Decision time The first day I started hiking the Pacific Crest Trail in 1999, someone told me that the trail had ruined them. At the time, I thought it was a cute thing to say. It didn't occur to me as a warning, I didn't realize that I was walking the same path. I've often told people that the hardest part of hiking any long trail was taking that first step. I later found out, that the second hardest part was the last step. It was hard to finish the PCT. I remember walking down the forest road in Manning Park, none of it felt real. The border of Mexico, the struggles and joy along the way, the road I was walking on... The trail had become my reality, my routine, and by that it had ceased to be something I could point to from a distance with awe and wonder, the spectacular had become normal. I took it for granted, and it didn't seem so special. But, I was smart enough to realize what was going on, that the trail was indeed special. The thought of "no more trail" made me feel sad at best, frightened at worst. I knew that nothing lasted forever, but it all seemed way too brief. I spent the next year in somewhat of a PCT-induced daze. The hike came up a lot in my everyday conversations. I started to worry that it would consume the rest of my identity. I imagined people referring to me... "oh, you mean that guy who hiked... blah blah blah" I tried to make a conscious effort to avoid discussing it, but my efforts were often thwarted. In so many everyday experiences, I could draw parallels from the trail. "It's like on the PCT...", I'd try to stop myself, but it was difficult. I realized that we all drew on, and were defined by our life experiences. I just had the position, either fortunate or unfortunate, of having the bulk of mine bundled up in a 51/2 month whirlwind of craziness. Everything else I'd done in my life was dwarfed. School, work, family, friends... I felt lopsided. I loved hiking, there was no doubt about it. I found that no matter how directionless or melancholy I felt, a good hike provided a temporary cure. My day hikes became little injections of morphine, I couldn't get enough. I met a number of people who had also hiked the PCT, or were in the process of hiking it, and saw familiar stories behind their eyes. With them, it felt OK to openly express love for that thing that was so removed from the everyday experience. The trail was a secret refuge. Still, I felt stuck. I wondered if I would forever be a slave to "the good old days". I came up with a solution to all that was only one solution - "surrender to the flow". Perhaps I could give the PCT some competition for control of my life - water it down a bit. Luckily, there was another long trail in the US - longer, wilder, lonelier... On the PCT, hikers talked about it in tones of dreaminess. "I hear it isn't really done yet". "I hear that a lot of people bomb-off (don't finish)" "I hear it's easy to get lost"... All those red flags looked green to me. But perhaps my biggest motivation was the fear of not doing it - the fear that I'd forever have to clench my teeth in the pain and regret of the path not taken. I HAD to hike the Continental Divide Trail. Border of Canada to East Glacier I made a final decision to hike the CDT about 4 months before I started. Two friends I’d met on the PCT were already planning the same trip, so it was a simple matter of adding my name to the list. Life intervened though, and with about 4 weeks to go, both my friends had to change their plans. I did care, but then again I didn't. I was going anyway. I was going if I was the only person I'd see for the length of the trail, I was going no matter what the trail conditions were. I knew I needed a good deal of determination to complete the CDT and I had plenty of it. Luckily, the snowpack in the northern rockies was only about 60%-70% of normal. That, coupled with a warm sunny spring, meant 2001 would be an ideal year to hike the trail North to South. I did want to start with some hiking companions. It would be a lot easier to trek off into the unknown with some company... at least at the start. Plus, I was sure that I'd overlooked some things in my planning, and would benefit from some second opinions. Then... there were grizzly bears. I figured in a group of three, my chances of being mauled or eaten were reduced by 66%. The actual evidence of bear attacks didn't support that hypothesis, but it made me feel better... It couldn't hurt anyway. I arrived in the town of East Glacier on June 10 with a new backpack, an open mind and a shaved head. I was hoping to find someone... anyone who had made the same plans as me. Almost anyone starting a CDT thru-hike would have to pass through East Glacier, and they'd stick out like an American in Japan. East Glacier was a small tourist town, just emerging from hibernation. The winters in East Glacier were long and harsh, the summers brief and glorious. I had arrived in limbo season. It was cold and drizzling. "The bad weather lasts for three days at a time, this time of year", one of the locals told me, "this is day one". I was still determined to go hiking... even if it wasn't along the CDT. I headed up the eastern slopes of the mountains in Glacier National Park, which start abruptly just west of East Glacier. It was so windy I could barely stand. I called out and sang, trying to give the bears some warning of my approach, but it was silly. The noise of the wind overpowered my tiny voice. I spent the night back at the local hostel, windblown, tired and alone. I didn't see anyone with a backpack, much less the perma-grin of a thruhiker ready to hit the trail. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was in no hurry to start the CDT. I knew that at least a couple people (who I'd met through the internet), were starting their hike in a few more days. If nobody else showed up, I could wait for them. Also, the weather was supposed to get worse before it got better - no point in starting the hike in misery. I went for another day-hike into the outskirts of Glacier National Park. A woman who was staying at my hostel joined me. It was nice to talk to someone, and because of the threat of surprising grizzlies, I had an excuse to talk incessantly and loudly all day. It was a nice day, and I was getting a feel for these mountains. They were the mountains of the prairie, the first bumps to interrupt a thousand miles of flatness to the east. Up the mountain sides, the life zones were compressed into little horizontal bands. The grassland gave way to forest at 4500 feet, and the forest gave way to the weather at 6000. Above 6000 feet, the hillsides were covered with progressively smaller flora, ending in rocky frozen tundra and steep naked peaks 8000-9000ft high. Glaciers still clung to the higher elevations and north facing slopes, vestiges of the giant sheets of ice that had carved out all the U-shaped valleys below. The landscape was foreboding and inviting all at once. It was a book, daring to be read. That evening, I was having dinner at the Mexican restaurant (easily the best eatery in town), when I heard an unmistakable comment coming from a couple tables over. "blah, blah, blah, Gila...". That one word told me there were a couple of CDT hikers who'd just been in New Mexico, and were now trying their luck at the north end of the trail. The hikers were a couple of 20-something guys, nearly beaten. They'd been hiking in Glacier for the last few days. Every day they'd been on the trail, in New Mexico and now in Glacier, something had gone wrong. Every day in Glacier they'd had snow, sleet or rain. They told me a story about losing the trail in a waist-deep wetland. They had 60 pound packs. They had crampons. They thought knew it all. They hadn't met any other CDT hikers, and had never hiked a long trail. I wanted to give them advice and encouragement, but they looked at me like I was from mars... how could I possibly help THEM? I hadn't hiked any of the CDT yet, what did I know? So, I nodded my head and listened to their tale of woe. They hadn't learned the most important lesson - if you're having a miserable time, change what you're doing or at least change how you're doing it. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- By noon the next day, heavy rain had turned to a thick wet snow. The season was going backwards, what had happened to summer? I felt nervous, thinking I was doomed to some kind of curse that would last the entire season. The winter had been mild, the law of averages seemed to be working its magic against me now. The two hikers I'd met the previous evening were back on the trail somewhere in Glacier, no doubt having a miserable time. I spent the day mulling about town. I talked to a couple european tourists who assumed Glacier was always so dreary. I also read a book "Bear Attacks: Their Causes and Avoidance", which both gave me confidence and freaked me out. The previous night, a grizzly had destroyed some garbage bins behind the hostel where I was staying. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next day, the weather improved somewhat. I decided to take one more day-hike... that time, along the CDT (which is routed right through the town of East Glacier) south of town. The trail headed off into the woods behind a golf course. One of the workers at the fancy lodge showed me the way. "This is it", he said, pointing to a non-descript forest. The only thing that indicated a trail was a piece of metal nailed to one tree about 8ft. off the ground. I chuckled to myself... it was the CDT I'd heard of - obscure at best. As I started off through the woods, the path became a little more distinct. A startled herd of cows scampered off into the underbrush as they heard me approach. I slogged through mud, and walked along an old forest road. The forest canopy seemed endless. Nobody hiked the trail. It didn't really go anywhere interesting... except to Mexico. I hadn't even started my "real" hike, and I'd already tired of singing songs to ward off bears. After 4 or 5 miles, I turned around and headed back. I had decided to bring one piece of "dead weight" with me on the hike. I had a strumstick - a slender 3-stringed instrument that was played like a mountain dulcimer, sounded like a banjo, and looked like neither. I couldn't play anything too complicated with the strumstick, but it was a nice distraction, and had an infectious sound. While I did some laundry in town, a little girl came over and made up words to my improvised melodies. A little while later, the strumstick broke the ice with some RV'ers who'd parked nearby (they were headed from Kansas to Alaska). The strumstick was well worth the pound it weighed. My mystery internet hiking buddies were due to arrive that evening on the train. I decided to kill some time at the local bar. The bar was about what I'd expected - small and populated by a bunch of afternoon drunks. A sign on the wall listed those banned from the bar. I counted 79 names. East Glacier had a population 250. "I guess that's why nobody's here", the bartender commented. George Thorogood's cover of "one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer" played incessantly on the juke box. I could only stand one beer. I headed over to the other, cheaper hostel, behind the Mexican restaurant. The two hikers who I'd met a couple nights ago were there. They'd spent the last couple days on the trail, and were now about ready to quit altogether. With them were three new arrivals. These three had also hiked the CDT through New Mexico, then flipped up to the north end due to a combination of heavy snowpack in southern Colorado, and concern about the dryness up north (predictions were for a bad fire season in Montana in late summer - exactly when northbound hikers would be passing through). One of them, Drew, had hiked the PCT the prior year, and the AT (Appalachian Trail), the year before that. The CDT would be his third long trail in as many years. The other two hadn't hiked any of the long US trails, but were seasoned if by nothing other than their experiences in New Mexico. John was from Idaho, and Mario was from Holland. The area around the hostel was soon swimming in stories from the CDT and beyond. A lone non-hiking Aussie, who was also staying at the hostel, of course thought we were all completely nuts. A little while later, my mystery hikers arrived. Sharon had hiked the AT among other things, Kevin had hiked the AT 3 times, and the PCT once. It was a hiker convention... or hiker zoo, take your pick. I introduced myself to Kevin and Sharon and we decided to head together out the next morning. The weather looked good, and Kevin had arranged a ride to the trailhead. I didn't sleep much that night. I couldn't shut off my mind. There was too much to think about, too much to talk about, too much to imagine. I felt I was in the hold of a ship bound for a new world, a blank space on a map where the dragons be. I wanted to see a dragon more than anything. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I didn't really need sleep anyway, I had enough energy to stay awake for a week (or so I felt). It was a good 60 miles up to the trailhead from East Glacier. Along the way, we stopped to register with the National Park Service. Glacier NP required all backpackers to stay at designated campsites scattered throughout the park (as did most National Parks). Reservations were required. Among other things, it reduced human impact on the land, and helped avoid habituation of the local grizzly population. When we laid out our itinerary for the well-meaning lady at the desk, she looked concerned. "Nobody's been back there yet", she warned, "Are you sure you can cover 15 miles in a day? that's a really long way". Between the three of us, we'd hiked over 13,000 miles, but there was no point in being snobby. "We'll be OK", we responded. We got permits with the words "itinerary not recommended" stamped on top. A short while later, we were at the border. The official CDT route through Glacier NP starts at the head of the Belly River, where the road crosses the US/Canada border. Just about any hike through Glacier NP would be memorable, but all three of us wanted to take the most scenic route possible... which wasn't necessarily the "official" CDT. Kevin had come up with a plan - we'd start at Belly River, then hike over Stoney Indian Pass and pick up the Highline trail south from there. After a couple photos at the border, we hit the trail. Before I had time to contemplate it, I'd started what would turn out to be 5 months of continuous walking. The weather was a bit clearer that day, but the tops of the mountains were still covered in clouds. A couple miles into the hike, we were treated to our first spectacular scene. A giant meadow of dandelions stretched out toward a couple mammoth mountains. It was a dramatic and appropriate, "hello, welcome to the CDT". As we traveled further down the Belly River, the clouds got thicker. We took a break and it started to drizzle. Kevin set up his huge tarp and we huddled under it. I had a thousand little concerns racing through my head - How deep was the snow? Would we be able to get over the passes? What if the weather stayed bad? Would I lose my determination to continue hiking? What if my equipment broke down? etc... I had no choice but to put these aside and live in the moment. All that mattered were the things I had direct control over. Fate would decide everything else. The rain became intermittent as we continued deeper into the mountains of Glacier. I had a chance to try out my rain poncho. I had made the poncho a couple months before the hike, but hadn't had a lot of opportunities to try it out. I just hoped that it'd work. I had figured out a way to lash it around my body so it didn't blow in the wind so much. It was a little difficult to take on and off, but it seemed to be keeping me dry - one less thing to worry about. Soon we were passing through old forests along ancient lakes. The low clouds made the scene intimate. I spotted my first sign of bear - a black bear print & some wet green bear poop with fur in it - some poor critter had met its end in the belly of a bear. We passed by a couple young women carrying heavy hand tools - pulaskis and shovels (a pulaski is one part axe and one part digging hoe, named for a fire fighter who came up with the design). They were working for the park, and were clearing trees that had blown down over the trail. By the looks on their faces, I could tell they were living a dream in a place where doing so was easy. I wanted to tell them everything I was thinking, everything I was planning to do. But I had my own "don't ask, don't tell" policy. If people didn't ask me where I was headed or what I was doing, I didn't talk about it. It was my own way of tempering my annoying urge to blabber about the trip. The women hadn't been up Stoney Indian Pass, and didn't know how much snow was up there. They continued their walk, in the opposite direction. In the early evening, we arrived at our campsite along the shore of Glenn's Lake. All the designated campsites in Glacier had the same setup: First, there was a food preparation area with a fire pit. Then, about 20 yards away, there was a place to hang food - a steel cable strung about 15 feet above the ground. 