Reference 28 | Benchmark Ranch to East Glacier
Day 108, 32.3 miles.
The Bob Marshall desert is well known and popular. When I am walking along a long path, it is easy to know if a place is popular and accessible because it will always have more garbage. More mouthwill wrappers on the ground, more losses of lost equipment, more used toilet paper flowers that are left over from the evil dug in place of packed properly. I also see more independent tents and bigger backpacks and this is how you know you are not looking at a hiker. I used to think that the longer the walk was, the more you would have to bring. Then I tried myself and I realized that the more you walk, the less you will want to take you to your back. If I am only out of the weekend, surely not carry the chair and the Kindle. If I’m out for months, no, thanks. I saw many badly done bear and shed food on the path. If food drops on the path, it is better than empare or pick it up and eat it. Clean dirt and if you can’t get all dirt, don’t worry, hikers call it paths. Even if it breaks down as an orange peel or a cherry well: pack that and leave no trace you were there. The Bob is known for its many farms because the equipment cannot use motorized equipment such as a chainsaw in wild areas. But crews have done a great job and the path is clear. Today I could finally see the famous rock formation known as the Chinese wall. It looks like the Great Wall of China in how it is undulating through the landscape. How bold we are, to name a creation of nature after a creation of man.
Day 109, 35.3 miles.
I walked through a burning scar for many miles today, from the 2017 strawberry fire. I think I have traveled more burning scars in Montana than in any other state in the CDT. It was like walking through a garden of sculptures. Nature is the primary artist. You can find so much beauty in the burning scar and in the renewal and the regrowth that inspires. Even in death, these trees are impressive. I was happy to look for some wild strawberries today. They can look small, but each one is dense of sweeter taste than anything you will find in the store. It is possible that they encourage them to balloons in their wild form, but in doing so we have diluted them. Bigger is not always better. It reminds me of the history of the delicious red apple, which we cultivate in the platonic form of the apple. And so, the apple looks like, but the taste is soft and the texture is calcareous, not crunchy. In the afternoon there was a hard rain place that lasted only twenty minutes, but I had to walk in the foliage and the resulting wet mud for four or five hours and I soaked completely. I am only 6000 ‘elevation, so the path is very brush. I had nothing dry to erase the lens of my phone’s camera. But I still had to put the mileage. Today I reached 2650 miles walking on the CDT, which is the length of the PCT. On the PCT, that mileage took me 153 days. In the CDT, I am on the 10th day. And the miles in the CDT are more difficult to win. In hiking we have a saying: embrace the suction. Sometimes, hiking stinks and is what it is. In the CDT, we say: embrace brutality. Sometimes it is flat, then it is very steep, hot and then cold, dry and then wet. Today I was wet. It reminds me of something that my meditation teacher says in a speech: it is easy to laugh when life flows like a sweet song, but the man worth it is man with smile when everything goes wrong. And in life it is often wrong. Unwanted things happen, dear things do not happen. I thought I would make an easy day with a minimum elevation gain; Instead, I have a car wash. But at least I could eat wild strawberries.
Day 110, 28 miles of East Glacier.
I needed to go to the city on the early side to be able to wash the clothes before I closed the night, so I took an alternative that cut to the road and then returned to the CDT in the middle of berries covered. They called me and I had to answer, even with my laundry deadline. The path was also super brushstroke and covered in some places. It rained briefly several times, but the real soaking I obtained was certainly from the brush. It was not even enough rain to put on my jacket; I generally hope and I see if I can endure for about ten minutes before stopping it to add or delete the layers. None of the rains lasted more than ten minutes, but my pants were soaked. Fortunately, I will be in East Glacier tonight, so I don’t have to worry about preserving a dry layer to sleep. Now I am approaching the last 100 miles of the CDT. I saw a Nobo who passed and headed south. He congratulated me. He reminded me of the last 30 miles of the PCT, where Nobo hikers who have already finished in the Canadian border setback to the closest American road. You end with a congratulations flow as you approach the terminal and you are crying long before reaching it. I entered the Glacier National Park today, which is stolen from Blackfeet Land. The creation of the National Park effectively revoked its rights as promised in an 1895 treaty to hunt and meet in this land. When I got into East Glacier, I registered in the glass viewpoint Basecamp Hostel, which bears the name of the head of Nimiipuu. I washed my clothes, I had dinner, picked up my refueling, bought a Blackfeet permit, I looked at the glacier permits and had my first ice cream since I ate a talenti bottle in Silverthorne, co.
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