As near as I can make out, no rain fell during the night while I slept. Of course, sleeping on an inflated pad one inch thick, on top of hard-packed earth doesn’t conduce to a continuous night’s sleep. It is more a series of long naps, interspersed with turnings, tossings, and such like sleepy readjustments, including getting out of the tent to relieve myself and then trying to settle back down into a comfortable sleep. On the whole it somehow works out to an adequate night’s sleep.

Now that it’s morning and I’m good and awake in my sleeping bag, I stare up at the ceiling of the tent. There’s a small window of clear plastic through which I can see a small segment of trees and sky. The trees look foggy and wiggly and none-too-focused, but then I’m not wearing my eyeglasses and the plastic window is much better for admitting light than disclosing details. I’ll know soon enough what the outdoors looks like. When I’ve gathered my courage, I unzip the sleeping bag, pull my legs out and reach for my clothes. They aren’t very warm, but they are more or less dry. I proceed to greet the new day.

Here I’ll mention that my clothes are mostly of nylon and polyester, the sorts of synthetic fabrics that don’t absorb much water. There is a simple reason for this. The only reliable engine I have for drying my clothes is my own body’s heat. Cotton may be especially well-adapted to desert conditions, where it eagerly absorbs sweat and then cools the body as the captured sweat evaporates in the merest breeze, but in the mountains, in damp conditions, wet cotton clothes can suck the warmth out of one’s body as a vampire sucks blood. I have heard that wilderness Search and Rescue (SAR) workers have a nickname among themselves for cotton clothing. They call them “dead man’s clothes.” (I am sure those SAR folks have still other quaint sayings that I am not aware of.) In any event, this consideration dictates my choice in clothing. On dampish mornings like this one, I am damned glad it has.

After I dress I normally pack up all the belongings that I moved into the tent the night before. However, when I lift up my sleeping pad I discover the floor of the tent beneath it is wet. So, too, is the underside of my pad. Furthermore, the foot of my sleeping bag is somewhat damp. They’ll all need a bit of drying out, if possible, before I pack them up. Given the volume of rain yesterday, I accept this as the minor inconvenience it is.

I emerge from my tent to find a mostly cloudy sky with breaks between, and an abundance of clean, fresh air. The air has a pronounced nip to it in the shadiest spots. In spite of this, it looks like it’s shaping up to be a rather nice day. The mountain peak above the lake (I do not name it because, although it is 8949 feet high, it has no name) stands up steadfast and bright with morning light, cut cleanly against the cloud-sculpted background of the sky. (Do try to remember the scenery, please!)

I bring my sleeping pad and my sleeping bag out of the tent. I drape the sleeping bag over my tent (where the sun is momentarily beaming down) so it can dry. The sleeping pad I prop up nearby where it, too, can benefit from the meager sun. Later, after I eat and wash out my bowl, the sleeping bag and pad are dry enough to pack away. All that is left now is the tent. In order to give it more time to dry I take a stroll to find an appropriate spot where I can ease my bowels.

This is a delicate subject, but not one to pass by in silence, for it is a subject every hiker must face and it has consequences for every hiker to come. An armchair hiker, who visits the wilderness by looking at pretty calendar photographs or reading books by wilderness adventurers, may not be aware of just how many people there are swarming over and into every nook and cranny of this earth.

In this, we resemble ants. Our cities are our ant hills, crammed and seething with bodies in motion. As you move to the suburbs, just as with the near environs of an ant hill, the activity is still considerable, but bodies are not piled up one upon the other. As you move still further away from the hill the amount of activity becomes more and more diffuse. But, as you may observe (especially if you spend much time in the wilderness), ants are literally everywhere.

Sit for long in any place, including the most desolate mountaintop and soon you’ll feel little legs crawling on your skin. You can lay odds that it’s an ant. It is the same with humans (except we do not crawl up pant legs). We are a driven, restless, recklessly curious species and we seem to turn up everywhere, no matter how far we are from home. We comb over every inch of the earth and then go back and comb over it again. It is our way.

Traverse Lake is no different than anywhere else. We are here. You can directly gauge the number of visitors here by its remoteness from a road – and nowhere in the lower 48 states is very far from a road any longer. Outside of Alaska, places that stand twenty air miles from a road have become such a rarity that I suspect they could be numbered on the fingers of one hand. I speak of the USA. Canada, of course, is exempted from this particular rule of thumb, but that can be blamed in part on widespread permafrost and muskeg in the far north, not on any lack of Canuckian ambition. Instead, Canadians fly to their remote, roadless places. We humans are not easily stopped.