20 yards in another direction was a pit toilet, and scattered here and there were 3-4 tent sites. It was a remarkably organized system... almost too organized. But, it was one of the most popular national parks in the country, I couldn't think of any better way one could manage the throngs that would be arriving in a month or so. For the time being though, we had the park to ourselves. We didn't see another person for two more days. As the light of the day grew dim, I sat on the edge of the lake and thought about where I was. The clouds occasionally lifted to show a vertical wall on the other side - the base of a giant pointed peak that kept watch from a thousand feet above - Pyramid Peak. Somewhere in the middle of the misty lake, a loon called out, a perfect accompaniment to the stillness of the water. Back in the forest, the call of Swainson's thrushes echoed like ethereal water whistles. As darkness took over, the only sounds left were a gentle breeze and the light patter of raindrops on my tarp. I smiled as I sunk into my down sleeping bag. I didn't need angels, I was already in heaven. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next morning, I was eager to get over Stoney Indian Pass. The pass was almost 7000ft, and would be a good indicator of the snowpack ahead. I shot out in front, singing to the mountains and bears. I came to a clump of fallen trees that had yet to be cleared from the trail. A chaos of wet branches and trunks blocked the way. On some other day, it would have been a headache, but I was almost happy to work my way through the mess. It was like a natural gate that made the trail more mine. The trail then cut up a hillside, switching back and forth parallel to a roaring waterfall. The landscape was a lush soggy green. I looked up just in time to see a large sandy-colored bear staring back at me. The bear was standing on the trail, on its way down from the pass. It had just rounded a blind corner about 75 yards ahead. I wanted to do... something, but I knew that the best thing was to just stand there and evaluate the situation - same as the bear was doing. I'd read that one shouldn't stare at a bear, as that might provoke it. That was impossible. I was alone with the bear. My hiking companions were at least 15 minutes behind. I clutched my little can of pepper spray, a puny item of last resort. I wasn't sure how long we stared each other down, 10 seconds? 30? But, before I had time to consider making a move, the bear did an about face and ran back around the corner. Relieved, I sat down and waited for my companions to catch up. I couldn't help but think of my lucky timing - if I'd left camp a minute earlier... if any number of things had happened, I would have found myself face to face with the bear at the corner. While I was waiting, a movement on the other side of the stream caught my eye. A Black bear was running away, up the mountain. A little cub trailed behind, likely terrified of whatever hidden danger had startled its mom. They had already seen me, and didn't consider the huge waterfall enough of a barrier. I'd never seen any animal, any thing, climb up a hill so fast. By the time Sharon caught up to me, the black bears were a couple of specks high on the mountain, still climbing into the mist. After Kevin arrived, the three of us proceeded cautiously around the corner where I'd seen the first bear. The only evidence of the bear was an occasional paw print. It appeared to be a grizzly, but it was hard to tell. Black bears were often colored similar to grizzlies and the two could be difficult to tell apart. One of the best ways was by looking at the space between the top of the paw print, and the mark left by the claws. More than a couple inches, and it was probably a grizzly. The space on these prints was about 2-3 inches. The only problem was determining which bear had left which print. There were bears galore. We didn't see the bear again though, and it was one mystery I was happy not to solve. As we climbed higher, the snow on the trail became more frequent. But, it wasn't getting thick. By the time we reached 6000 feet, there was enough snow to hide the trail, but not too much to make hiking difficult. We followed a set of fresh prints, left by a bear headed in the opposite direction (possibly the same one I'd seen) - down from the pass. We reached the top of the pass without much difficulty. 1 to 2 feet of solid snow covered the ground. Kevin and I looked at each other, grinning. We'd both hiked the PCT in 1999 and knew from that experience how a heavy snowpack could change things. It could make an easy trail frustrating and slow and it could make a difficult trail dangerous or impossible. The light snowpack was a blessing, it made the trail easy to love. After a long break at a lake on the other side of the pass, we headed down toward the Waterton River, in the heart of Glacier. Everything was a lush deep green in the indirect light from the grey skies. Occasionally, the clouds moved aside and let the sun peek through, igniting the hillsides. It looked the way one imagines the best of the earth looks, a realization of a child's dream of the mountains. I looked around, alone... "Why isn't everyone out here?", a quote from a friend who... wasn't there. Why isn't everyone everywhere all the time? If it was ever possible I would be, I would be a god, watching everything with amazement - the slow progression of the natural order. The trail followed the course of the river a bit, then cut up a hillside covered in a thick ordered mess of green and rusty brown bushes. The bushes were over our head, impenetrable. Without the trail, progress would have been impossible. Bam! The sun blasted a hillside across the valley, a hillside just like ours... sans trail. The sun faded quickly and quietly, the rain came, the rain went... I had trouble deciding just when to go through the effort of donning my poncho. Somewhere along the way, I got distracted and lost my hat. I looked ahead, and there he was again - ursus rounding the corner ahead of me. He was headed the same direction I was headed, about 30 yards ahead. I saw its big brown rump of raw wildness ramble around a corner, out of sight. Kevin quickly caught up. He saw the bear peeking back at us. We cautiously and loudly rounded the corner - no bear. It had melted into the bush, we couldn't see 2 feet into the tangle, much less think of moving through it. The bear lived on a different scale - it probably weighed 600 pounds or more - the bushes were nothing. Our trail rose higher, and the bushes faded out. We came to a high snow covered plateau - an unbroken sheet of whiteness. To our left, the snow rose into the clouds, to our right it dropped into a sea of evergreen. The trail was nowhere in sight, but we knew where had to go - we could see landmarks for miles, and had good topographic maps. Somewhere in the whiteness, we were supposed to find our designated campsite. We came near the place where the camp was supposed to be... we thought. Nothing. We could camp nearby, but we figured if we were going to 'wing it', why not put in a few more miles? It was still early in the afternoon, we had a whole day to kill. The warnings of the park ranger, "I don't know, it's really tough..." were laughable. The rain had given way to snow - showers came and passed. Clouds whizzed by our heads, sometimes the sun broke through for an instant, no more. We ambled over snowy boulders and shrubs, eventually hitting the trail where it was lower and uncovered. There was no place flat to spend the night. As it got later and darker, we got tired and hungry. We finally descended to a deep green valley below, far off the trail. It was lush, open and level. As we looked for spots to pitch our tarps, a cold steady rain drenched and chilled us. I put up my soggy tarp and sat under it, wet and tired - staring at the mosquito mesh for an hour as darkness came. The rain broke just long enough for a quick meal outside, then it was time to rest & hope tomorrow would be kind. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Everything wet (which was... everything) froze in the night. But, the morning brought clear skies. The sun was taking over, and slowly, it marched down our shaded mountain valley. I shivered as the heat got closer - 100 yards, 50 yards... I couldn't wait, and ran into the light. I stood on a rock and basked like a lizard. We spent the next few hours drying our possessions in the ever-warming sun. Glacier was alive in the sun. The trail continued its mountainside traverse above the trees, snowy peaks rose from our feet to the horizon, and all places in-between. Giant waterfalls, hundreds of feet high, poured off moutainsides miles away - vertical white lines interrupting the green and grey carpet. We quickly arrived at the Ahern Drift. "The Drift", we had been warned, was one thing that could put a crimp on our blissful little romp through Glacier. The Drift was formed by snow that slid off a high north-facing slope. At the bottom, it formed an enormous pile of ice that rarely, if ever, melted. The trail was routed straight across it. There wasn't a good way to go around the drift either - it would mean miles of steep boulders and thick virgin forest. During the height of the summer, the park service actually shoveled out a path through the drift, but we were there before anyone that year, the drift was solid and untouched. We started across, at first able to sink our feet into the soft snow, then able to kick steps with a little more effort. As the slope got steep and icy, we had to chop steps with our ice-axes - chop out a level footprint, move your foot, chop out another, and so on... all the time keeping a good sense of balance and awareness. A slip would mean a steep slide down to some boulders hundreds of feet below. An ice axe might be able to brake a fall, but it was better not to fall in the first place. The last 15 yards of the drift were the stiffest and steepest - about a 60 degree slope. Then, we made it to solid ground. Looking back, we thought, that's it? Sure the drift was a little challenging, and we did need our ice axes, but, it didn't live up to the hype. As with so many things, the challenge was relative - compared to a walk to the K-mart, impossible - in the scope of a 2800 mile hike, it was a side-note. The trail and views continued. We arrived at our next designated camp site by 2pm. We weren't about to just sit around all day. It was only 7.8 miles further to the Swiftcurrent campground near Many Glacier Lodge, and most of that was downhill. We voted to head for the lodge - clouds had been steadily building, and we didn't want to spend a second straight night on an exposed mountainside. Pizza at the restaurant below sounded more appealing. As I rounded the top of Swiftcurrent pass, a couple of wary bighorn sheep scurried up a hillside to the north. The trek down from Swiftcurrent Pass was one of the most memorable on the trip. The trail was blasted out of a cliff face most of the way. Two thousand vertical feet of rock, banded in horizontal earth-tones, led down to a series of glacial lakes far below. The sun hit the lakes, causing them to glow like a necklace of emeralds. A family of mountain goats heard us and scrambled away across a sheer mountainside - their kids no more than white dots following close behind. We finally encountered another person just before we arrived at the Swiftcurrent campground. Just before I devoured a pizza, I met a couple who was planning to hike the CDT next year. They were scoping-out Glacier. They were anxious - they'd been ruined by the PCT the previous year. We met up with Mario, Drew and John in the campground. They'd taken a different route to that point, but we'd be following the same route south of there. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- After a hot breakfast at the restaurant, and a stop at the ranger station to update our permits (we were one day ahead of schedule now), we continued our trek south. We got some ice cream at Many Glacier Lodge, summer tourist season was just starting. A family from New Jersey was preparing to get packed-in to the backcountry. I overheard a guide talking to them, "Now, our sherpas will meet us on day 3..." I wanted to puke. I realized that some people needed guides to get into the backcountry, and I was happy to see the family was making the effort, but did the guides have to be such complete dorks? On the way up to Piegan Pass, we took a long break on a meadowy mountainside high above the tree-line. The sun radiated down on us, slowly warming the cool spring air. Mountains were everywhere, each one had its own character, its own history and future, yet, they were all the same mountain in some ways, all connected, and bound to each other through more than the earth. I tried to home-in on what it was about mountains that stirred in me a primal sense of euphoria. What was it that made them special? I suppose it didn't really matter, I just enjoyed the moment for what it was - bliss. I rested my head on my backpack, my body cushioned by miniature grasses, decorated by alpine flowers, heated by the sun and cooled by the wind. The three of us didn't speak a word for an hour. Then, all at once, we packed up and continued on, it was time to get moving again, there would be other mountainsides on which to slumber. The hiking was actually more fulfilling than resting. Every step brought forth a new scene, and each scene was spectacular in its own right. My heart raced to keep up with my legs, and my lungs filled with crisp thin air. I felt every sense, I could see, hear, touch, smell, feel ... even taste the world around me at every moment. All of my body and mind were in motion, in synch. I was fully aware and alive. This was what life was supposed to be, I thought. This was why I had legs... why I had eyes, arms, ears, and all the rest of it. We topped that pass and headed back down. South of Piegan Pass, the trail was buried under 3 feet of stiff snow that was shaded from the sun by a high thin forest. I attacked the snow, plunging ahead heel-first, skiing with my shoes, and keeping balance with my poles. I raced ahead of my companions, on a mission to just... go. I popped out onto a road, the "going-to-the-sun road". The road was as close as most park visitors would get to the backcountry of Glacier. Sure, there was plenty to see from the road, and from the lodges below, but all could think was, "push yourself dammit!", "go farther", "climb a mountain, then keep going". I wasn't angry, I was happy, and I wanted as many people as possible to know my joy. Instead, they crept out of their idling cars, pointed at the mountains, "look mom", and drove off - cramming as much power-vacation as possible into their hectic lives. . I walked up to a nearby lookout/parking area, where some people were gazing at distant peaks. One of them had a thousand dollar camera focused on a mountain 5 miles away. The light was terrible for photos, and it was only a mediocre view. I wanted to tell him everything, but as I approached, he scampered back into his car and sped off. Smelly and rejected, I headed back down to my own path, the one that cars didn't notice. After a few steps I was back in my world. We met up with Drew, Mario and John at the designated camp site. We made a fire and sat around in simple conversation. Mario got up to follow a friendly mule deer with his camera. He came back a few minutes later with a look of horror, "I saw da grizzly!". He had a close encounter with an ursus crossing his path. "I know what you mean, man", I thought to myself. The bears kept us honest and humble. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I woke up to an inch of fresh snow the next morning. Kevin had already started hiking, and Sharon was getting ready to leave. I decided to hook up with the other guys. Their routine was closer to mine - more type B than A - more "get up late & enjoy" and more "be there when you get there". There were no obligations or responsibilities either way. I could have hiked alone, I could have quit, I could have done anything I wanted and been greeted with an, "OK, whatever". We only had 10.5 miles to hike for the day. It was basically a half-day. The way the designated sites were laid out in Glacier, we didn't have much choice. It was either a lazy 10.5, or a grueling 24 miles. To us, the choice was clear. The 10.5 miles was flat. The trail passed by a couple waterfalls, and along the shore of Saint Mary Lake (one of the larger lakes in the park). Far below, we spied on a boatload of tourists motoring up the lake - a speck of white in a big deep blue. We reached our campsite by 2pm, taking a couple long breaks on the way. I had a whole afternoon to enjoy. I rinsed out my smelly clothes and hung them on small trees. I strummed my strumstick. I thought about food. I found a tick, munching its way into my bloodstream. Yuk! Oh ya, that was right, ticks, mice, mosquitoes, flies, dirt, blisters... there was a long list of things to get a person down on the CDT, but none of them came close to matching the good, ying for yang. Warm and dry, I curled into my puffy sleeping bag. I read a book as evening rains pelted my tarp. A clap of thunder echoed through the mountains for a full minute - from all directions. I didn't understand how that could be allowed by the laws of physics, but there it was. It got dark, I slept. It was all just too good. Did they know? How could they let me get away with it? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next day was another short one. Another pass. More mountains - amazing as always. The weather was getting progressively better. The mornings were clear, each one warmer than the last. The pass was Triple Divide Pass, a point where watersheds draining into Hudson Bay, the Gulf of Mexico, and the Pacific Ocean all intersected. John and I wandered off the trail on the way up. We headed up a mountainside covered in suitcase-sized rocks, just north of the pass. We had all the time we wanted, time to wander along the mountaintop. We took our obligatory long break on the pass. Marmots and pikas, oblivious to our alien bodies, came up to us - not looking for handouts, just looking the grass under our butts. I wanted to hike further, but we were stuck again by the layout of the campsites. It didn't matter, there would be plenty of full hiking days ahead. It was a time to relax, and enjoy the gifts of Glacier. A couple miles down from the pass, a sign was strung across a side trail, "DANGER: All area behind this sign is closed because of bear danger". A mile later we arrived at our campsite. Back in East Glacier, I'd heard that particular valley was notorious for grizzly problems and was often entirely closed to backpackers. We were there early in the season though. The bears hadn't yet sent Joe and Jill backpacker running from the woods. That would all come later, we'd be hundreds of miles away, right in the middle of somewhere else. We poked at our fire and learned about each other, about ourselves, about the trail and about life. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Another day, another pass. It was called Pitamakan. The trail was covered in snow, but the route was obvious - up to the sag in the ridge, any way you can. We sat down at the top and surveyed the landscape. The trail dropped down to a valley on the other side. The trees were all dead, victims of globalization. Europe's beetles were multiplying down there, and there was nothing to be done about it. Our bugs and weeds were over there, doing much the same. The pests mimicked the people... or was it the other way 'round? There were a lot of options on the CDT. It had been said that no two people had ever hiked the same route, yet dozens had hiked what was called the CDT. The terrain all along the trail was so open, so inviting, that it was hard to stick to any "official" route. "Hey, let's go over there instead", became a popular refrain all the way to Mexico. I wanted to take an alternate from Pitamakan and so did Mario. We headed up and around the pyramid-shaped mountain on which we were resting. The narrow trail was cut high across a steep ridge, all covered in snow. But it was soft snow, it was easy. We crawled out on a side ridge that ended in on a big flat rock, it was almost too perfect. Mario spontaneously let out an "AAAAOOOO!", Dutch for "wow" I presumed. The trail led us down to the Two Medicine campground. It was a car-campground, complete with a camp store. John and Drew were already on their second ice creams. We sat on the porch of the store for a while, canceling out perfumed tourists with our natural-body scents. Everyone who came by was in a good mood - friendly and full of smiles. For some, Glacier was an annual pilgrimage, for others, it was all new. We all shared something – we had all decided to go there, and nobody needed to question why. We headed over to our little assigned plot in the parking lot, set up our tents, then over to a little talk one of the rangers was giving. The ranger was talking about "leaving no trace" in the woods - a noble attempt - it wasn't an easy subject to make interesting. While swatting at the mosquitoes - which were worse at lower elevations - I touched my nose and blood poured out. For a week, I'd been blowing my boogers in the bushes and breathing dry mountain air - turning the inside of my nose into a cracked-up time bomb. I'd had nosebleeds all my life, but it was one of the worst. The blood wasn't dripping, it was pouring. Alarmed, I headed for comfort at the campground host's RV. A middle-aged couple had volunteered to spend the summer in Glacier, keeping an eye on the campground in exchange for "free rent". They had ice and they had bug spray. It took a little time, but the bleeding stopped and I managed to remain conscious. I vowed never again to blow my nose on the CDT. It was going to be tough... I loved blowing my nose. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was June 21, the summer solstice. There's a tradition on the Appalachian trail called naked hiking day - celebrate the summer, free yourself, run amok through the woods... naked. We figured the idea needed to spread. We did make one exception though - covering the jewels of the crown a la the red hot chili peppers. I figured if they could get away with it on the cover of an album (that's been in stores for the past 10 years), certainly it wouldn't be a problem in Glacier, where people were naturally happy and free. Thusly under-dressed, we headed out through the car-campground. Few people were awake. The few that were greeted us with confusion and encouragement. We had to walk past the ranger station. We hoped they'd see the fun in it. They didn't. One of them (every ranger I met in Glacier was a woman) called us back, like a teacher reprimanding a troublesome student. There I stood, dressed in a glove and a backpack, trying to explain why it was OK. "we're just going over to the trailhead and we'll put our clothes back on." There really wasn't any point being naked in the backcountry - nobody was out there. The whole point was to ignite peoples' imaginations. The ranger reluctantly let us go, what was her other choice? Cuffing us and sending us to the Blackfeet jailhouse? What could be more harmless than 4 mostly naked hikers? We passed a couple more cars on the way to the trailhead and waved hello, "welcome to Glacier!". We put our clothes back on, and headed up the trail. We were hiking on the edge of the park, high above a giant expanse of flatness to the east. All of Montana was laid out before us. The CDT was huge, no, the earth was huge, we were small, no... I didn't know. We just kept going over the windswept foothills, 8 more miles back to East Glacier. To think any further ahead was pointless. The trail went to hell... or at least to mud... the moment we stepped out of the park and onto Blackfeet land. The reservation charged anyone walking the few miles from the park to East Glacier $10, $10 that got washed into the reservation's "general fund". What was the general fund used for? Nobody could be certain, except that hiking trails were about the last thing on the list. There was a strange sort of battle going on though, the reservation's cows roamed into the park, where the park's bears ate them. Seemed fair to me. I couldn't believe it. An actual park ranger cop (a woman of course) was waiting for us at the trailhead just outside of town. It seemed that we'd frightened some people with our little freedom march earlier in the day. The people had complained to the park staff, "If this is the sort of thing that goes on here, we're leaving!!!". We figured we'd done the park a service, who needed people like those in the national parks? Through a questionable reading of the parks "laws", we were charged with disturbing the peace or some such thing. The fine? $50 - the going rate for any park infraction. We spent the rest of the day in East Glacier, eating, buying food, doing laundry, eating, beering. News traveled fast in a town of 250. Before long, we were minor celebrities - we'd stood up to da man! It was $50 well spent. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next morning, we had to get out of East Glacier. Among other things, a 6ft blackfoot brave with a perm and a smile had taken a liking to Drew. We got ice cream to go, shuffled past golfers, "Look out for those bears..." (like we hadn't heard that one before), and headed down the same bit of trail I'd tested out a week earlier. East Glacier to Lincoln We still had to hike through more of Glacier National Park, but it was the southeast corner, nobody hiked there. There was a trail, the park service made sure of that, but it wasn't a particularly good one. The route traversed below unseen peaks, in a tunnel of trees. It was flat, but it was the toughest bit of CDT hiking I'd done so far. Since it was 7 or 8 days to Lincoln, my backpack was 1 snickers away from exploding, it was dreadfully heavy. We were all in the same sorry state. Every few miles, it was time for a break. It took little excuse to stop and a great deal of effort to get moving again. All our songs had been sung to death. Our warnings to the bears consisted of an occasional, "hey bear" or "coming up"... or Mario, clapping in Dutch. After a dozen miles, we popped out on the highway, that other world. Marias Pass. Cars whizzed by, seeing us as we saw them - imperceptible blurs. We stopped for dinner at a campground on the other side of the highway, then searched for the trail south. The others had driven through Marias Pass on their way to Glacier, and swore there was a big "CDT" sign somewhere on the south side of the road. My map told me to head straight into the woods, but I decided to trust the others' first-hand observation. A mile down the highway, we found it - a bit of tire-burned earth that doubled as a trailhead parking area. We turned south, into the forest, straight for the Bob. The Bob was big, the Bob was bad... bigger and badder than Glacier anyway. Fewer people went there. There was no going-to-the-moon road, there was no "Bob Lodge". Just us, some bears, and a maze of interlocking trails. The Bob Marshall Wilderness was rarely called by its full name. We'd heard from the locals that all troublesome bears got relocated to the Bob. Like so many things locals were sure they knew, it wasn't true. Troublesome bears were released close to where they were trapped - bombed with pepper spray, shot with bean bags, and attacked by dogs - it took a lot to freak-out a bear. Hopefully, it was enough to drive them away for good. But drive them to where? What did they do when the woods were full? We weren't officially in the Bob yet. We camped a few miles from the road, just far enough so that we couldn't hear it. Instead, the wind made the trees sing, and evening rains provided an encore. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A mile into the next day, the trail disappeared. That was the CDT, barely even a line on a map. We stood in a meadow of knee-high grass and flowers, looking, looking. We found wildlife trails heading out of the meadow... they disappeared in a few hundred yards, couldn't be the trail. We spotted an old tree blaze - an upside-down exclamation point cut out of the bark - it was probably 15 years old. Was that it? yup. The trail quickly got us frustrated with pointless ups and downs. Why hike over a hundred-foot hill, when you could just as easily go around it? Ahead, the trail followed a jeep road along the South Fork Two Medicine River below. We decided to cut down to the river early. The jeep road wasn't used by many jeeps it seemed. Almost every print in the frequent mud was that of a large bear. They were headed in every direction. Each time our feet were on the verge of being dry, the route crossed the river - a knee-deep ford in most places. It wasn't tough, and if it wasn't for the fact that my shoes didn't dry easily, I would have liked crossing the river. 10 miles or so later, we reached an empty ranger station. We sat on the porch eating cheese and crackers, debating who, if anyone, used the place. The door was locked. Then, a young woman showed up - a wildlife biology student. 21 years old, all smiles... the kind of biologist you see in the movies and say, "ya right, they're all like that.". We didn't feel so tough anymore. She was spending the summer studying, trapping (well, assisting), tagging and tracking bears. She said they'd already tagged more bears that year than they had the entire previous year. The bears were spreading, growing. She was the one responsible for the bizarrely raked 10-foot sections of road we'd seen - she was counting bear prints. She'd seen a couple bears earlier in the day. She had a healthy fear of them, but there she was, alone, doing it, armed with a little experience and a big can of pepper spray. I wanted to stay, I felt old. The map ahead showed a web of trails, all led to the same place. The official CDT route took a 3 mile detour to the southwest - over a hill and back down, why? We picked another path, the shortest route from 'here to there'. The trails got nicer as we neared the border of the Bob. We paralleled Montana streams - shallow, wide rippled sheets of water over smooth egg-shaped rocks. We were in old woods. A moose watched us go by - freaks, brightly colored aliens in a sea of sameness. We came upon a sand bar and called it a day. My nose was bothering me - filled with gunk that had no accurate name. I chipped away at it... just a little relief... Then I was back at the beginning, dripping and bleeding, for 10 minutes watching a frothy red puddle in the sand steadily grow. There was nothing my friends could do, "just worry for me, so I don't have to.", I thought. It was just a bloody nose, but I couldn't afford it. I needed all my blood. A simple affliction of light-headedness could be disastrous. I had 6 or 7 more days to go. The flow slowed and slowed, had it stopped? From then on, I treated my nose like a Chinese vase, no more itching, no more jerky movements, no more breathing through it, just let it alone I thought. I propped up my head up closed my eyes. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next day started where the last one had left off. We climbed up Crucifixion Creek, past Blue Lake and reached the divide. The continental divide was flat and swampy. The snow had just about all melted, but the mosquitoes hadn't yet hatched. Clumps of evergreen forest divided up empty soon-to-be green meadows. The area was a chain of parks in immense proportions. We took what we thought would be a cross-country shortcut, my map showed it as a trail. There had been a trail at one time, probably 20 years ago, but it was gone. We crashed through the brittle bottoms of trees, pushed ourselves up eroded gullies and made slow difficult progress. Suddenly, we were standing on brand-new tread. Somebody had moved the trail. They'd spent a lot of time on it - wooden structures lined the path, and drainage channels were cut to help the trail last. It was all a dozen miles from the nearest dead-end dirt road. It was a joy to walk on. In a couple miles we crossed into the Bob. A few minutes into the Bob, we passed a group of trail workers headed the other way - young employees of the forest service, and mules loaded with tools and food. They had been clearing the trail of downed trees, roaming the Bob for a week at a time. We didn't talk long, we wished each other well, and headed our separate ways. The trail became long and monotonous, I could feel the bigness of it. I was just seeing a small bit of the Bob, a small bit of the earth, and it felt gigantic. Every step brought more of it, a world in which to disappear. Varied thrushes rang like cell phones, no, not like cell phones, here and there, hidden by the green. Mule deer darted off the path ahead. We drifted apart, Drew, then me, then Mario, then John... the little differences in our walking speed amplified over the miles. We passed each other, leapfrogging as one then another stopped for lonely breaks. Our calls to the bears had devolved to a simple "'NUP!", the loudest sound we could make with the least amount of effort. The tunnel led us to Gooseberry, to Forest Service central. A dozen mules and 3 or 4 people were at Gooseberry, mulling around a back-country cabin. The older one was clearly the leader, dispatching teams to scour the trails for downed logs and patches of mud. We told him of our encounter earlier in the day, "Hmmm, just where I thought they'd be...", he rubbed his beard. He loved it all. I'd picked up a heavy metal file along the way, it had been laying on the side of the trail. "Must've fallen off a mule, thanks". He gave us juice. We had to ford the Flathead River. It split in two there - one of the crew gave us advice on where to cross - it wasn't very accurate information, but well-intentioned. We took off our socks to keep them dry, put our shoes back on, and crashed into the frigid stream. It was about waist deep, but not too swift and not too wide. We ate dinner on the other side of the crossing, then found a bit of earth surrounded by wetland on which to spend the night. My nose was still crusted in dried blood, not bleeding, so it was fine. It rained most of the night, the damp forest became damper. The morning was nothing but a dull misty greyness. During the night, a team of mice had attacked my food. One had chewed through the line that held it in the trees, another had penetrated deep inside - sampling some hot chocolate, some mac & cheese, and settling on gorp, good gorp, gorp drew had given me, gorp I was saving and savoring - pistachios, macadamias, exotic seeds... damn. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I spotted an unfamiliar creature, spotting me from the trees. A pine marten, a giant killer squirrel, or... squirrel killer. The big weasel thought of the implications of Drew and me - aliens! and bounded off in panic. The gloom quickly gave way to rain, the trail turned to mud. We were climbing, getting colder, the rain become sleet, then snow. Stupidly, I had tucked my nylon pants inside my ankle gaiters, water ran down my legs and into my shoes. I'd done it before sometime, but too long ago to learn from the mistake. My feet were numb with cold, sloshed, wrinkled and white. I put on my last pair of dry socks - 2 minutes of aaaahhh, then they were gone - soaked. I was out of energy, out of blood?, behind all my companions and slipping. Then it all changed. The snow faded, the clouds crumbled and blue took over the sky. The sun beamed, brightened and warmed. The terrain opened up - lakes, boulders, flowers... In the span of an hour, I went from misery to joy. I ate a snickers, a 'big one'. I was back. The trail disappeared again, under snow. We climbed to 8000 ft, the highest we'd been on the trip so far, and took a long break on rocks on top of Kevan Mountain, in the sun, finally... a view. A snake-like cliff extended southward, it was the northern section of the chinese wall. Not an original name, but a great wall. The top of the wall was the divide, sheer cliffs dropped down a thousand feet or more to an alpine slope below - that's where the trail was. The trail headed down, then up, then down then up, over ridges streaming out from the wall. We had to cut cross country to the CDT. It didn't go over Kevan Mountain, it went through the woods below somewhere... we'd had enough of that. We could see for 50 miles, it was obvious where to go. We cut down slopes of boulders and scree, down snowbanks like kids sledding at Christmas. We hit the trail. It was glorious, especially in contrast to the last couple days, those 50 miles of wooded tunnels. We followed the base of the cliff as it meandered south. The sun illuminated bands of colored rock in the cliff face - red, grey, mauve, black, yellow, brown - soft tones of solid earth. Tiny yellow flowers danced in the breeze and sunlight. I didn't know their name, but what did it matter? Why name such a beautiful thing? Why make it human? Why destroy the mystery and magic? We followed the wall the rest of the day, finally settling to camp in some trees just below it. A mule deer with fuzzy velvet antlers came by to say hello... and lick our pee (I've never tried it, but it must be good stuff). The Swainson's thrushes whistled, the shadows grew and another day of CDT passed. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drew left early. The rest of us were in no hurry. It was a clear sunny morning, the sun blasted the wall above us. We had to make a long detour southeast into the tunnel, then southwest to the other end of the wall. In-between the two sections, the wall went crazy and wasn't navigable, it was to remain a secret from us. We looked for the trail but could find nothing. The only thing we did find were Drew's footprints, headed up some decent, maintained tread that wasn't on the map. Perhaps "they" had re-routed the trail? We followed Drew. The tread led over the next ridge, then disappeared into a fan of faint paths. According to the map, there was supposed to be a trail up on the ridge someplace. We followed one of the faint paths along the ridge, but it ended in a cliff. Frustrated and confused, we headed down the other side of the ridge... perhaps we didn't know where we were? We figured that if we followed the stream below, it should lead us to our trail... somewhere. We set off, through the untrammeled forest. The woods got thick, huge, the ground approximate. It was rotten mossy logs, broken bits of branches and random patches of mud... it all made for difficult walking. Then it got worse. Giant fires had swept through the Bob in 1988. The lush green gave way to a land of bleached and broken trees. Some trees still stood, but many had fallen. They'd crashed on top of each other into a tangled skeletal mess. Green grasses and bright flowers grew below the menagerie of greyish white. In some places, the pile was 20 feet high - solid dead wood, in other places the earth was bare. We clamored over the brittle bones. The only way through was to snap whatever got in our way, whatever grabbed onto our clothes, our packs, our skin. Anything thinner than a pencil snapped from a touch, anything thinner than a baseball bat required a stiff kick. Eroded, steep-banked streambeds cut perpendicular to our path, we balanced high above the ground, trying to walk the length of whatever trees had fallen a favorable direction. We caught up to Drew and took a break. John spotted a bear crouching behind a log a hundred yards away - just a head, checking us out. We decided to keep moving, progress was slow. Everything grabbing, sticking, scratching, breaking... Then we hit the trail and instant relief. It had taken 3 hours to go 3 miles. It felt longer, it felt farther. We were behind schedule... not that we really had a schedule, but we'd hoped to be farther by then. We kept hiking, the burned area gave way to green after 5-6 more miles, we drifted into our solo places again. A group of horse-packers passed by, 3 people with 9 horses carrying their junk. I hopped off the trail into the woods, but it wasn't far enough for the horses - they panicked, they jumped around, the people yelled at me. Screw these people... I thought... It's not my fault your horses are stupid. We were determined to get back as close to the south end of the wall as possible. We had a good climb ahead... a couple thousand feet or so. John got in front and we all marched in silence behind. All of us were tired and we were about out of water. We didn't stop. John reached the top and threw his poles at a trail sign, "HAAA!", A desperate release of steam. We had to hike a few more miles to find water, eat, then one more to camp. I set up my tarp in a steady grey drizzle. The clouds had been building all day, now they were letting go. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We awoke in a thin forest of larches, covered in dew and blessed with another clear morning. Another day of "the wall" was ahead. The south section of the chinese wall was more regular than the north half, more straight. We stopped everywhere, soaking in the sun and soaking in the mystical power of the wall. Sometimes it took something so large to remind me how small I was - how weak, how insignificant, how helpless. The trail was routed just above the tree line, among the short flowers, but below the rocks that had crumbled from the cliff above. Through most of the summer, horses provided the bulk of the traffic on the trail, and everywhere they went - mud, ripped up earth, diverted streams... The damage was mostly cosmetic, that bit of trail hardly made or broke the local ecosystem, but it was disturbing and annoying. It was like graffiti on a statue. It was like litter. The trail was my home, and I had the feeling that people just didn't care about it. But, I knew they did care... in their own way. They just had different priorities, they rode high above the mess, protected from it by a thousand pound poop machine. I walked in the poop. The trail turned away from the wall, downhill into the forest. I decided to stop at Benchmark Wilderness Ranch with my companions. After the mouse incident and our generally slow progress, I didn't really have enough food to get all the way to Lincoln. I didn't have any food waiting for me at Benchmark, but John did, and he wouldn't need it - he was taking a break from hiking to go play rugby for a few days... whatever. The route through Benchmark was a little longer, but not much... maybe 5 miles or so. A family of backpackers passed us - Dad, Mom, brother, sister... heading up to the wall. They told us that a couple women had their camp wrecked by a bear the previous night at Indian Point. The women had hiked out. The summer was getting underway. We stopped at Indian Point to get some water, and the strangest thing happened. I actually saw a tree fall over. It had been resting on another tree and a slight breeze upset the balance. Crash! I'd seen probably hundreds of thousands of old trees lying on the ground in my lifetime, but I'd never actually seen one fall. One has to spend a lot of time in the woods to see that happen. Another 15 minutes down the trail and the sky exploded. The clouds had been building a lot faster all day than they usually did. A blanket of heavy rain poured down in waves, we ducked under trees, covered in nylon and plastic. Thunder echoed through the mountains, rumbling almost continuously. Then, it was over. Blue skies, a few tattered clouds... The air was cleaner than it had ever been (if that was even possible), the trees glistened, the grass and flowers glew. There was too much energy in the atmosphere though, the clouds built again, more rain. The cycle repeated a couple more times. We crossed a pack-bridge over the West Fork Sun River, and stopped to eat on the other side. Across the river, a man in blue jeans was a lugging huge container of water up the river bank - one of a group of horse-packers who'd made camp not far away. A little while later, he returned with 4 nervous horses and another man. I had to stop myself from shouting, "Hey, you can lead a horse to water...". We hiked a few more miles down the trail, which became a well-worn horse-highway, about 10 feet across. The landscape was fairly flat, clumps of forest and clumps of soft meadow. It looked manicured, almost fake, like a big city park, or a fairy tale. Any minute, I expected to see a merchant on wagon full of treasure roll past and get jumped by a band of merry men, and a green-clad chap swinging from the treetops. Every place was a perfect place to camp. Drew picked out a spot, and we all shrugged our shoulders, "looks great". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- It was only a few more miles to the trailhead - the end of the road, or the beginning. Benchmark Wilderness Ranch was a few more miles down that road. The trailhead parking area was filled with cars and trucks. A group was getting ready for an extended stay in the woods. One man in the group had a giant external frame backpack, counterbalanced by a bulging gut. The pack probably weighed 90 pounds, pots and pans were lashed here and there, a shotgun, ammo, I supposed he was going to war since hunting season was months away. He knew what he was doing of course, he was experienced. What was he intending to get out of his time in the mountains? I wondered. A backache? Blisters? Was that his understanding of backpacking? It didn't look fun. I didn't care about the guy, I was just sorry that he was spreading his, "ain't a man if ya' can't take it..." philosophy, ruining the experience of backpacking for whoever happened to listen to him. I was down to 2 granola bars and a few crackers. We walked a few hundred yards past the entrance of the trailhead, then accepted a ride in the back of a pickup the rest of the way to Benchmark. There wasn't much at Benchmark - one woman, a couple cabins. Benchmark was primarily a horse-packing business, their biggest draw, hunting season, was months away - $2000 for a week's worth of shooting big animals and camping with generators... Drew's package hadn't shown up. The woman who ran the place was heading down past Augusta later, and offered him a ride. Augusta was the nearest town, about 30 miles of gravel road. His package was likely at the post office. We decided to rent a cabin and take some showers... The only problem was that we had no extra food. The hours clicked away... 12PM, 1PM, 2PM... two old guys drove an old blue pickup truck back and forth... 