Pulling off the interstate west of the pass, feeling the transition from pavement to gravel, feeling the nagging pain in my knee, soreness in my lower extremities from Friday's long ascent, and the fatigue following illness that lingers just on the conscious side of awareness. The single room vault toilet, placed there to dissuade rouge surface shitters, grew larger in the single beam of my solitary headlight. It looked out of place along with the ovoide parking area ringed with melting grimy snow; out of place. I'm now projecting an internal state onto the external world. Putting the car in park, involuntary sigh, quickly glancing at the time, turning off the engine, my fingers lingering on the key: no one is expecting me... anywhere, no one knows exactly where I am, I don't have to climb this mountain. It's just some words written in a notebook that no one else will see. It's not a triumph to remove the key or exit the car to pull on a wool sweater I'll regret in a mile. I'd simply rather face a nine mile hike in the ice and snow rather than the unrelenting judgment I'd hear in many voices if I were to turn around. I do love this after all: public land, the world we forget is out there beyond our screens, the discomfort, uncertainty, the fear, the beauty. I am happiest here even if out of place.
Entering the forest in the dark hours before anyone else will be in these mountains still gives me pause. Everytime a moment of fear or healthy respect for the unknowns comes over me as I cross over into the trees. Phantoms of my imagination in the form of mountain lions, missteps on steep slopes, and branches weakened by snow make me take a breath and recenter myself. It takes a moment to remember hurtling down the road at 80 mph in a tin can on slick pavement. Which posed the greater danger? I feel foolish, childish even. Today the snow was sloppy for most of the trek, and I felt miserable in my own skin. Slower than normal progress coupled with the nagging voice of the self indulgent nature of walking in the forest in the blue hour. Even as I studied trees and tracks, marked the edge of an overhanging cliff without looking up by noting the outline of falling water from melting icicles. What am I doing here? Why? The specific turning universal in a breath. Noting the resilience of branches, even trunks of trees bowed and buried into arches, the silence of it all. Such a dynamic world we tramp around in. I move fast in the forest, not as fast as some but faster than average and I chastise myself for the speed. I believe that fundamentally that world out there behind my walls is the real one, the authentic one. I reside on one side of a schism I didn't create but perpetuate and only seldomly bridge. The one I saw this morning where a rabbit was accosted in the open changing course fleeing to cover; a narrative I won't be able to read when the sun returns and yet I walk with a purpose no one has directed or named skimming the landscape as one would assigned reading. During such a moment of self directed chastisement an immobile form caught my attention; a douglas squirrel clutching a fir cone. Stopping to watch, I thought of the double slit experiment where the presence of the observer alters the outcome but observe I must wondering if there's an owl nearby watching the same squirrel waiting for such a moment of stillness in its prey that my presence may have provided. No owl was forthcoming while I stood there, the voyeur, not being party to a hunt in which I had no stake. I'm now six miles in without encountering another person and then voices rise from below. Politely standing off trail visible but quiet noticed only when within arms length and I wonder if this group wrestles with the same questions, if they would have noticed a tiny creature fifty yards away, fretting over the outcomes resulting from observation. I don't ask them. They ask about the snow ahead, wind at the top and I share the details wishing them well. I wonder if they took a long sigh after turning off their engine, if they thought of bagging the whole thing after arriving, if they too turn the specific into the universal in the span of a breath. Another world of bent branches and unbridgeable divides.
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