Traverse Lake has a well-made and well-tended trail that leads one straight from the road’s end to its shore. A trail is nothing more than a road written small. Wherever there is an established track, people will come, and they will return over and over again, even as I have come here. But even beyond the trails, out there in the wild blue yonder, where to walk is to bushwhack and to find one’s way means reading a map, a compass and the terrain before your eyes – even there we humans go. The bushwhackers are few and intrepid, but there always are and will be such seekers of the out-of-the-way. As we humans multiply by our millions from year to year, not only do the remote places shrink in size and number, but the numbers of the intrepid grow. It is the way of the world today.

So, as you can see, it is no small matter to find a proper spot to defecate in the woods.

This morning I’m making an exception to my general rule, which is to take care of business after I’ve walked a mile or two up the trail, away from my campsite. Campsites are areas of heavy use and are near to water sources. Both of these make excellent reasons to avoid my adding to their already heavy burden. But because I want to give my tent some extra time to dry, I amble away from the lake and my camp, up the nearby hillside, looking for an appropriate spot.

It needs to be not merely well away from water, but also a spot where other campers are unlikely to wander for pleasure. These are two prime factors, but I also prefer that the earth underfoot to be soft enough so that I can easily dig the needed ‘cat hole’, using a rock, a stick or the heel of my boot. I always appreciate a scenic view, too, but that is just a frippery and not a serious consideration.

I find my spot. It comes complete with a spectacular view. When I finish the job, I leave nothing in sight that indicates the spot has been disturbed. That is but simple courtesy. I hate to think how often this courtesy is overlooked. The whole episode is enjoyable as a brief and refreshing jaunt on a fresh morning. Now, I’m certainly not in a rush, but it is past time to pack up and go. Down comes my tent, mostly dry. All that remains is to replace my gear into my pack for the day’s walking.

I do not want to say I have an orderly mind. That would overstate the case. But I do have a mind that appreciates order, when it can be arranged. So, I suppose it is inevitable that I have developed an orderly routine for packing my belongings into my backpack. First, I empty the pack entirely and lay every item on the ground near it. Luckily there are not a very large number of items. Actually, there are so few that I can recognize when one is missing. This is helpful, since it helps to ensure I won’t leave anything behind.

Once everything is gathered, it is short work to place every item in its time-honored spot. This is one of the underappreciated joys of backpacking – the ability to know everything you own and be able to lay hands on it any moment of the day, mere moments after the desire arises. Who knew that the secret to instant gratification is to pare away at your belongings until they can all fit comfortably into about 3500 cubic inches? Yet, I find it is surprisingly true. There is contentment in having little, if that little proves to be enough.

As I said before, it is time to begin walking – past time even. My watch tells me it is 9:30 am.

The trail sets out at once to climb away from the lake and up to Wonker Pass. According to The Oracle, the elevation at Traverse Lake is 7720 feet, while Wonker Pass is 8420 feet above sea level (or 8500, depending on who you ask). Therefore I shall be climbing 700 (or 780) feet in the next mile and a half, with the able assistance of 12 switchbacks.

Having these good, solid facts at my disposal gives me a warm and happy feeling. I have so much confidence in them that I do not bother to count the switchbacks as I ascend. I feel certain that 12 is the correct number and that the author of the guidebook I copied this information from would never do me such an ill turn as to misnumber them. Trust, I believe, is the life blood of society. Rather than count switchbacks I split my attention between the rocks in the trail and the flowers beside it.

The green stems and leaves of the lupines that crowd beside the trail I give the courtesy name of ‘flowers’, although ‘plants’ would be somewhat more in order. The lupines are not blooming, but I recognize them. Their shapely leaves remind me of little hands with splayed fingers. Up here at 8000 feet the land still has one foot stuck in winter. Up here I’m also treated to a fabulous view of Traverse Lake from above. Beyond the lake I see the full length of the hanging valley between its two high and rugged ridges. The view ends at last in a jumble of peaks some fifteen or twenty miles away. It’s exhilarating.

After the first mile or so the trail leads along the face of a mountainside so steeply pitched that sometimes I can reach out my left hand and touch the hillside where it is level with my shoulder. The trail itself is a three foot wide shelf or lip cut into the consolidated soil and scree of the slope.

Scree, for those who do not know the word, is a genuine mountaineering term. It refers to the heap of small rocks that builds up beneath a sheer rock face as the face weathers away. If these rocks were a bit larger, they’d be called talus, instead. Scree, as you may know, tends to assemble itself at the angle of repose. This particular slope appears to me to be a bit steeper than the angle of repose, since the scree has embedded itself in enough soil to glue it together and retard its natural affinity for that highly restful angle.

Here it may be helpful to pause long enough to explain this notorious angle of repose, than which our slope may or may not be steeper. But, helpful or not, I will explain it anyway. You just can’t imagine how much I am suffering to tell you about the angle of repose – I so seldom find a way to work it into the conversation without recourse to actual violence.

