The CDT: Is it safe to night hike in the CDT? When Grizzly Country Ends

The big cosmic brownie

“The answer to the great question of life, the universe and everything is forty-two.”

—Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

myThe elevation had returned and so had the elevated heartbeat. Sweat drips from your elbows to your eyes, your breathing pulls desperately at the air, the pace slows as you get closer to the top, or you find one last burst of energy to go faster until the curve flattens out and the world becomes horizontal again and the heartbeat graph on your clever little smartwatch flattens with it. Breathing becomes steady, slows down and relaxes downhill.

Repeat.

This is the underrepresented part of hiking that doesn’t always appear in the annual wave of YouTube videos uploaded by Lord Huron about finding yourself.

The PUDs (useless ups and downs) are the real heart of the hike. MUD (significant highs and lows), as they would be called in another universe, where suffering is welcomed in the moment. But the meaning of difficulty tends to be found later. For me that usually means being in the city with a hamburger between my teeth. There were no hamburgers here, just blisters. Blisters and a solitary hunter’s tent, huge and canvas, hidden among the trees along a rocky ridge. We didn’t go in to explore; It would have felt like an invasion.

Then, a little later, there was a cooler with some folding chairs next to it. Hunter’s stash? We open this. Ice Cream found a zipper stuck to the side of the cooler and pulled out a damp-curdled notebook with a pen stuffed into the rolled-up spine. A trail log. The names inside were familiar and the dates were recent. There was also a note from the owner of the refrigerator and the chairs. He welcomed hikers to grab a drink or two and a snack from the cooler, and offered a phone number for those with greater, more desperate needs.

“Fucking sick,” I said, opening one of the chairs and plopping down.

«Hell yeah,» Ice Cream opened the cooler. We were expecting water, maybe soda, Gatorade, beer. The note said snacks, so maybe fruit and candy. In fact, all of that was in the refrigerator. But to our surprise, a third was filled with Starbucks Frappuccinos in glass bottles.

I picked one up and turned it in my hands as if it were a piece of strange scientific equipment. «Isn’t it like ten dollars each or something? What is this guy, the Costco manager?»

«Good?» Ice Cream said. «Big money.» He kept one in his backpack to drink later.

I laughed, «Bruh, that’s glass! You gonna take it to town?»

She shrugged. “On the AT I carried that Hippy Butt Creme in a glass jar the whole way and you used it more than me.”

«Yeah? Are you going to drink that coffee or let me use it for a latte enema in the woods?»

“Whichever comes first.” She took off her backpack.

«Well, I don’t have any constipation problems here. It’s probably safe. You knew that, though.»

«Yeah». He opened a chair and sat next to me. We took a good look at the snacks and pulled our respective favorites out of the bag, I ate them all immediately and saved half of the ice cream for later.

We sat there, drinking cold drinks and eating sweets, just enjoying the feel of a chair. Folding chairs have come a long way since I was a child. No more heavy plastic straws woven across a click-clack aluminum skeleton. A few days ago I turned forty-two years old. Ice Cream’s birthday was today. I pointed to the refrigerator. «Happy Birthday!»

«You too!»

We clinked soda cans together.

***

We had pitched our tent in an empty hunter’s camp. Elk called. The sun set low and orange; Its light shattered between the tree branches as if it were glass. The air was fresh and smelled of pine and earth. After the sun was behind the hills, I placed my headlamp on the roof and turned on the wide beam.

«Ready?» I asked.

The plastic wrap crinkled as Ice Cream unwrapped a Cosmic Brownie and reverently broke it in half; I took two birthday candles out of the empty glue box I used to store my candle needle. One was green and the other red. Ice Cream placed the brownies between us and I placed a candle in the center of each one as if I were holding a Zen Tea Ceremony. Candles placed, I found my lighter and lit them. They shone like their own little suns, broken pieces of solar glass kept alive for this purpose.

Ice Cream turned thirty today. As the candles flickered, she reflected on the past decade. What he had learned, what he had overcome and what he had become. The list was long. History, religion, family. He had climbed them all in an effort to reach the stars. She would have done it too, but like Evenstar of Rivendell, she had traded the eternal west for a mortal man.

Me.

And there we were, about to eat flaming brownies in a tent thinner than hope in a trench.

She touched my hand. «Thank you for being the best part of my twenties.»

“The honor of my life,” I touched his hair. He cried, he smiled, he blew out the candle. Next, I turned mine off. We kissed and then ate our brownies. They were cosmic.

***

Ice Cream was crying again, this time because she was upset. The sun was also setting again, but no light magically passed through the trees. It just faded away. The days ended earlier and earlier. It had gotten dark at the Glacier at 11:00 p.m. Now it was coming down around eight. This, combined with the absence of grizzly bears, meant one thing. Night walk.

I love night hiking. Not ice cream. But since she loves me, she tolerates it. We had reached an agreement at the beginning of the CDT. Night walks are not permitted in grizzly bear country. More than a thousand kilometers of morning and night camping. Now it was my turn.

«I just don’t want it to be a bad experience for you, but I get really tired. I don’t want to walk until two in the morning, but I want you to have your own thing.»

Tears came when we discussed how late we were going and I said I just wanted to keep the vibe going. She tried to accept that, but it began to eat at her until, during a snack, she broke, but only a little.

She had sat on a stump. I put my hand on his shoulders and gently tugged at his hair, running a strand through my fingers. «So, no later than eleven. Is that feasible? I’m tired now. It’s more likely that we’ll go by ten.»

She nodded. «Yeah. Yeah, that sounds good.»

«Let me know if you’re too sleepy. God knows what that’s like, it just happens to me during the day.»

«I know. You did great. I’m glad you can finally do some night walks.»

«All the way to Mexico, baby!»

She gave me a bold look.

We walked under a bright moon and a silver shadow, our headlamps shining like pinpricks of light in a sea of ​​dark mountain.

That night we cowboys camped above the tree line, our heads hidden under the branches of a small, ancient, gnarled pine tree. The moon shone bright and high in the clear sky. Ice Cream’s breathing fell into the rhythm of sleep, and as she looked up at the great cosmic brownie in the sky, the shadow of an owl darted across the long open meadow. It passed over my head no more than three meters; His wing beats silently like an omen. I let the bird take me to the world of dreams.