corner of the truck bed, limp with lack of gear and strangely dwarfed by the rest of the scene.
It was barely past two o’clock and already frigid when I arrived at would be my first official boondocking site above Twin Lakes, somewhere around 9,500 feet. I was truly eager for refuge after having bounced so wildly from scene to scene post-PCT in early August and felt as if I had finally achieved the clarity and solitude to adequately digest it all.
From blindly wandering the crowded streets of Vancouver, to the churning waters of the Puget Sound and further South, back to California where it was still summer even in the northernmost corners, to all I had been in such a brief time - and with very little intention at all.
A flurry of trains, buses, hitches and flights all drifted me laboriously back to Nashville, where my truck had been parked all this while, and from there down to Texas where it all began so long ago. Then, following the vein of America outward with the southern states all laughing at me as I drove through them with such a haste, as if the South would let me ever leave it without a firm, blazing farewell.
I wrestled for days with the routine symptoms of altitude illness, first in my head and then in my gut, as I would try to digest more and more regular foods. Periodically I would stand up too quickly or forget how instantaneously alcohol can dehydrate, in both occurrences finding myself light-headed and reeling. I’d spend my first few days huddled from the rain anyway, in the back of the truck, rewetting my contact lenses and getting whatever it was that remained of “my thing” together internally.
It felt fine to be a novice again, comfortably at the ready to explain myself should the occasion demand it, and to tell my story. The natural progression, the motions, the actions that led to whatever this was: a reclusive hiker shamelessly living out of a car on public land. At least out west, I figured, it would all have a better reception.
Aside from altitude, adjustments to the sharply dry alpine weather soon struck in those easily forgettable places, like at the cuticle, corner of the mouth or behind the eyes. It was Colorado’s silent welcome, a reminder yet again that life here could be even less hospitable than elsewhere, and such a ruggedness that it was, contributing in the same manner to the conditions of buildings, businesses, vehicles, behaviors, transactions and interactions with strangers I would encounter. An omnipresent gnawing at the edges of everyone and everything, manmade or otherwise was palpable immediately upon cresting the high slab that held the only municipality in Lake County, higher than any other city in the country and just barely hovering below treeline. Encircling the 19th-Century edifices in every direction rose the white sawtooth peaks of the Rockies.
Ultimately, it would be lack of routine and poor housekeeping that would do me in that first week; after months of easily managing amounts of packable items only, I now found myself with more space and more possessions than I could realistically keep track of. The prospect was both welcome and overwhelming.
I was to spend two or three days acclimating and then, weather permitting, attempt a climb or two of one of the surrounding mountains. I had vague but lofty ambitions to hit them all, to collect photos and therefore bragging rights from each summit. Of course, as easily as I made these expectations they just as easily dissolved completely from reality. On the second day I watched, helpless, as the storms moved in to soften my pride and scold my proneness to characteristically bite off more than I can chew. I listened, and allowed myself to let go of any prior expectations. All they were to me, in effect, were premeditated resentments.
Like clockwork. Funny how we’re always somehow put in our place, the very instant our ego stands up to speak.
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