The angle of repose (if I understand it correctly) is what you get when you pour a bunch of loose bits into a heap, such as invariably happens when you turn over an hourglass and sand begins to pour into its empty bottom half. As the sand heap grows, the sides of the heap become steeper and steeper. Soon, the sides grow so steep that, even as the loose bits continue to pour onto the top, they can no longer stay put, but bounce and roll down the sides of the heap all the way to the bottom, constantly maintaining the steepest angle possible. This means the sides of the heap have reached the angle of repose. There now. That was worth it, wasn’t it? I thought so.

In walking across this steep slope I run up against a small ravine that cuts across the trail. This ravine is crammed to overflowing with icy snow, and the trail rather inconveniently disappears beneath it. I can see where the trail emerges again on the far side of the ravine about 100 feet ahead.

I stop at the edge of the snow field. I have no intention of setting foot on that icy slope. If I were to slip I would hurtle down the snowy ravine for several hundred feet, gaining speed like sprinter after the gun sounds, until something stopped me – for example, those boulders the size of Volkswagens at the bottom of the ravine. What a bother.

I alertly determine that I should climb around the top of this snow-filled ravine, since that route provides a much shorter detour than climbing around the bottom. By temperament I am a hiker, not a climber, but this climbing cannot be helped. I will have to use my hands as well as my feet. I turn and face the mountainside, grasp a handhold on the boulder there in front of me and begin to climb. I ascend about forty feet to a place where the ravine is bare of snow.

That was the easy part. Now I turn and proceed across the ravine. There are plenty of footholds and handholds to ease my way across. That is not the essential problem. No, the problem, as I see it, is that I am perched above a snowy chute where, if I exert only a tiny bit of imagination, I can see myself plunging to a gruesome death – alone and unmourned, smashed and disabled, bleeding and crushed, torn and mangled, broken and much worse – if either my foot or hand fails me in my mission. The climb across is actually rather easy.

It is in moments like these that I find it useful to breathe – slowly, if at all possible.

The ravine itself is only about 60 feet across here. With all the pertinacity of a sloth, I crawl my slow way across it, bearing my 30-some pounds of gear and food on my back. On the other side, I descend slowly to where the trail emerges from the snow. When I arrive I sit for a minute. I look back at the trail I left, sitting there innocuously on the far side of the ravine. In a small way, I feel like I have burned my bridges behind me. I wonder how many more spots like that I’ll have to cross before I am out of this zone of snow fields. However, it does feel wonderful to have done with it and to walk again. As I say, by temperament I am a hiker not a climber. I have too much imagination.

I and the trail continue to climb. There are many more snow fields to cross and a few others to avoid, but none of them are as perilous as that first one. I do need to stop each time the trail is covered by snow and look ahead to determine where the trail is visible again. If the trail were to switch back beneath a snow field it would be very easy to lose my way. My progress becomes slower, but I am never brought to a standstill for long. The snow up here close to the pass has melted just enough to disclose the trail’s whereabouts, although it constantly stutters in and out of sight. I see no one else’s footprints up here.

This pass is the highest I will travel over, except one other of an equal elevation. If Wonker Pass is clear enough of snow for me to get past, then I can look forward to nothing worse than what I find here. That’s why I feel some small relief when I walk past a tall knob of rock and suddenly I have crested the pass and can see the scenery on the far side. I’m standing at 8420 (or 8500) feet in a mountain range that tops out at an average of 9000 feet. From my point of view I have climbed to the top of the world. It’s impressive. I take off my pack, get out my camera and check my watch. It shows 11:00 am.

Viewed simply as scenery, the panorama spread before me is a wonder. From my perch atop Wonker Pass I can see ridges and peaks in a radius of twenty miles or more and across a field of almost 240 degrees (about two-thirds of a circle, for those of you who find degrees to be an unnatural and repellent unit of measurement). These ridgelines do not march away in parallel ranks, one behind the other, but run in a confused welter of directions, colliding like the waves in a water trough.

This view is something I can really sink my teeth into and I have many questions I want to answer about my projected route through this madcap landscape. I open my map and take the opportunity to study it against the terrain that is laid out so comprehensively in front of me. It is one thing to study a map spread on a kitchen table, another thing to see it come to life, ribbed in rock, clothed in forests, dipping and rising like some carnival ride for a colossus.

On the map the trails are marked in bold strokes. They look massive and substantial compared to the dimly drawn contour lines through which they cut. If the real trail were built to same scale as the lines on my map, it would be broader and more imposing than a two-lane highway, dominating the landscape. The reality is different. Here, where my eyes take in mile after mile of mountain mass, where the trees number in their millions and the rocks in their millions of tons, the trail is a mere shovel scrape a couple of feet wide. I am awfully glad it is there. It is the only human thing I have to keep me company in this immensity.

Of the most immediate interest to me is the route of the trail I’ll be walking for the rest of the day. Directly below me, where I will soon descend, is a vast bowl scooped out by an ancient glacier before it melted away. It left a very considerable vacancy behind it and that vacancy begins a few feet from my nose. It is all empty air out there for a couple of miles, unless I look down – straight down. There I see a toboggan ride of ice, snow and rock that falls about 600 feet before it begins to curve away from radical verticality.