3PM, 4PM... Drew's ride never materialized. Apparently "later" meant "tomorrow". I was starving, but couldn't afford to eat my provisions - I needed those for the hike out. Timidly, I headed to the house, "Do you have any food... like, any meat we could, like, buy off you?", I asked. The woman returned with 4 venison steaks. "Here you go, she said with a smile." Wow, real meat. Protein. I returned to the cabin triumphant. We sat around, deciding how to make the most of our unexpected bounty. Then Willie showed up. Willie "worked" at the ranch - a high-school-aged country boy, 100%. He brought us a cooler full of chips, potatoes and pop... we prepared a feast. "I put sugar in my stepdad's gas tank... He was pissed.", Willie volunteered. He kept going, telling us stories that if repeated to the wrong person, would've won him free meals at the Univerity of Montana State Correctional Facility. He was beyond correction though. The only advice we could give him was that he ought not to talk so much. I ate so much that I couldn't stand after dinner. I lay in bed, immobilized by my bloated stomach. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Drew finally got his ride early the next morning. The rest of us sat around, lazy. Sitting was a treat. I finished reading "Mountain Man", by Vardis Fisher, getting the pages from John as he finished them... handing them off to Mario when I was done. Drew got back around 3PM. It had taken him 3 hitches and 4 miles of walking to get back to Benchmark. John's rugby friends hadn't shown up yet, but we were eager to get going. "See you up ahead, man", I knew I'd cross paths with John again... the hike was still young. The Bob was behind us. We were hiking into the Scapegoat Wilderness. It was all attached, it was all the same land, but the scapegoat did have a subtly different character. The mountains were tighter, there were crickets, cicadas, different birds, fewer bear prints. The fires which had burned the Bob in 1988 devastated the Scapegoat. A map at the trailhead showed how the Scapegoat's forests were primarily dead white snags. We walked along the length of a river, the clouds made sand-dune ripples in the sky. It felt good to be hiking again, it was what I was for. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We entered the burn soon after breaking camp the next morning. The trees were twisted into white spirals by the intense heat over a decade ago - locked into place like some pompeiin family in eternal denial. The graveyard stretched as far as we could see, up mountainsides, along rivers, everything had been consumed, recycled. Flowers, grass, bugs... they were taking over. In these mountains, 13 years was a blink. Near the occasional lucky patch of trees that bore witness to the fires and lived, a thick cover of saplings took root... smaller and smaller as they got further away from their progenic source. That was the way a forest came back, slowly, eventually, but quickly all the same. The trail crossed Dearborn Creek, then headed back up toward the divide. We got there and examined our options. The official CDT route went down the other side, then back up another drainage… crossing the divide again after 8 miles and thousands of vertical feet... up and down. It seemed it would be easier to walk along the open country that constituted the divide and get to the same place in 3 miles, with dramatic views all the way. A path was beaten into the ground heading up the divide - we weren't the first ones to balk at the stupidly circuitous CDT. Tiny blue-white-pink flowers, smaller than thumbtacks, carpeted the landscape. The few trees, most of them white relics, grew in formations decided by the whimsy of the ever-present winds. Swaths of standing dead forests reached up the mountainsides, clouds covered the ridge, making the wind visible. Far below, Bighorn Lake rested as a puddle of blue in an immense rocky white bowl. We hooked up with the CDT and descended to a pond below Caribou Peak. Our venture to the mountaintops was too brief. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- For breakfast, I re-hydrated some hash browns that I'd picked out of a hiker box in Benchmark. They were probably 4 years old, completely bland and disgusting. I was no longer hungry, I felt sick instead. I had no energy, but managed to drag myself back up to the divide. The mountaintops were slowly changing. The bare rolling hills were splattered with cliff faces, fewer and fewer as time and the miles went on. South. We dipped down to Lewis and Clark Pass. Merriwether Lewis had passed through there on his way back from the Pacific nearly 200 years ago. I could see his face - tired, torn, confused and worn. The landscape looked more tame than I'd imagined. I was sure it had changed in 200 years, but not much. The mountains were still the same. The trees and grasses had shifted here and there, but 200 years is a short time for a mountain. I had heard that one could still see ruts in the earth from Indian traders - the pass had always been a popular route across the divide. I didn't see any ruts, only a modern dirt road leading down to a spring, a source of water used for more than a mere 200 years I imagined. We headed back up the divide, up Green Mountain... a green mountain, a windy mountain. The wind kept anything from getting too tall. Trees there grew sideways, as if pressed by a dry-cleaner. The wind was blowing fiercely, as if trying to rid the mountain of its human infestation. All sound disappeared into the white noise of wind whipping by our ears. It was only there though, just that one mountainside... strange. We got to the other side and headed through more forest. The CDT was getting more and more vague. Every couple miles, we'd have the luxury of a sign "CDT-->" to remind us we were still on course, but that was all. There was little actual trail, just open land. We came upon one of these signs... it was aimed (like most of them) at hikers who were headed north, an arrow pointed the way toward where we'd come. It appeared the sign was intended for travelers who came up the ridge to our right. Drew headed down the ridge and into the woods to investigate. Yup, there was an old road there... he disappeared behind the trees. Mario and I followed. The road continued along the ridge, then disappeared into a latticework of blown-down trees. I kept going, Mario was behind me, but my legs didn't want to wait for him, couldn't. After a couple more miles of forest, meadow, forest, meadow, I was frustrated, no road, no trail, no signs, nothing. I pulled out my compass and map - too late. I'd been headed the wrong direction since that damn sign. We should have gone left, not right. I'd paid a price for not paying attention to where I was. I was off my map. Mario caught up and we had a little conference. We figured we were on a ridge NW of Bartlett creek. If we headed down to the creek, we'd hit a forest road. We could follow that to the highway. We called out for Drew, but he was gone. He could take care of himself. We headed down the steep wooded hillside, intersecting a road halfway down the mountain. We looked around and saw a patchwork of clear-cuts all along the mountainsides surrounding us - logging roads headed this way and that, none of them were on the map. We tried to pick roads that headed our general direction, but came to one dead-end after another with lots of bushwhacking in-between. Finally, we got to the bottom of the valley, on the main "trunk" road. We were out of water though, and for whatever reason didn't keep going down to the creek to get some. Instead we followed the road. I kept thinking... We should have been in Lincoln by now... if we'd only managed to follow the CDT to Rogers Pass. We'd taken our wrong turn only a couple miles before the pass, and had been hiking parallel to the highway ever since. A couple miles down the road, a pickup came down the road from the mountains. I just about grabbed the truck as it drove by. We tried to play on right side of the fine line between pathetic and scary (the pathetic side). The couple driving by was rock-hounding - looking for rocks to use in some home-improvement project. The bed of their pickup was filled with brittle flat rocks. They offered us some water. We told them our story, and they apprehensively let us sit with the rocks as they drove toward the highway. They had one more stop to make, at a public gravel pit. We helped them shovel gravel into plastic 5-gallon buckets, and got promoted to "back seat" status. Inside the vehicle we could actually talk to them. He'd grown up in Lincoln, lived in California for a while, then come home to Montana. He had a gun, and was concerned because we didn't. "There's mountain lions out there...", he warned, "Ya never know what might happen...". Oh ya... bears AND lions. By the time we reached the highway, we had a ride to Lincoln. "Just pass the favor on to someone else", he told us. I had tried to do as many favors as possible since the PCT, I figured I was still slightly in Karmic debt... now definitely... I had a lot of work ahead of me. Our ride dropped us off in the middle of Lincoln, the biggest town I'd seen since leaving Seattle. It was a metropolis of over 2000! I wanted a milkshake, Mario wanted meat. We found both at the eatery in the middle of town. We stood out like... well, like a couple of smelly hiking bums. Families avoided our eyes, the waitress was cordial and curt. Lincoln was the one-time home of Ted "Unabomber" Kaczynski, and the people had little tolerance for the dirty, smelly and bearded. We split a room at a hotel next to the restaurant and set out to discover... Lincoln. We didn't have to look far, John was walking down the street. Drew was at another hotel. The man in the blue suit had arrived. He had a regular name like you or I, but to us, he was simply the man in the blue suit. A veteran of the AT and PCT, he'd started hiking the CDT about 10 days after us. He had a tiny pack. He'd passed us while we were in Benchmark. He'd sprained his ankle in a horse print along the chinese wall. He wore a one piece blue jumpsuit. "This thing is great", he told us, "let's just see a tick try and get in there.". I nodded my head in approval. He kept up his sales pitch, "It breathes... it's warm AND it's cool". He was one with the blue suit, naked without it (literally). He couldn't have been fabricated by any imaginative whimsy, he was too real, too fake, one of a kind. He left that afternoon, "Aw, my ankle just needs a little exercise." It was twice the size of its twin. "Damn horses...", he complained. John had a friend joining him on the trail. J.J. was from New Jersey... er, rather, Big Sky Montana. He'd dropped John & Drew & Mario off in Glacier, I'd met him there briefly. He hadn't hiked any long trail, but he really wanted to do it - that was his most important piece of equipment, one of the mind, one that couldn't be bought at REI. He was a teacher with a couple months off, looking to learn and discover something. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mario and I had agreed to try and stick together, if for nothing else than to split hotel rooms. We stayed until lunch the next day - grease, protein, cream, fat. Then, after one last polish sausage, we raised our thumbs. Lincoln to Butte Our first ride, in the back of a pickup, took us 5 miles down the road. The next one, on the flat bed of a flatbed, took us 4. We started walking, still 9 more miles to go... another car stopped. The driver was late for an appointment and headed the wrong direction, but wanted to help. He drove us half a mile, until he had to turn off a side road. One more ride in the cab of yet another pickup, and we were at the pass, back on the trail. It had taken about 5 hours to travel the 18 miles from Lincoln to Rogers pass. It was already getting dark when we started walking. We made about 100 yards, and called it a day. For the first time on the trip, I didn't bother using my tarp. The sky was clear, and the forecast for many days of hot sun. I laid on some lumpy slanted ground, and covered myself with my sleeping bag. Darkness rose. The forest was another world at night. If day was the realm of the plants and insects, night was that of the mammals. Mice, bats, skunks, possums, etc., even deer and bear were mostly nocturnal. Throughout the trip, I often awoke to sounds of creatures crunching through the dead leaves in the middle of the night. It wasn't troublesome, it just "was". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We climbed up to the divide early the next morning. It was a nice trail, maintained by some local horse-packers. We were no longer in a designated wilderness, just a forest, but still wilderness all the same. The designated wilderness areas had special attractions, they had visitors. The national forest was a lonely place, not as visually striking, but challenging and beautiful. The trail, carved out of green-covered soil and rock, traversed near the crest of the divide. We had views of gently rolling mountains - waves of green that stretched to the hazy horizon and beyond. Summer was finally taking over, it was hot, even hotter with a full backpack, 8000ft closer to the sun. We found occasional shade. Then, the trail entered the forest and we found only occasional sun. After a dozen miles or so, we zigzagged down to Flesher Pass, another highway that came peeking through the mountains. A couple cars stopped at the pass, their occupants walked around, looked, pointed, then sped off - always in a hurry to be somewhere else, never satisfied. I headed down the road, looking for a spring. I found it a half-mile away, a trickle of water flowing under the empty highway. I sat down in a clump of lush grasses, pumping water, swatting at flies. Water was getting more scarce, so we had to plan how much to bring. On average, it worked out to 1 liter per 7 miles for me... I could stretch it to 10 if desperate. Plus, I needed exactly 1.5 liters to cook a meal & wash it down. We planned our day around water. I didn't want to carry any more than necessary. Mario had already hiked through New Mexico, at one point he'd walked an entire day on 1 liter in the southern sun. The misery of that experience was still with him. He always carried "the maximum". South of Stemple Pass, the trail entered an almost unbroken forest of skinny lodgepole pines. It was easy walking, soft, shaded, not steep. In 10 miles, we got a brief view ahead, took a break, and then returned to the tunnel. The trail was well marked, except where it needed to be. We'd walk along an obvious path, passing CDT signs and blazes that didn't need to be there. Then, the trail would disappear, nothing... Oh, there it is... I think... We came to another pass, another road, a gravel road, Stemple Pass. I was out of water again. I headed down the road, arms full of empty bottles. Mario took a nap on a picnic bench... hmm... didn't seem fair. There was a blue line on my map, about a half mile down the road. There wasn't a stream on the ground to match though, just a dry ditch. All the water was intercepted by somebody's backwoods dream home up above. Bastards. I kept walking, water would appear further downhill... and it did. By the time I returned to the pass, I was pooped. After dinner, it was dark. We walked 100 yards into the woods and set up camp. A couple hours later, in the darkness, someone parked at the pass. They had a floodlight and were determined to use the damn thing for something, even if it was stupid and pointless. For 20 minutes, they flashed the trees with the light, "No, let me have it...", "ha, ha, ha...". Morons. They were people and their stuff, trying to be happy and failing. They drove off. The real woods were ours again. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The trail quickly hit a large grassy meadow. The path became a two-track jeep road. The roads only got used by vehicles in the autumn, when ranchers came to collect their fat free-range cattle. For the time being, there were only us, the grass, the flowers and the flies. The flies were peaking. They were part of the eco-quation, just another limb of life. I was sure the flies had names, categories, both scientific and common, but I had no idea what those were. So, I just gave them my own descriptions. First, there were the tiny grey ones, 1/4 inch long. They seemed to prefer smelly socks and I was fine with that. Next were yellow and black flies, disguised as bees, but harmless. They would hover in one spot for a while, then land and slowly crawl... a lot like their stinging counterparts actually. Then, there were the shiny flies, they came in a variety of sizes and iridescent colors. They were attracted to poop and rot, their shiny bodies kept them clean... clean for a fly anyway. The tiny 1/8 inch biters were easy to miss, until I wondered why my wrist was itching, and found it covered in little welts, the bastards. I caught one in the act, scooping out a hunk of me for dinner - it was his last act - squish! Finally, there were the giants. They were loners, striped like zebras or escaped prisoners, they circled like sharks. Sometimes, they waited for ten minutes or more, looking for an unprotected bit of flesh. Usually, they were easy to spot, as they were unafraid, taunting us. There was only one way to get rid of them. Stop walking, wait for them to land, get comfortable, and then whack! - they buzzed into the dirt. It usually took a stomp or two to finish the job. Occasionally, one got through - a sharp sting on my neck was always fatal for the fly. They hadn't evolved to feed on humans and couldn't deal with our swatting hands. I examined one of them, their mouth consisted of a boney white razor blade, 1/8 inch long. Their method was to slice open skin, and drink up blood. On people, the flies never got much past the painful slicing part. We got to a grassy saddle a few miles north of Nevada Mountain. Time for a break. A few flies buzzed in, attracted by our sweet stench, and then a few more, then dozens, then hundreds. My pack, a feast of salt, lay on the grass, covered in a swarm. Most of the flies didn't bite, but at critical mass they made breathing and eyesight difficult. We weren't able to stop for more than 5 minutes in the heat of the day, any longer and they took over. The trail faded in and out, usually out. We knew where to go, the terrain was open & visible and I had good topographic maps. Still, we sometimes had to wonder, were we really on the CDT? The flies kept us moving. We reached Dana Spring in the early evening - a fenced-off patch of soggy grass, and a pipe that led to a holding tank. It was all there to keep the cows from destroying their own source of water. The flies started to relax as the sun got lower. We cooked dinner. Just as we were getting ready to leave, Drew caught up. He'd spent an extra day in Lincoln, and had apparently been hiking non-stop since then. Mario and I had decided to take a short cut over the next few miles. The divide made a semi-circle to the north and the trail followed the divide - no water on the route. Instead, we could follow some roads along a creek and pick up the trail in about 10 miles. Drew agreed it was a sensible plan. We decided to meet up at Polly Spring, a few miles down the creek. Polly Spring was nothing more than a field of cow prints and dried poop - no water. Stupidly, I hadn't brought much water from Dana, not enough for a comfortable night even. I left a note on the trail for Drew, and we continued down the dry streambed... there had to be water somewhere soon. As we descended, we passed more and more cows. In their brief artificial lives, their only encounters with humans had all been miserable. They saw us and panicked, they ran direction-less, they bellowed and mooed, "help, oh no!". The cow was a pathetic creature, it had become more of a plant than an animal, just a carcass on four moving stalks. 3 more miles, still no water, what were all these cows drinking? Then, I heard it, a stream! Another valley, dotted with cows, fed into the main channel. It was dark by the time we set up our tents. In the distance, we heard more cows bellowing, running from Drew. He stopped before he reached us though. Mario lit a couple firecrackers he'd bought in Lincoln... Oh, that was right… It was the 4th of July, and the only one who seemed to notice or care was Dutch. A full moon lit up the landscape in shades of grey and blue. Crickets sang, an owl swooped by, silent and cool. It'd been over 300 miles since the border of Canada. I had already become removed from the ordinary, a thousand steps back from the routine, asking "why?" and laughing. I was immersed in a new reality, my reality. The CDT was fast becoming a home, a life-style, more comfortable every day. I felt lucky because I had over 2000 miles left to go. I thought about the two hikers I'd met in Glacier, the ones that had quit before I’d started. Where were they now? and where did they want to be? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We awoke to the sounds of terrified cows, Drew was getting closer, then passing us. We gathered our things and headed out. Walking on the soft dirt road was easy. We passed some parked RVs, celebrating the holiday? the people inside were still sleeping. Wherever the forest gave way to meadow, the flowers were spectacular - hillsides of color stretching to the sky. We slowly passed above a gigantic ranch - a square mile of tiny yellow flowers flowing downhill from our feet. The ranch house was a tiny mansion in the middle. We caught up to Drew and to the CDT. There was a new section of trail... mostly. It took us by an old forgotten railroad trestle - rotten wood, planks missing, probably haunted by some lost engineer-spirit. History never stopped, was the fate of the trestle the fate of everything? The trail disappeared into a meadow and the terrain got confusing. We walked in circles for a bit then consulted our maps. Before the trip, I'd downloaded all my maps from the internet, traced-out the trail and some alternate routes, and printed them. It took way too much time, but it was paying off... so far. The maps were as topographically detailed as one could get, they were the USGS 7.5 minute quads, shrunk a bit and altered. Every other topographic map was based on these, the only problem was that the man-made ingredients of the map kept changing. Roads closed, or more often, were added. Buildings were built, jurisdictions changed. To supplement the maps, I had a set of guidebooks, written and meticulously updated by Jim Wolf. He'd originally written most of the guidebooks around 1980. They contained useful information like, "...Crawl beneath another fence. Go over a minor ridge at 16.7 and then, at a junction at 16.8, make a sharp turn to the right..." He was a lawyer by trade. Mario had a set of the other guidebooks. They were newer, with color photos and laid-out with an amazon.com motif. They looked really nice, but we didn't use them often as they just didn't have the detail we needed. Usually, we also had forest service or BLM maps, covering whatever area we happened to be in. These usually had the most updated road number and trail info, and covered a wide area. We were in the Helena National Forest. None of the guidebooks or maps were much use in that one spot. We followed a couple dead-end wildlife trails, and then just followed a compass-heading south. The compass was one thing we could always rely on. We climbed past some radio towers, then descended to MacDonald Pass - named for a tollbooth operator, a true American hero. We took a break at a car-campground. Some kids were driving their ATVs in circles in the parking lot near the highway - communing with nature in their own way. I was discovering that few Montanans exercised without a motor. Discussions about the CDT usually led to questions like, "So, where's your car", or "What road are you taking?", or "Who's picking you up?". All I could do was chuckle kindly, anything else was fruitless. We headed over more grassy hilltops. Afternoon storm clouds were building over neighboring hills, but we had sun on ours. An occasional stirke of lightning flashed and echoed... 5 miles... 6 miles away? We finally camped on the trail, which in that case, was an old logging road covered in grass. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The route continued on forest roads much of the next day. 2 miles of flat and overgrown road, winding around the mountaintop, 2 miles of trail, 6 more miles of road - hot with bleached-white gravel, a mile of steep rocky jeep tread, more old road, tilted and grassy - we saw every type of road imaginable. We stopped to dry our belongings, it was a daily ritual. Every morning, we woke up wet from either dew or rain. Every afternoon, we laid it all out in the sun - the thirsty air sucked up the moisture rapidly. We came to a decision point of sorts. A section of trail was described in the guidebook as "flagged, but not built in 1998", it was all the information we had to go on. Surely, I thought, they must have built it by now... Drew decided not to risk it, and took a different route. Mario and I hiked on, and arrived where the junction was supposed to be. There was nothing but a piece of plastic orange marking tape tied to a young pine. It looked about 3 years old. The trail still hadn't been built, but it was only a couple miles, we could manage. It was two miles of hiking from orange flag to orange flag, through thick young trees across the steep slope of Thunderbolt Mountain. Solid footing was rare, so was space between the trees. The orange flags had mostly fallen to the ground. The few that remained were well hidden. True to the mountain's name, rain and lightning flashed from above. We got wet, but we managed to make it through somehow. At some other time, it would have pissed me off, but somehow it was funny on the CDT. Sometimes the trail was wherever we made it. We pushed ourselves the rest of the day, trying to make up for time lost to the orange flags. We climbed a couple thousand feet and reached Leadville. Leadville wasn't a "ville" at all, just a bunch of abandoned mining equipment and cabins, rusting and rotting. The people had been practical, the only reason to go to the mountains was to extract money. When it didn't pay out, they left their trash behind and moved on - litter in the guise of history. We finally made camp at 8000ft, on a grassy hilltop with views east to Butte, and views south to... somewhere... to tomorrow. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The route down passed across a long soggy meadow. A spring created a clear stream that cut down the middle of the meadow. ATVs had ripped across the meadow though, and diverted the stream. Instead of its natural course, it flowed through quickly-eroding muddy tire-ruts. ATVs let anyone get to the woods. They didn't require the drivers to have a brain, conscience or soul. That ancient meadow, Long Park, was altered, wrecked by the clueless in an instant. They were still clueless no doubt. It was human history in a nutshell. The trail wound down over fields of Lupine. We could see all the way to the Anaconda-Pintler - jagged peaks on the horizon. It had been a lot of miles since our last foray into terrain like that. We'd be on the horizon in time though, it wasn't that far, another week perhaps? The trail took us back into the forested tunnel along little used roads... What were they all there for? Oh ya, money. Trees were money, rocks were money, rivers were money. They were my money too, they were a bank from which I made continuous withdrawals. I needed to feed my habit: walking, breathing - I couldn't do those things well without the bank. There were almost no CDT markers on the roads. A half-dozen intersections and a couple lucky guesses brought us to another car-campground, same as the last one. We sat at a table, exhausted and running low on food. A family had taken over the space next to us. They were taking turns riding ATVs up and down the parking area - Dad, then Brother, then Mom, then Sister and her friend, even the family dog got a ride. Walking was not done. I took a nap. It was another 5 miles to the highway that led to Butte. We walked 3, out of the national forest and onto "no trespassing" land. We picked a spot and ducked under some barbed-wire. Out of sight of the nearby house, we spent the night. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We hit the highway quickly the next morning. It was Sunday morning. Cars flew by impossibly fast... one by one. I started to think we'd never get a ride - they couldn't see us going so fast. A pickup shot past us, slammed on its brakes, and backed-up. It was a miracle. We got dropped off in the suburban sprawl south of Butte. I felt embarrassed. Mario had never been to the US before, and I wanted it all to be impressive. I tried to explain that it was better than Butte - It wasn't all Walmarts and K-marts, McDonalds and TV, at least not yet anyway. But... it was real, it was the America of our own creation, we'd been found out. I explained the history of the "blue light special" to Mario - a story that wasn't in any book or national monument's guided tour. Butte was a big town, not designed for walking... not designed at all actually, just thrown together - the quickest way to make money. We walked anyway. I bought a bunch of new equipment - a new sleeping pad, a new food bag, titanium tent stakes, nylon rope... The biggest attraction in Butte was an old pit mine, a giant hole in the ground. We didn't see it though. Instead, we split a hotel room and ate pizza. The man in the blue suit rode by on a bicycle he'd bought for $10 at a thrift store, "This thing is great.", he said, "It’s the only way I can get around this place." It was a clever move. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On the way out, we stopped for lunch at one of the dozens of nameless casino-restaurants scattered throughout the town. I ate a BLT and watched cigarette smoke filter though the hair of a chubby wrinkled old lady. Her hand was attached to a slot machine. It was the sickest thing I'd seen in weeks, I had to get out of the place, why did people live there, I wondered? How? We passed a rehab center next the the highway, the addicts were having lunch, some of them were walking in circles around a track, metaphors for their lives. Butte to Salmon We were on the highway again, working our magic with thumbs and cars. About 20 minutes in, a van stopped up ahead. As we ran up, the man got out to rearrange some things in his trunk, he waved at us to take our time. He worked (or at least volunteered) for the Montana Wilderness Coalition, I was surprised that such a thing even existed. He was looking for ATV damage along the CDT. He'd had trouble figuring out just where the CDT was located though. "I'm gonna have to order some of those yellow guidebooks.", he said. "A damn enviramenalist..." as many of the locals called them. He lived in Wyoming. Most of the rides we got in Montana weren't from Montanans, they were from travellers just passing through. The rides from Montanans were usually in the back of a pickup that started moving before we could sit down, and took off the second our feet hit the dirt again. I often wondered, if they were in such a rush, why'd they even stop for us? Too quickly, we arrived back at the trail. I was ready to start walking, but wanted more conversation... Mario and I were already running low on new topics. The trail started out quite nice - new tread that switch-backed through a forest of old trees and giant round granite boulders. We passed a series of crystal clear streams pouring from deep inside the mountain, their soft trickle sang, "drink me". Magic. I was home again. As we rose, the mosquitoes multiplied. At first, they were enough to make stopping intolerable, then enough to make walking the same. With every 5 steps, I caught one sinking its plunger into the flesh of my left shoulder, whack! another took its place. I was spending all my energy to battle an undefeatable foe. For the first time on the trip, I resorted to chemicals - DEET - better than drugs. Relief was instant, the buggers couldn't see me anymore. The DEET usually lasted around 45 minutes, then got diluted by sweat and dirt. It was long enough though, we rounded the top of the hill, headed through a wetland, and hit a road. The bugs were tolerable again. The road took us above Delmoe Lake. ATVs had carved smooth, rolling double-tracks in every possible direction through the forest undergrowth. We tried following some of them, hoping they'd take us down to the lake. The tracks went in circles though. The ATVs didn't take anybody anywhere, just gave them a cheap thrill of, "look at me! Wheeee!". $2000 joy-ride machines... who'd like one? We cut cross-country, aiming for the lake. Delmoe Lake was a reservoir, the water was down a good 10 feet or so, leaving a stale ring of bleached earth around its perimeter. Rotting dead fish lapped at the shore - put out of their misery. I climbed up some rocks, headed for the dam, when a big white dog saw me and switched on - all teeth and voice, growling, hair standing on the back, tail straight out. "He's a nice dog", I heard from behind some rocks. I clutched my pepper spray, subconsciously hoping the dog did something stupid. I really wanted to try the stuff out. "He's a nice dog", the guy repeated, smiling, "Come on boy, it's OK". Dogs don't like people with backpacks, poles, sunglasses, beards and hats. I saw myself in a mirror once, and understood why - I looked not quite human. We headed around the lake to a car-campground, tired, slept. