Only together
We can walk along the same path, but our trip is different. The backpack is not a team sport; It is an individual routine. Hiking partners can help each other to plan the day, give an ear listened to the road, share a place for lunch and a camp area, but ultimately, you are only when it comes to real hiking. The last day of our 175 mile walk through Tahoe Rim Trail (TRT), Bluebird and I are exhausted and running empty.
«I’m going to continue,» he said as he packed and left after our lunch. «But it is possible that I see me in a mile or more or more along the path, I am so tired.»
«Okay,» I said. «I will make sure to stop and press your SOS button, but you don’t wait for much more. I’m finishing this trace.»
Ha ha. Just joking. Or is it me? The backpack is a difficult sport. It’s you. Twenty -five pounds on your back. A starting point and an end point. And the rocky, steep, muddy and confusing road that connects them. It depends on you and the trail shoes on your feet to take it there. There is no label. No substitutions. There are no line changes. You carry your own shelter, food and water. There is no support team. There are no coaches or animators or anyone who throws a bottle of Gatorade from the tact line. It is only you. And maybe, if you are lucky, someone else on the road playing their own version of the same game.
Beauty abounds
After this trip, I am quite sure that I am spoiled, and it can be very convincing for me to walk any other paths. I have walked and appreciated all kinds of natural environments: green forests with slides, isolated solitary farm roads, sandy beaches with waves. I have walked along the trail of the Apalaches, the Pinhoti path, the Colorado path, much of Te Araroa and now the TRT. The TRT is beautiful. Lake Tahoe is the idyllic backdrop when you are on their way, rejecting miles. It is the perfect incentive to search. During much of the walk, the lake is there or just around the next crest or corner. And when it is not, there are numerous and wonderful smaller lakes in desolations. The granite, the snow of the mountains of Sierra of its maximum point. The imposing and majestic pins. The way the light shines and is reflected at dawn and dusk in the dry air of the mountain. Everything is so impressive and unforgettably beautiful.
It took us eighteen days to complete our walk. We take a zero in the city of Tahoe and 2 of Nero. One in South Lake Tahoe and another in Statelline. The weather was above all fantastic. It rained and acclaimed an afternoon after we had already established our tents, then caught us the next day on the road, but it was short. The threat of severe weather and low temperatures in Freel Mountain made us change our game plan the fifteen day. But like any well -trained player, we adapt. Instead of continuing in an anti -Horary sense to finish where we started in Sponer Summit, we move there and walk in a schedule of return to Big Meadows, where we had to get out of the way due to bad weather. We closed the loop completed our walk.
Rely on me, metaphorically
Some days I was the strong hiker. Most of the Bluebird days was. One day we just walk 5 miles. It took us about 2 and a half hours. The second to the last day, we cover fourteen hard miles and more than 3,300 ‘elevation in 9 hours. In general, we did not walk together, but we were never more than a quarter of a mile away. Again, we were not a team, but it did not mean that we were not companions of the soul team. We walk the same path with the same goal. We help each other when we could. We share breath:
«Do you know who you are? A rude, the rude of the Rudes!»
«You have this!»
«Come on, just one more mile!»
We share some cookies and sweets. We share a water filter. We share motel and shelter rooms. We share tears. We share doubts and joys. We also share frustrations and some unpleasant words.
I know that Bluebird was slightly upset when I selfishly decided the headphones, play funky music and run through the wind and rocky section Wild Ride Mr. Toad. He hates downhill and steep, designed for the fun of mountain cycling, and is definitely not friendly with hikers. I could probably have used soft breath from me instead of worrying about matching my frantic rhythm. Uhh … .oops.
Then there was the night at the end of a very long water day when I misunderstood the instructions to meet an angel of trails to fill our water bottles. We had climbed the wrong side path and was stopped there with an irregular phone signal, trying to decipher where and how to get to the right place. Trail Angel on the speaker phone. Bluebird verbalizing frustration: why #&*! Do we walk along this lateral path steep in the wrong direction just to be totally lost? Uhh … .oops.
But we survive, our intact and strengthened hiking association. Game. Place. Phosphorus. Who won? Who cares. Most do not consider that the backpack is a sport because there are no winners and losers. I like that. It is only you, the path and those around you walking along the same path. Without winners, without losers, only hikers.
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