But I exaggerate for effect. The pitch of the slope down the side of this glacial bowl cannot be more than 60%, or a mere drop of 6 vertical feet for every ten horizontal feet. Luckily for me, I do not need to take the most direct route to the bottom, either. In theory, I shall be zigzagging my way across the face of this slope on a well-built trail that might have a 10% slope. Call it 12% at the steepest bits. A piece of cake! All I have to do is keep gravity from doing too thorough a job of assisting me downhill and I am home free and clear.

However, the glacial bowl directly at my feet is not the entire story, only the most dramatic piece of it. All the waters that pour from this bowl continue to crash and splash their merry way down the mountain until they join the major watercourse that drains this whole watershed, Trail Creek. I will trace a less headlong path than the water will, but we both shall go to the same destination. I must cross Trail Creek today.

According to The Oracle the Trail Creek crossing will take place six miles from here (by trail) and 2200 feet below the elevation I now occupy so loftily. It’s a long way down. The Oracle also reminds me that the stretch of trail I shall be walking from here to Trail Creek is among the loneliest and least traveled I shall encounter on this hike. I suppose no more than 100 hikers set foot in this remote basin in any year. I do not expect a well-maintained trail.

There is one other thing on my mind. Tomorrow I expect to leave the trail entirely to travel up and over the ridge that separates Eagle Lake from Hidden Lake. As I approach this critical piece of my itinerary I am keenly aware that I don’t really know what I’m facing. Perhaps I can see it from here. I scan the chaotic middle distance, trying to discover a glimpse of the ridge I am scheduled to cross. Sadly, it is blocked from view by an intervening ridge. Tomorrow’s challenge remains a mystery I must face tomorrow. There won’t be a preview of coming attractions.

There’s nothing else to do but get up and walk, so I do. Flying, however, would be much more efficient under the circumstances.

First, there’s icy snow to cope with – plenty of it. In the main, the snow fields here are oriented vertically. This provides me with narrow vertical corridors of rock, talus and scree between them. This also provides me with intermittent views of the trail, where it weaves and shuttles across the slope, disappearing under snow and then peeking out from it in the narrow bands between the snows. It looks like I will not be taking full advantage of the 10% gradient of the trail during the immediate descent from the pass. More often than not I will be picking my way down the rocky vertical corridors, touching the trail from time to time. It is work, but I prefer the safety of solid ground underfoot. It would be pointless to try to duplicate the trail’s course down. Not here. I cinch my pack tighter to my body, so it will move closely with me and not throw me off balance.

With all these snow fields there is plenty of melted snow water, too. The whole hillside is awash with it. Impromptu creeklets by the dozen gurgle and rush, down and around the rocks. Apart from the intense concentration it takes to pick my way down the side of this bowl, it is rather fun. The whole place is alive with playful movement. I say playful because the water’s lively splashing, its leaping, frothing and music-making seem so merry – it is all around me, everywhere I look, and it lifts my spirits.

Slowly, I make my way down the most treacherous part of the descent. I haven’t exactly been following the trail so much as nodding to it from time to time. After a long, successful balancing act, I’m below the greater part of the snow fields. The pass sits above me, in plain view at the top edge of the bowl. From this perspective it seems crazy to call it a pass. Mountain goats fall off walls less steep than this, I think. As a last gesture, I fill my water bottle from the snow melt runoff.

From here I leave the switchbacks and snows behind and I can stride again. Soon the trail becomes a long, descending ramp that circles the side of the bowl and eventually drops into a stand of trees, half a mile ahead. From there onward I walk in forest again. Eventually the long ramp curves back upon itself and forms into a switchback. There will be more. The Oracle promises eleven more of them before I reach my next landmark, a meadow further down the trail.

With the resumption of trees, the once-panoramic view contracts and closes around me. Now when I look around I see trees. They’re above me, below me, before me – a friendly presence. With the miles to Trail Creek laid out before me, I strike into a rhythm designed to put those miles behind me with minimal effort. There is less to see, less to think about, less to capture my attention. I’m hiking for mileage and with that comes a sinking into my inner thoughts – rambling trail thoughts that fit easily with rambling through the woods.

The trail shows signs of infrequent use. In one place a twenty foot section of trail has washed away in a minor landslide. From time to time there are fallen trees across the trail, undisturbed, including one place where five or six big trees have crashed over the trail together making it completely impassable. The only remedy is to leave the trail and bushwhack my way uphill and around them. On a populated trail there would be a well-defined detour where many feet have trampled a new way around. Here, nothing seems disturbed. Too few feet have passed this way to leave their mark since these trees fell.