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next morning, we walked Delmoe Lake road all the way to another highway. The road had been slightly re-routed from the location on my map - made a little longer & gentler so people could get 40-foot RVs back to the lake. I hated Delmoe Lake road, its smooth boring turns, its white gravel, its white trash living on the shoulder, the graffiti on the boulders, turning to sand. Still, people came to the lake, the swill-hole, the irresistible force of flat water, any water, drew them there like flies to a cow's rear-end. We passed some old men at a picnic area, unloading ATVs from a trailer. Another toxic puddle was nearby, just under I-90... People were fishing in it. I pumped water from a nearby well, and then joined Mario in a quick nap. The old men we'd seen zoomed past us. They wore the blank look of addicts, plugged-in to the drug machine, farting, vibrating, giving its fix to pale skinny legs and bloated bellies. We were slowly hiking around the back side of Butte... too slowly. The forest service map showed a trail following the divide through the forest south of Homestake Pass. None of our other information mentioned it. As we suspected, the trail wasn't there, just some map-makers practical joke, or mistake, or dream. We cut down below the highway, heading for the suburban hills south of Butte. Our guidebooks suggested following paved roads for the next 20+ miles, southwest, then northwest. We'd had enough of that. Private property be damned, we were going straight through the subdivisions. I thought of the caption on a Far Side comic: "Tonga and Zuthu wander through the suburbs, plagued by kids, dogs and protective mothers." We asked some kids on bikes where the roads went, as the roads weren't on our maps. Like most of the people in the area, they didn't talk to strangers, just mumbled and pointed. We followed the curving roads to a dead-end, then found a dirt-bike path heading into the hills, going our way. We followed it for a mile or so, past a clump of abandoned buildings built near nothing, then to an abandoned railroad bed - "No Trespassing". The railroad bed took us to another road, more "homes & land" land, these were bigger homes on bigger plots of land. We stopped for a break in the shade in somebody's backyard, out of sight, we hoped, out of water, almost. It was still hot. We estimated our location on the map, and kept heading west to the end of the road, barbed wire, no trespassing, no people, just quiet island homes in an expanse of brown and green grass. The land was still there though, every place was some place, and there was a beauty to it all. We spotted a tank of water ahead - luck!!! Clean cold water was seeping out of the ground into a tub for the cows and horses and trespassing hikers. A couple more barbed-wire fences and we were back on public land... we figured, probably. We climbed a road (is it that road?, studying the map) and camped in light forest among pine needles and smooth decorative rocks. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I was pretty sure of our location. The road, then more like a trail, took us a half mile west, then turned. We headed off the path and into the forest, following a red compass needle and directions of least resistance. Lucky for us, the forest there was easy to walk through, there was plenty of space between the trees, no hidden cliffs, and occasional views so we could make educated guesses about where we were. Was it Climax Gulch? or the next one over? the one not on my map? We knew if we headed west long enough, we'd hit another highway, then it'd be easy to pick-up the trail again. We followed a drainage down, west. Water flowed, the forest was peaceful, enchanting, nice. It was all smooth rounded boulders and a shaded pine-needle carpet. I imagined it was what Butte once looked like, before people had come to improve it. Why couldn't we all just live in hobbit-holes in the woods? Oh, ya, telephone wires, automobiles, toilets, upholstery... all the complicated things that made life easy, that's why. We crossed another barbed-wire fence, into somebody's land, and came out to a ranch house. We could see the highway a couple miles off, down a gravel road that cut through an open plain. A mile down the road, a pickup towing a horse trailer pulled up. A man leaned out and said hello. We had obviously trespassed through his land to get to that point, but he didn't seem to mind. He wore a dull cowboy hat, faded shirt, faded jeans, boots, and, believe it or not, spurs. That's right, honest-to-goodness cowboy spurs. We explained what we were doing, and he offered us a ride to the highway. We couldn't refuse it. Beside the fact that it was blazing hot and shadeless, we'd had little contact with that "other" Montana, the one they advertise, the one that's kind, helpful, gentle, smart and real. After our short ride, we got out and said our thanks. "If the good Lord had intended us to walk, he'da given us four legs.", the man said matter-of-factly. I showed him my hiking poles, but he was only slightly amused. He actually understood where we were going and, probably even why. "Make sure you go up Nichola Creek when you get there.", he advised, looking off to the horizon, "It's my favorite place in the world.". He smiled and shook his head, some memory sending him into a temporary contemplative bliss. Then he drove off, horses bouncing behind, headed toward Butte. We were standing right on the CDT. Amazing. Our plan had worked better than we'd figured it would, we'd cut off a lot of boring and traffic-laden roads. We still had to walk 3 more miles of hot, shadeless, bright gravel. I generally walked about 15% faster than Mario, we rarely attempted to walk together. It would have driven me nuts to be behind someone constantly, I hoped I wasn't driving him nuts... I probably was though, oh well. I took a lot of breaks, long breaks. I'd wait for him to catch up, then wait another 15, 30, 45 minutes... However long it took until we telepathically decided it was time to walk again. The road led us to a trailhead, where we took a long break. Just below us flowed a little creek, the last water for another 17 miles. We'd already gone about 8 in the morning. The creek drained two dozen square miles of range-land, and tasted like a cow's rectum... my filter didn't filter-out stink. I went back down the water to wash my bandana, and half of a dead fish floated by. I tried not to think about it too much. The trail rose into the hills, Butte was behind us. Most of the trail was ATV trail, doubling as hiking tread. It actually made for pleasant walking, very smooth. We didn't see any ATVs, that probably helped make it a pleasant experience. The CDT was well-marked. Wooden signs pointed the way at each intersection, it was nice to let the signs do the navigating for a change. The trail rose higher into a forest of douglas firs. The big trees seemed out of place here. They weren't nearly as big as their cousins on the pacific northwest coast, but they were probably as old... at least those that were left. We passed through great swaths of clear-cuts - straight lines that partitioned the land. Oh, that's right, trees were money, money was important, all important. I wished the big trees luck in avoiding the roads and chainsaws and people, "It'll be all-right", I told them. Then I turned my head so they wouldn't catch me lying. We caught some light rain and soft thunder - it matched the temper of the forest perfectly. I learned a new Dutch word, "Wulkin", which meant clouds, I think. I wanted to learn more, but it was too easy to make Mario speak English. I figured I'd have to visit Holland someday to really get the hang of it. I wasn't going to get very far telling everybody, "Wulkin", and pointing at the sky. How would I communicate on a clear day? I'd learned one other word, "Pausa" which meant "break". When Mario was really tired, English was too much effort, it was time for a "Pausa". We hiked the 17 miles to Larkspur spring in record time, and ate dinner protected from the steady light rain by big trees. The sky cleared as evening came, and we made it to an open grassy hilltop. It was places and moments like those that made the trip worth any price of time, money or discomfort. The sunlight slowly faded, giving way to a calm, clear, quiet night. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We made it down to another paved road by noon. The Anaconda-Pintler wilderness was just ahead, bare rocky peaks were calling for us. But, we'd made a decision to have a pit-stop in Anaconda first. The road, hwy 274 (I'll never forget that number), was empty. One car drove past as we were hiking up, it took a half-hour for another to pass, and it didn't stop for us. 45 minutes, and another car, no luck. We started walking toward Anaconda, it was 20 miles or so. After 3 miles, we got a ride in a pickup... halfway... the people in the pickup had "something" to do in the mountains. 2 more miles of walking, and the same pickup came by again, we got a ride to the "main" highway, only 2 more miles to Anaconda, and there were lots of cars. It took only a couple minutes to flag down a ride, it came from a food distributor with a wife who worked at a restaurant in Anaconda. We had lunch and decided to spend the night - the sky was turning black with clouds. We'd heard rumors there was another couple hiking the trail. The man in the blue suit had mentioned them, the people in the restaurant had seen them. It took only a few minutes to track them down. Like me, Sunshine and Seehawk, had hiked the PCT in 1999. I'd never met them though, they hadn't been in a hurry to finish that trail, and weren't in a hurry to finish the CDT. They'd started about a week before us - undeterred by the late-season storm in Glacier. It was great to talk about the CDT with someone new, someone who really understood, someone who had the same questions and concerns..., "are you going through Mack's Inn, or around the top???" etc, etc, etc... They were trying to avoid as many large towns as possible, they'd skipped Butte. They didn't have a problem bringing extra food, good food, if it meant less hitching. They were from Santa Cruz, they swam in every lake, ate organic nuts and always packed a coca-cola to go... they were the energizer bunny. By that time, I estimated that Kevin and Sharon were a few days ahead and the man in the blue suit was just behind them. Drew was somewhere in Montana... we hadn't seen him since the orange flags. John and J.J. were somewhere behind us. That was our community, a little traveling town of loners and couples scattered along a few hundred miles. Every fifth building in Anaconda was occupied, the rest were either boarded-up or forgotten. Anaconda had been a boom-mining town back in "the day". Now, there was just one small mine north of town, barely worth a mention. The prosperous times had left gifts for Anaconda - they had a 400ft-high pile of black tailings, and a monstrous smelter-stack just outside of town. Then there was the movie theater. Everyone in Anaconda asked, "Have you been to the movie theatre?". There was a sense of honest pride about it. Everything else in town had gone bust, but the theater was forever. It was decorated with tile mosaics and red carpet, lighted by chandeliers, built with detail and thought. Movies were only $3, "Pearl Harbor" was playing. The town may have been empty, but the theater was full. I sat in the doorway of the room that evening. The largest bolt of lightning I'd ever seen electrified the hill just above town, a sonic boom followed. I was happy to have a roof that night. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Sunshine and Seehawk had arranged a ride to the trailhead in the morning. An honestly excited woman (she cleaned the rooms at a hotel) kept us talking all the way up the hill, she loved it in Anaconda. "You're going up to where there's no trees... up there?" she said, looking out the window, "I don't know if I'd like that so much". I tried to explain how it was amazing, beautiful and free, but could barely put it into words, "you're up there, with miniature plants, stark rocks, snow in July, looking over miles of land, and you're a monarch..." She was excited for us all the same. Sunshine and Seehawk were headed up the official CDT route, Mario and I had another plan. The official route went through about 20 miles of forest, gradually rising to meet the divide at Goat Flats. Mario and I headed straight up into the mountains... well not "straight up", but over crazier terrain anyway. We'd had enough of the tunnel. The morning had started out absolutely clear, but by 10AM, storm clouds were forming to our south. By 10:30, the mountains to the south were being pounded with a barrage of lightning. The rain didn't concern us but the high voltage did. We were headed up a giant mound of rock covered in little more than grass and sagebrush. We were as good as lightning rods on top of the hill. The storm clouds were heading north, straight for us. It looked like we'd have plenty of time, until we didn't. I looked back at Mario, and saw a bolt of lightning strike a mile behind him, right where we'd been 20 minutes prior. I raced down the hill, and aimed for a thin clump of trees - they'd have to do. Mario caught up, and we sat there, crouching, waiting, getting wet. The storms never lasted long though, and in 20 minutes it was blue skies again. We figured we'd have a couple hours till the next wave. We crested the hill and headed down a steep wooded mountainside. Well, it was more than wooded, covered in thick underbrush that blocked, tugged and pulled. I slipped on a loose rock and cut my leg, not bad, just skin. It was frustrating, but the only way. Somebody owned the entire mountain valley, we had no idea who. We owned it, at least it felt that way... what was the point of owning something just for the sake of calling it your's? They weren't there, they weren't seeing it. We were ghosts, what could they do about that? If a hiker hiked through private land, and nobody saw him, was he trespassing? The trick was in "not being seen" (should've paid attention in Monty Python class...). The owners of the land had built a giant gravel road up the length of the valley, thanks. The road was wide enough for a double semi to make a U-turn. I wondered just what the hell were they doing up there? We tried to keep our breaks to a minimum, we wanted to move as quickly and quietly as possible, plus, the mountains were getting "cool" again, we... well, I had energy. About halfway up, we saw a black bear with two cubs... They promptly ran when they saw us. We got to a lake at the end of the road and relaxed - fairly sure that we didn't have to worry about the 'trespassing thing' anymore. Bare