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The Whitney Question

An unspoken question was hanging in the air, becoming almost as solid as the rock underfoot.
Would the trailsnail try to summit Whitney?
I already knew the answer.

An easy day was before us. It was something called a cross-country day.
Apparently, this meant no pass sucking the life blood out of me.
It also meant going through increasingly woodsy scenery, a pleasant change from boulders and stark switchbacks.
Since I didn't have to work so hard, I had energy to reflect.
Surprisingly, I found that I was glad I'd come on the trip. At the ripe old age of 41, I'd proven to myself that I could do something completely brand new, physically demanding and independence requiring.
Not bad for a somewhat chunky lady. Indeed, I was the chunkiest lady I'd seen on the trail.
But it wasn't keeping me from doing what I wanted to do.
Plus, I actually liked it when I wasn't panicking or running across a valley, trying to beat the sun.
I felt better than I had in years when I wasn't inching along a switchback, wheezing for breath.
My trailmates were cool, and the thin mountain air was clearing my head.
As I kept up a good clip, I realized that I was doing something I wanted to do again.
Go figure.
I liked backpacking.
When we gathered for lunch beside a pleasant stream, Lon was liberally splashing himself with the ice cold mountain water.
What, I wondered, would it be like to be clean again?
Who cares? I was happy, High Sierra dirt under my fingernails and all.
I sat on a log and munched crackers and beef jerky.
A scraggly, skinny man was nearby. He began talking in a sort of monotone about being in the wilderness for something like 35 days. His mom was going to pick him up in 10 more or so.
His food stores were low. He'd been living on dried food that he'd fixed before he abandoned his life in Washington, D.C.
Things just got too wierd there, he said. He had to come out to the mountains to clear his head. He tried to carry 90 pounds in his pack because he was going to be out so long.
(He looked like he weighed 90 pounds.)
But it got too heavy. His body rebelled.
I couldn't quite imagine what that meant even though my body's rebellion had turned into longterm guerrilla warfare.
Dark shadows hung under his eyes. He could easily have passed for a homeless person who hadn't eaten for a week.
I tossed him an energy bar, and he caught it like a frog snapping up a fly.
When Lon and Christina appeared, he began the spiel all over again.
He got more energy bars for his trouble, and then he wandered away.
A few minutes later, we heard him by a stream, going into the spiel again. The other party of hikers tossed him food. He subsided and disappeared.
I wonder what that guy did next with his life, but I'll never know.
I'm pretty sure, though, that he's getting whatever he goes after, judging from the rain of energy bars that fell upon him that day.

Posted by at 11:04 AM | Permalink