As I drop in elevation the trail churns through long muddy stretches. The underbrush thickens. In places it impinges on the trail, overhanging it. My legs drive through the brush, parting it briefly. Behind me it closes over the trail, not to be disturbed again until the next hiker comes by – or animal. Animals aren’t blind to the convenience of trail walking as opposed to bushwhacking. That is to say, large animals such as deer, elk, coyotes or bears can find trails convenient. Small animals have a different view on it.

I’ve seen graphic evidence of this in the past. Once, in the late autumn, I walked on a trail that was dusted over with two inches of powdery snow – not enough to interfere with easy hiking and more than enough snow to disclose the tracks of every single animal that passed that way. In many places that snowy trail was positively frantic with the tracks of chipmunks and mice. These tracks were everywhere, but not in every direction. The tiny tracks had an obvious theme. Each and every set of tracks began at one side of the trail and scurried directly across to the far side. Not one set of the small tracks followed along the trail.

In contrast, the snow also disclosed where a deer had lollopped along the trail for half a mile. The same was true of some coyote tracks I saw further on – it stayed on the trail. Finally, a black bear left a long series of shuffling tracks that followed the trail for nearly 300 yards before it turned aside down a hill. Apparently, an animal’s attitude toward a trail is somewhat determined by its size.

Soon it was quite obvious to me that some kind of large creature was in the habit of walking this trail, too. I knew this because it was leaving piles of its scat in the middle of the trail. Rather large piles of scat. (Parenthetically, scat is a genuine woodsman’s term and I use it with pride. It refers to an animal’s droppings, dung or manure – its leavings, if you will. No self-respecting woodsman ever refers to it as doo-doo or caca. It is scat. Trust me.)

As a city boy, born and raised, I must admit that my early education in regard to scat was scandalously neglected – unless you make an exemption for dog scat. That I knew well. I speak instead of the more esoteric forms of scat. These I have been forced to learn about here and there, picking up what knowledge I could as I went along, with no mentor to guide my feet among the realms of scat.

At the dawn of my sixth decade I can readily identify deer scat. So, too, I am confidently acquainted with coyote scat. But my knowledge still remains limited. This scat on the trail was unknown to me. However, I could see that whatever was leaving this scat was big. Make that big.

A deer is, in the nature of things, a big animal, but this unidentified scat-scattering animal was even bigger and it clearly wasn’t a deer. As I said, I know deer scat. As any country boy could tell you, deer scat is formed into numerous pellets about the size of toy marbles, but more oblong. They’re black, or nearly so. When a deer makes a deposit it leaves about 10 to 20 of these as its calling card. This scat was highly undeerlike, in that it was more of a pat or a pile, about the size of my fist, but flattened. It had unity, form and size. It was altogether impressive scat. I know. I was paying very close attention to it and I had plenty of chances to look, because let me tell you this scat was all over the place and it was fresh. Over the next mile I saw at least a dozen respectable examples.

I pride myself on being a hiker who is alert to his surroundings – unlike some hikers I’ve encountered over the years, who proved so oblivious to their surroundings that, when they passed right by where I sat a few feet off the trail, and I said “howdy”, they jumped nearly out of their skins not having known I was there. I can only wonder at them.

In any event, when there is a big unknown animal leaving a ton of fresh scat on the same trail I am walking on, why, I am just about eaten up with curiosity as to what kind of animal it could be. I think about it. You might say I put my whole mind to it. I’m intrigued.

My thoughts run in this fashion. What kinds of big animals might live hereabouts whose scat I can’t identify? That’s easy. There are three that I’m aware of – elk, cougar and black bear. Mountain goats, for example, just don’t cotton to the kind of deeply wooded dell I see around me, at least, insofar as I am aware of the habits of mountain goats. My knowledge of them is a bit sketchy. But bears, cougars and elk would definitely be at home in a place like this. This is excellent progress! Already I have narrowed the field to three choices. Now how to narrow it further?

Next, I reason that cougars are the only exclusive carnivores in that group. This scat doesn’t have the look of a carnivore about it. It contains no hair or fur, for example. Excellent! Now I’ve narrowed it to two choices.

At this point I am at the end of my certain knowledge and therefore puzzled as to how to proceed. But a man of resource (such as myself) does not bow his head before mere ignorance. He proceeds boldly to grasp his ignorance by the scruff of the neck and shakes it until it yields something satisfactory. What falls out may still be ignorance, but if it is a shapely and aesthetic ignorance, then it is almost as pleasant to contemplate as real knowledge would be. So, boldly and resolutely, I proceed by inference. An elk, I reason, is much like a deer, is it not? Should not an elk’s scat therefore be like a deer’s? Why, it stands to reason!

Therefore, I must be dealing with a bear. And if the quantity of scat is anything to go by, either this bear spends hours upon hours of the day roaming this trail, or perhaps I am facing multiple bears – a family – a mother bear (a true woodsman would say ‘a sow’ with just a flicker of superiority crossing his rugged woodsman’s visage) and one cub, or possibly even two! This is news of a remarkable sort. It pays to be alert in the woods.

