Just past dusk, in my tent listening to rushing water and the night
Starting up the trail this afternoon, I felt very smug and badass, asking a couple at the trailhead to take a picture of me with my pack, and confirming that, yes, I was going into the backcountry alone.

And then it was routine, the familiarity of the usual side-pocket where I always keep my chapstick and pocketknife, the second-nature technique of walking sideways down the bare granite and shale to avoid twisting an ankle, calculating the map with the hours left of daylight. I sweated a few miles up the trail, found a perfect little camp in a windbreak between boulders, up the hill from a rushing creek. I set up my tent, filtered water to fill all my canteens, washed my face, brushed my teeth, and set my bear box off behind some trees, just as it got dark enough to want to flee the mosquitoes into the tent.

I was feeling very satisfied with myself until the trees began to go black against the purpling sky, and I suddenly realized how profoundly isolated I am, here in the middle of the wilderness. I think I’ve been trained to be wary of solitude, inculcated into the constant chatter and noise. And here I am, so many miles from the human anthill of a large urban sprawl. I don’t think I’ve ever been this truly alone in my life.

The flat part of the afternoon, a few hours before the sun tips and begins to slide into sunset
It’s hot today, but the wind screaming through the canyon, shrieking through the pines, carries a hint of snow still melting off the side of the mountain. Saw another solo backpacker today, and he fits the typical picture much more than I, a fast-walking, white-bearded mountain man.

Today I haven’t felt the solitude.

Sun directly overhead, stopped for lunch at the top of the mountain and fending off chipmunks

This is why I come here, the layers of sawtooth peaks, variegated snow and granite. Mountains like this can make you feel small. I can’t decide if it makes our lives seem petty or precious.

Sitting on granite rocks next to the lake, with the intense late-afternoon sun about four fingers above the mountain
I’m not sure what I wanted this trip to accomplish. Groundedness? Some time to grieve, alone in the mountains? Some good hiking, maybe a vista or two? That last might have to be enough. You can’t force epiphany any more than you can force peace of mind.

Sharing some rocks with flies, ants, and a smattering of mosquitoes, with a view of mountains through the pines, a short walk from my camp. The nondescript part of morning somewhere between dawn and noon, when the day has already gained traction and if I were a proper trekker I would already need to be on the trail.

My focus so far has been on just Being in the mountains. Sitting here, watching that bird flit from tree to rock against a backdrop of granite and twisted pines, reaching back into the canyon through layers of hills, with the snow-laced mountains beyond, the sound of a waterfall in the distance against the chirping of the birds. After days of rinsing off by jumping into mountain lakes I need a real wash, with soap.

And I need to learn what kind of life I can live that has death and loss in its very fabric, in the core design of the pattern. And not in an abstract or conceptual way. In the abstract, we understand that life only has meaning because it is finite, that it only makes sense when back-to-back with its co-joined twin. But then when you lose someone real, someone who was integral to the shape that the pattern has taken, how can you even continue with the weaving? I’m not sure if I thought that the wilderness would answer that for me.

But the sun’s crept down the rock and I’ve lost my shade. If I’m going to make the trailhead before dark I suppose it’s time to go.