Segment 14
~15 miles
Granite is up around
6 but I bury myself in the sleeping bag. Finally I get up, maybe 20
minutes later, groggy, to go find the campground latrine.
It's a narrow wooden
box, old, vaguely reminiscent of a coffin. The toilet is low to the
ground, a dark pit within, and there are screened vents along the
floor. I prop the door open with a rock for light.
I am not at all
hungry and so I slip back into my sleeping bag. Eventually I rouse
enough to nibble a clif bar and Granite drops a mug of chai off with
me. I sip and read and try not to think about getting up.
Pika is by our tent
shortly. It's not even 7 yet. She wants to know if we've seen
anything. Granite talks to her, since he's dressed and outside of the
tent. Apparently her pack was stolen at 3 AM last night. She heard
what she thought was her pack being snapped on, but when she got up
they were gone. Maybe a bear, but she fears it was a human. She's
scouting the campground looking for any trace.
Within 30 minutes,
she's found the pack and brought it to a picnic table near us to
sort. A bear had stolen it. It had ripped the back brace out of the
pack, stolen her food, pierced her Nalgene bottle, and snuffled
through the rest. I watch her sort her stuff. She has a metal kettle
for tea, now dented with tooth marks. She has boxes of Amy's Mac &
Cheese, a thin glass bottle of Apple Liquor she's saving for the end,
an inflatable lantern. Granite tells me she also has a camp chair,
but that she hasn't been able to figure out anything that she can
send home. Seeing her pack, I feel so much better about mine, which
I'm always embarrassed has extravagances like camp shoes and journals
and gloves. Granite tells me that her pack weighs 50 lbs, and I am
amazed she can carry it. I struggle to walk with any pack over 37 lbs. My pack generally weighs between
20-30 lb, depending on food and water, and even that is a struggle.
Pika is a hippie
with long braids, many earrings, and brightly colored scarves. She is
confident, quick to laugh, and very open. I like her immediately and
appreciate her smiling reaction to the bear attack. She decides to go
back to Mt. Princeton Resort and use their store to restock food.
She'll try to wash her pack, which now smells a bit fishy, at a
future resupply point.
I'm walking just
after 7:30, and Granite will catch up in a couple hours. The day
starts with a forested climb, but there are switchbacks and it's not
too challenging. The chalk cliffs behind me are beautiful, wreathed
in ever-changing, misty clouds and aglow with morning light. I turn
around often to look, but my iPhone camera can't capture it.
The walking is easy.
Really easy. The trail is smooth and well-maintained, so my feet can
move quickly. The terrain is flat for a few miles, then becomes
rolling.
I was so loathe to
walk the Eastern Collegiate, believing it would be a tunnel of trees.
But it's far from it. The trees are sparse and have wide breaks where
I can see mountains across the valley to the west.
I'm tired and a bit
slow moving, but the path is walkable and so the miles fly by. Granite
catches me at 10:30 AM, and then we walk together for a bit. We meet
mountain bikers and two beautiful Weimaraners, and we tell folks we
meet about our trip. I have so many conversations with strangers on
this trip. And in my real life—can I call it that?—conversations
with others, especially strangers, can wear on me. I constantly long
for silence and solitude. But on the trail, company is always a
serendipitous meeting of new friends. So many are out on the trail
like us trying to find something. I feel connected to them and to the
trail in some indefinable way.
We stop on a hilltop
a bit after noon and I lie down on a rock and doze. I'm so tired I
immediately drop off to sleep.
My shoulders and
upper back are achy, I think because I'm wearing my pack funny. But
the pain isn't unbearable, and it's only my back. My feet I worry
about and fuss over, but a back is just a back.
My feet, by the way,
love the Eastern Collegiate. I am not wearing leukotape over my
blisters, for the first time since we started the trip. I just have
the one big blister on the outside of my left food, and it doesn't
ache. I don't need to dip my feet in icy streams or swallow
ibuprofen. And the fact that swarms of black flies aren't surrounding me
also endears this trail to me.
We end the day by
slipping down into a deep valley. There's a campground here called
Angel of Shavano, and we can look up and see the towering green
cliffs of Mt. Shavano above us. It's close to 5 PM and we've walked
15 miles. We could keep walking another 5 and arrive at Rt 50 by 7:30
PM, hitch to the Monarch Mountain Lodge before 8 for dinner. We
booked a room for tonight, and they have our resupply package, and
our feet feel fine to cover 20 miles today.
But I'm not ready
for the real world of Internet access and text messages again, and it
feels right and nourishing to be walking all day in the woods. I want
a small simple dinner and to stretch out on a thin sleeping pad. I
want this night in the woods more than a hotel, and more than I want
to walk 20 miles.
The Angel of Shavano
campground is full. We talk to the campground host, a kind
middle-aged woman, and she tells us there is dispersed camping up the
stream by the waterfall. We walk along the road and reach the stream,
follow it to a wide, flat campsite with sitting logs and a fire ring.
We are just above a roaring, frolicking stream, and the noise fills
the air so that we have to speak up to hear one another.
Granite pitches the
tent and I fetch and sterilize water. I sit at the edge of the stream
watching how sunlight reflects of the water to the underside of the
rock walls bordering the creek. Fat ants crawl around my water
bottles.
We eat early and
curl into bed, the rushing stream sound filling our tent. I don't
even get my sleeping bag arranged the way I want it before I'm dead
asleep.
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