Armed with this new knowledge – or something like it – I now know for certain what I must do. A black bear is a formidable animal. A sow protecting her cubs is still more to be reckoned with. However, black bears rightly find humans to be formidable in return. The best strategy for each of us to pursue is to avoid one another. A black bear is well equipped to avoid me all on its own initiative. It has an exceptional sense of smell and fairly acute hearing. Using either of these exemplary senses a bear is quite likely to detect my approach without my lifting a finger to help it. Having detected me, it is more than likely to turn tail and scat, in the non-woodsman skeedaddling sense of the word.

However, a lone hiker (such as I) is better off assisting the bear. Lone hikers, although they smell to beat the band, are known to be quiet sorts of people. On their side of the equation bears are sometimes known to become totally absorbed in what they are doing, just as persons can be, and grow oblivious to their surroundings. One moment a bear can be intently ripping apart an old log and scooping insect larvae into its mouths by the paw full and the next thing the bear knows, it looks up and exclaims to itself, “Oh dear, where has the time gone?” Given this notorious distractible quality of bears, it is better for me to make noise as I walk. Sometimes you just have to recall a bear to its duty to run away. I am prepared to assist it the best way I know how. As I walk I begin to make a godawful amount of noise.

I begin by singing. This occupies me for a time, but I have a problem remembering the words to songs. Not all the words, mind you, just some of them. Others I have a good firm grip on. I generally start out strongly with a whole run of words, all in place. Soon gaps appear like the missing teeth in the mouth of a six-year old. Like most people I throw a temporary pontoon bridge across these gaps in the lyrics with a dum or a dee or such, and march on. This serves well enough for a short time, but eventually the dums and dees are the whole substance of the song and the few straggling words that my memory can serve up aren’t even worth the effort. This is not the sort of singing one relishes for long. The bears won’t mind so much, but I do.

When singing fails me, I talk out loud. This I can do. I can reel off words sixteen to the dozen and my mother will proudly testify that I have been doing so since I was scarcely able to stand up without falling over. What is more difficult is inspiration. What do I say to an imaginary bear? And once I’ve said that, what do I say next? To solve this dilemma, I standardize on what might be called a foghorn approach. Every minute or so as I proceed down the trail I state in a loud voice:

- Person coming through! Human on the march! If you don’t want to meet me, step aside or learn to regret it!

I figure it can’t hurt to sound a bit ornery.

I keep this up for another fifteen or twenty minutes. It is reassuring to know that any bear in the area could scarcely miss my presence, but it does take a toll. It’s not easy to maintain a calm, contemplative mood when I am clanging like a bell every 60 seconds. I try to accept this in good humor. The bears need my help.

Eventually the trail descends to the meadow that The Oracle lists as my next landmark. I can see it down the hill to my left even before I reach it. It’s not a large meadow and it is rank with a lush green growth of grass, knee high. As the trail meets the meadow’s edge I bellow out my foghorn call one more time.

Then, at the far end of the meadow a figure rises from the tall grass. It is a big animal. Then another one rises. Then two more stand up. They snort with consternation. It is a herd of Rocky Mountain elk. I stand stock still and watch in awe as nine or ten of them run off, eyes wild, hooves pounding. A herd of elk on the run is not a dainty crew and they make a thunderous pounding – my heart almost matches them – and they are gone. The silence resumes.

I stand still a while longer, recovering from the startle of seeing several tons of wild animals jump into sudden motion. When I’ve regained my composure I begin to move ahead. After two or three steps forward, one last elk jumps up from the grass where the others had recently lain. It repeats the performance of the rest, a bit tardily. I swear I can almost hear it calling:

- Yikes! Where’d everyone go? Hey, guys! Wait up!

My day is made. As a bonus, I now know what elk scat looks like, when they’ve grazed their fill in lush, green grass.

Now that the episode with the elk is over, I belatedly realize that there is no trail in front of me. The trail ran up to the meadow’s edge just as pretty as you please, but in the course of a few feet it is swallowed in the rank growth of meadow grass and wholly disappears. My, oh my! This trail certainly is little used.

I’ve seen this sort of thing before. In Canada’s Banff park once, back when I was a young and adventurous sort, I spent two weeks in some very remote country where the trails had a bad habit of disappearing on me. I always found them again, but it does tend to reinforce the value of maps in one’s mind. Not that maps are foolproof, either, mind you, but they are always better than sitting on the ground and weeping bitter tears.

My first line of action in the face of a disappearing trail is simple enough. I note the direction the trail was taking before it petered out and I look to see what is in that direction. In this case it is an island of trees not more than two hundred feet away. Chances are good that the trail resumes there, so there is where I go. I swish my way through the knee high grass. The ground underfoot is a bit squishy, but nothing too bad in the way of swampiness. I can see why the elk like it here. It’s ideal for them.