cliffs and rounded rocky mountaintops rose above us, storm clouds were gathering. We had one more bit of open land to cover, and decided to do it before more lightning came. We continued cross-country, past progressively smaller trees, across slopes of budding grasses and flowers, and even over a lingering snowbank. We reached the top of the ridge and surveyed the other side. An old guidebook described the path ahead as "the steepest part of the entire route". It was a believable review. We had to lean over the edge to see exactly what we were dealing with. There was really only one way down... straight down. Carefully, we picked our way down the rocks, trying to remain close together so any rocks we set loose wouldn't have time to gain dangerous momentum. We had to throw our hiking poles down as we needed our hands to hold on to the rocks. Halfway down, I came upon a rock that didn't appear to be steady, it was about the size of a coffee table. I gave it a little test-step, and it slid off the cliff face, free-falling a good 50 feet before it exploded into shards. The sound was like thunder, a dusty smell I could only describe as "crushed rock" wafted upward. I admitted to myself... it was pretty cool... especially in contrast to the environment, where little changed quickly. At the base of the cliff, a millennium's worth of fallen rocks lay in a steep heap, we scrambled down those and continued into the forest below. The terrain below the cliff was gorgeous. Clear mountain rivulets snaked through lush flowered meadows. In places the soil had grown over the water, so that the streams disappeared and reappeared. They seemed to come from all directions. The forest was old and balanced, all manner of life grew on everything - fungus, lichens, moss... We headed off into the woods, following our compasses, and peeking at the mountaintops to keep an estimate of where we were. After a couple hours, we finally crossed a trail that was marked on the map. We stopped for dinner at a lake, then followed a rudimentary trail along the shore. The trail became less and less distinct, then we realized... it wasn't a trail at all, some bozo had managed to get an ATV up to the lake, and ripped a path through the lake-side plants. The tracks led to a wetland, where apparently, the motorhead decided to back up. I picked up a couple cigarette butts in the muck. Asshole. We got back on trail, through woods that an ATV couldn't get through, not without a chainsaw anyway. The trail rose, back to more lush meadows and clear water. The mosquitoes were getting progressively worse. By the time I set up my tarp, I'd squished so many that I had a mosquito paste on my hands. I had a love and respect for so many creatures, but it all stopped at mosquitoes... I didn't even like reading or saying the word. I absolutely hated them. They were so persistent and suicidal, so 100% instinct, that they weren't even alive to me. I was jealous of Drew, he had figured out a way to rip their little stingers off through mosquito mesh - great entertainment - I wanted to torture them too, death was too easy for a bloodsucking bug that just didn't care. I examined the hundred or so mosquitoes, clinging to the mesh hanging from my tarp. A few of them always managed to sneak in during the night. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The morning continued where the evening had left off - more mosquitoes and unexplored land. We came to a lake which was also the dead-end of a road, an unloading point for people headed into the Anaconda-Pintler. I saw something I hadn't seen since the Bob - people with backpacks. I wanted to talk to them... kindred spirits, I thought. They were wrapped-up in their own little adventure though, pulling all manner of nylon and aluminum out of their car, too distracted to notice us. We headed up to Storm Lake Pass. From the top of the pass, we had a view down the valley we'd bypassed - where the official trail was routed. A short traverse along a steep mountain slope, and we'd reached the CDT... and the divide itself... again. We wandered over a plateau called Goat Flats, a rolling expanse of short grass and flowers at 9200feet. Mountains poked-up from the horizon all around. We were back! The doldrums of Montana were behind us. "you could play soccer up here", Mario pointed at the plateau, using the American word. We descended to a valley below. The trail through the Anaconda-Pintler was laid out like most trail through rough terrain - a lot of up and down over passes. As soon as we'd descended, we had to climb 1200 feet, back above the trees, to a ridge that connected the divide to Rainbow Mountain. The day was a euphoric one for me, a warm sun beat down, giant white puffy clouds floated and reformed above us, we among tiny grasses and flowers and rocks covered in bright orange lichen. There was also a special sense of accomplishment and relief. It was one thing to be in that place, it was more to have come there by foot, from far below, from far away... heart still pounding and head dizzy from straining the thin air. It was a rocky mountain high. We saw more backpackers in the Anaconda-Pintler than we'd seen the entire trip thus far. It had more to do with the time of year than anything, summer was happening in the world below, it was still spring up in the mountains. A train of horse-packers rode by as we filtered some water, their hooves dug into the tread, packing it down and ripping it up all at once. We were always "in the way" of the horses, somehow it was never seen as the other way around... at least not by them. There was plenty of trail and plenty of land though, no need to get pushy, at least they were out there. I thought about how many people were watching Oprah right at that moment. A little while later, we passed a group of lads, about 14-17 years old, headed the opposite direction. The boy in front looked up at me like a fairy tale prince, run away from home. "Are there lakes and streams up ahead?", he asked, with an accent that came from England, circa 1885. I stood there baffled, I wanted to laugh, I wanted to take him by the hand, point to the sky and say something profound. "Well, I don't know... if you go far enough, I guess, but you'd have to go downhill through the woods...". He'd picked the one valley in miles that did not have a lake... or even a good fishing stream. They trotted past, fishing poles in hand. I had to think, hadn't the kid looked at a map? What were they thinking? I hoped they'd find something better than a stream, if they'd only go "up". We steadily rose to our next pass, Cutaway Pass. Gigantic larches, the biggest I'd ever seen, dotted the bouldered landscape. Larches seemed to do best in harsh environments, it was the only reason I could figure why they were growing there. The largest of them reached their maximum sizes and died, standing for decades, naked of bark. The wood was colored in vertical stripes of gold and yellow, rust and white. It seemed that larches reached the pinnacle of their majesty long after they'd died. I approached the top of the pass and saw a familiar face, "Dude!" John was standing there, grinning, laughing, and shaking his fuzzy head. I hadn't seen him since Lincoln. He was pumped. He'd convinced J.J. to walk the actual divide from Goat Flats to Cutaway Pass. The route had taken them over a series of steep rocky peaks. J.J. soon came around a corner. He had a look of exhausted relief, shell-shock. He hadn't done anything like that before, and didn't seem too sure that he'd actually made it. The four of us traded notes from the last couple weeks as headed down from the pass. We finally came to a flat area in thick forest. We were small among the giant mossy trees - pillars of wood covered by layers of soft ornamental decoration. Why did people even bother with art I wondered, I was walking through the living Anaconda-Pintler gallery. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We passed Seehawk and Sunshine early the next morning, the lake behind their tent was covered in morning mist - water beginning its daily march skyward and back down again. The trail took us past fields of beargrass - rounded tufts of coarse grass that supported a single 3-foot-high stalk which ended in a bulb of tiny white firework flowers. Beargrass was common in all the high country of Montana, of all the northern Rockies and Cascades... Still, most people had never even seen it. I thought, what isolated lives these plants led, never once travelling down to the world below. What wonderful lives. John's pack strap broke. We sewed it together, a temporary, no permanent, no, temporary field repair. Things just didn't last. They didn't heal. Entropy, bringing it all down. My shoelaces had broken a few days earlier - I had expected it. My shoes would last another few hundred miles I guessed, my shirt was getting thin, my shorts were ripped. But, my body grew stronger every day. That was the difference between the living and the dead I thought, where do the mountains lie? the earth? the sky? all the rest of it? The four of us decided to take another alternate route. It wasn't some crazy idea, just a way to avoid going down and up, a way to stay among the beargrass and rocks a little longer. Thunderstorms rolled past, south to north still. The clouds built up all morning, then all at once broke like a giant squeezed sponge, the dark water falling in slow motion in the distance, an occasional outburst of electricity thrown in for a little pizazz. Clouds were strange, magical things I thought, we were lucky to have them. I understood the rain-dance. As we continued south, another color took over - black. The previous summer, an entire forest had burned. In places, the flames had stopped at the divide, giving us a "before" picture to our left, and an "after" to the right. In the heart of the burn though, the only thing that survived were small sprouts of beargrass - their roots had been protected from the heat, and were already sending up new growth - taking advantage of the abundant sunlight filtering through the empty trees. We stopped for dinner at an oasis of sorts, a spring oozed from below, supporting a small patch of fresh green grass that grew like a freshly re-seeded suburban lawn. A mile later, we made camp on an edge of the burn. The mosquitoes were thick again, and I took pleasure in killing as many as possible. I clapped my hands together every second for 10 minutes, killing 1 sometimes 2 with every clap. Usually, I was able to keep the mosquito population in check by culling the numbers, but not there. The forest was super-saturated with them. I gave up. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- The next day, Mario and I drifted ahead. The trail continued to follow the divide closely, following the burn. The heart of the Anaconda-Pintler was behind us, our foray into the rugged peaks was too brief. The rain started earlier than usual. The clouds sunk low, covering the tops of the mountains, covering us. We walked through the thick fog. The tread disappeared, and the "trail" became nothing more than a series of cairns - piles of rock, about 3 feet high. It was 75 yards from cairn to cairn, but we could only see about 50 yards. We continued straight, what we thought was straight, past cairn after cairn, the next one always taking shape in the mist. Then, nothing. Which way had we come from? Where had the trail turned? The world was a small circle of sameness - scattered trees, piles of rock... is that a cairn? nope, just some random rocks. We took our best guess and zig-zagged in the general direction our compass said was correct. Another cairn, it was a game of hide-and-go-seek. The cairns either ducked behind trees or small hills, or disguised themselves as part of the terrain. We hit some actual tread again - a nice solid line of dirt - and continued downhill, out of the fog. It was time for a pausa at Shultz Saddle. The trail ahead followed a road. There was only one road on my map, about a dozen on the ground (why the hell did they need so many damn roads? Of course, money.). Naturally, we took the wrong one, then hit an intersection and took another wrong one. Crap. Where the hell were we? All the hills looked the same, the roads weren't on the map. It took a bit of guessing and deduction, but after a mile sideways through the forest, we came to what we figured was the "right" road. It was headed in the right direction anyway. It was a long day, a lot of miles. I never did learn the Dutch word for "stop", but I was sure Mario had mumbled it under his breath. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- We only had about 6 miles to go the next morning. Then, town. A day before a town, it dominated my thoughts, a day in a town and I couldn't wait to leave. The CDT took a big detour to the north, a loop through half-burned forest along the divide... or so we guessed. Instead, we took a short-cut, down another trail. We took a break at a road crossing, and watched an unlikely parade of vehicles. First, a minivan filled with Asians from California. Then a pickup drove by: two older, well-dressed men from Montana. Finally another, older pickup from Washington passed with two younger men, missing teeth. "Your friends went up ahead", I said, hoping I hadn't stumbled into some backwoods mafia dumping ground. The dirty guy leaned out his window, and nodded at me lustfully. We kept going. Later, I decided the parade was looking for mushrooms. Morels were in season, rare, very tasty, so I was told. Morels were money too. Mario said he saw one, "Looked like a brains", he described. I never noticed one. We cruised the last few miles of roads to Lost Trail Pass. A sign across the highway read "Welcome to Idaho" !!!!! A man sat in an information booth across the road. Information on what? I wondered. There was nothing there. He wasn't very talkative, didn't have much information. Maybe I scared him? It was 60+ miles to Salmon, ID. We needed a miracle. I scribbled the word "Salmon" in thick black letters on the back of one of my maps. We took turns holding the sign. I waved at cars, smiled, bowed, grabbed the rim of my hat. I only had 2 seconds to make a good impression. A bus rolled by, "community transit". Hey! It didn't stop, I couldn't believe it! 2 hours later, it was cold, windy, and getting ready to rain. A pickup stopped (Oregon plates of course). "You need a ride to Salmon?", "Ya", "That's where we're going". It was all the conversation I had with them. We sat in the back of the pickup, watching mountains, forests, rivers... all of it rolled by too fast. We were in Salmon. We'd covered the distance of a 2 day hike with a 1 hour ride. We quickly boiled the town down to it's elements: Grocery store, Laundromat, Hotel, Cafe, Post Office. We could make do with just a post office if required. Whatever couldn't be mailed was a bonus luxury. I took a shower and walked up to the laundromat. I sat there and read the newspaper, lulled by the din of heavy machinery. I watched a little girl get scolded by her trash-talking mother for doing nothing other than playing & dreaming. "You quit that right now", Whap! on her bottom, the little girl sulked and sobbed, she crawled into herself. The mother wore an expression of permanent gloom. I wanted to tell the little girl to run to the woods, to read, to live her dreams, to be curious and kind. She could be better than her mother. I knew that by the time she'd be old enough to understand any of that, none of it would matter, she was on a one-way dead-end road to a miserable life. People were so sad. So pointless. -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I spent the next morning wandering about town. A bumper-sticker tacked to the wall of the cafe read, "Can't Log it, Can't mine it, Can't graze it, Let it BURN!", with "burn" in proud fiery letters. I actually agreed with the statement of facts, but the philosophy behind it was irksome. It basically said, "the mountains are mountains of money", a message of unabashed greed I saw drilled into everything a