I was right. The trail picks up again in the island of trees. That was almost too simple. It leads me past a poor sort of makeshift campsite, then through the trees for a short stretch before it disappears again. This time it vanishes about one hundred feet prior to reaching a creek that cuts along the edge of the meadow. On the other bank of the creek a hillside rises up immediately. Clearly the trail would cross the creek and climb away up the hillside. It is the only sensible option. My job is to find where the trail resumes on the other side of the creek.

I walk over to the creek and scan the far bank. Nothing is apparent in the way of a trail, but I know it is over there. The more important chore will be crossing this creek. It drains down from that glacial bowl just below Wonker Pass and it is bank full of water.

I stand at the creek’s side and look upstream. Nothing but willow thicket in that direction. I turn downstream and walk, looking for a crossing place. Oh! Here’s a lovely one. The creek narrows to pass foaming between two boulders that are near enough together that I can safely jump from one to the other. And look! Thirty feet up the hill someone has tied a pink plastic ribbon to a bush! I can’t see the trail from here, but if that ribbon doesn’t mark the trail I will eat my cap.

And so it proves to be. I leap the creek, toddle up the hill and there is the trail, placidly waiting for me. I’m tickled – and the bit of ribbon was useful enough that I decide to leave it for the next hiker to see. I don’t especially like the proliferation of bright plastic ribbons that dangle from trees and bushes in the backcountry. Most of them don’t belong there and all of them are a glaring eyesore. But it seems churlish of me to remove this ribbon, moments after I’ve benefited from it, so there it stays and good luck to the next fellow.

Trail Creek, here I come. I’m making good time, but I’ve been getting an assist from gravity. I must have dropped about 1800 feet from the pass by now. The Oracle tells me it is less than a mile to Trail Creek from here. If the lesser creek I just crossed is any indication, Trail Creek will be booming. This is no gentle U-shaped valley I’m dropping into – with a broad bottom and a meandering creek to cross. This time it’s a steep V-notched valley and I expect a whitewater cascade of a creek.

As I walk along the final half mile I start to look on either side of the trail for a sturdy fallen branch I can use as a staff, in case Trail Creek is a real rip-roarer. Most of the fallen branches I find by the trail are mossy and half-rotted. After testing and breaking about a dozen, I finally locate one that might be more of a help than a hazard. I carry it down with me.

I pull up to the edge of Trail Creek. The trail crew that located the trail did their job correctly and the crossing is in one of the flatter, calmer spots. There’s a decent ford, especially if you’re a horse. Before I sit down and pull my boots off, I reconnoiter the creek on the chance that I won’t have to ford it. There’s a narrow opening in the creekside brush off to one side and a soggy footpath that leads downstream. I follow it.

Some thirty feet downstream the footpath leads to a logjam. There’s a stump torn out by its roots that has lodged midstream, capturing an assortment of jumbled trunks, brushy limbs and other junk. This amalgamation is well-woven and sturdy – loose enough for the creek to sizzle through the interstices. Anything not truly jammed and tight has been carried off downstream long ago.

I cautiously crawl onto the logjam and brace my chosen staff cum branch into the mess to steady me. It is a strange feeling to step onto a springy mat of woven branches with the water foaming a few inches below. I only need to take one gingerly step on this matted mass, then I can scramble up and onto the dead stump and safe haven of the other side. A few deft moves later and I’m on the far bank of Trail Creek. I look at my watch. It says 1:30 pm. I’ll stop here and eat some lunch.

I choose a place to eat where I can see a short distance up the creek, but the truth is I might as well be squatting in a hole for all the vistas I can see down here. From sitting on top of the world at Wonker Pass I’ve lost 2200 feet of elevation and it is a different world down here. I’ve traded snow and rock and open air for big trees, underbrush and other greenery that are gulping at every ray of the light that shines down into this gorge. Not many do. Compared to the immense sky at the pass the sky down here is a wide slit, closed in on each side by mountains that quickly rise another half mile above me. When I next shoulder my pack it will be to regain a large part of the elevation I’ve lost – 1200 feet of it, nearly a quarter of a vertical mile. Such is the life of a hiker. I’m not complaining. I asked for this.

In the meantime I sprawl half in and half off the trail. I don’t expect anyone to pass by and no one does. I eat the same exact lunch I ate yesterday and am pleased for the respite from walking. According to The Oracle, in the past four hours since leaving Traverse Lake I’ve covered more than 7 ½ miles. This is very near to a pace of two miles per hour. That’s average for me. By my own lights I am making good time.

After I finish all my food I dawdle and waste time. Lunch always makes me unambitious. If left unchecked I will sit here and stare at my boots for an hour or so, drifting on whatever slow stream of thought moves me along. A black beetle catches my eye, all six legs scrabbling away as it steams up the trail. Perhaps it’s because I am feeling so lazy that this industrious beetle catches and holds my eye. It looks remarkably certain of where it is going and what it is about, but somehow I cannot imagine what purpose or goal a beetle might hold in its mind or what plans it might have formed that it is carrying out with such vigor. It fairly shouts, “I’m going places!” But where? And to what end? I wonder and ponder as best I can, but it remains a mystery to me.

If I had a taste for such things, I might also wonder how mysterious my own hiking up hill and down dale might look from a more remote and lofty perspective. Certainly I would look as determined and purposeful as this beetle does. But for all my pushing ahead and ‘making my mileage’ I only intend to walk in a huge circle and end up precisely where I began. What would my lofty observer make of that? Nothing sensible, I am sure.

As it is, I am feeling pleasantly lazy. There is sunshine filtering through the branches overhead and my belly is happy. Many years ago, while I was reading Piers Plowman, I came across a lovely Middle English word, “bely-ioye” or belly-joy. Of course, the poet William Langland was using the word as a synonym for gluttony, and denouncing it as a deadly sin. But I found the concept of belly-joy delightful and innocent and I have cherished the word ever since. It comes in handy at moments like this, when my belly is filled and I am at peace with life. I am like any other contented beast and perhaps that is the secret of why I am out here. Contentment is a fine thing and often, in the midst of hectic city living, it seems the furthest thing from our grasp. I find that a bit of bestial cud-chewing is not a bad antidote for civilization and its discontents. Not bad at all.

It is time to rise from my ruminations and resume pursuing my peculiar purpose. It is written in The Oracle that I have miles to go before I sleep and mine is not to reason why, mine is but to hike up this long hill between me and the junction with Bench Canyon Trail with a 30-odd pound bag strapped to my back. Excelsior!

Immediately after I leave the creek’s side the West Eagle Trail (#1934), on which I have been walking since yesterday morning, butts itself into the Trail Creek Trail (#1922) and abruptly terminates. My path will now acquire this new name and trail number. It all proves to be very straightforward and unremarkable. At the junction a wooden sign is posted. It informs me what destinations I can expect to find should I turn left or right, and how many miles these destinations might be from where I stand.

Those mileages, by the bye, should be taken with a large grain of salt. I do not know how the U. S. Forest Service (proud subsidiary of the U.S. Department of Agriculture) arrives at the mileages they put on their trail signs, but it could not be by any reliable method or the signs would agree with one another. Instead, a sign at a trailhead to, let us say, Lost Lake (there must be a thousand of these) might say it is 3 miles distant. Then, when you arrive at Lost Lake, the sign pointing back to the trailhead all too often will say it is 2 ½ miles away. To an orderly mind, this looks suspicious.

To my way of thinking, the trail sign at this junction is far more important for existing than for anything written on it. It ratifies my mental map and tells me that I am where I think I am. A trail junction, among other things, is a grand opportunity to make a blunder.

I find it is safe to think you are somewhere, if that is where you truly are. It is relatively safe to know you are lost, if you can determine your general whereabouts and form a plan for getting back on course. The worst trouble happens when you are supremely confidant that you are where you aren’t, and that you’re going somewhere that you won’t remotely approach on your present course. That is when you march straight over a cliff that, by rights, ought not to be there at all. So, I am grateful for the sign, however badly it may misstate the miles. One must forgive small peccadilloes.

At the junction I turn right and proceed uphill. Trail Creek trail certainly knows how to switch back, which it demonstrates at once and with frequent repetitions. It has a remarkable grasp of this trick. It zigs left and zags right with equal competence and all the while it climbs with assurance and aplomb. The terrain where it puts on this display of spiraling artistry is partly wooded and partly open, but always steep-sided. In the open patches there are lupines and paintbrush and meadowy grasses, all very green, all lush, well-watered and amply sunned. There is some evidence of a long ago fire that may have swept these slopes many decades back and opened up these green patches that haven’t yet closed ranks with the surrounding forest.

Soon there is enough open hillside and enough sun shining down on me that I start to sweat lavishly. My pant legs are detachable and I stop briefly to detach them, so that now I am wearing shorts. I roll up the sleeves of my shirt to above the elbows and I unbutton my shirt front nearly to my navel. It is a very large and baggy shirt, the color of dust.

The color once known as dun has much to recommend it for clothing worn on the trail. My pants are also dust-colored, but a subtly different shade that doesn’t entirely harmonize with my shirt. As a final touch, I fold one of my red bandanas into an off-centered triangle and drape it over my head, tying the two narrowest corners of the triangle together behind my head, using them to pin down the floppy third corner that sags off the back of my head. The effect is rather like the scarf a housewife might tie over her head while dusting and cleaning house. I prefer to think of the look as pirate chic. In my less romantic and more realistic moods I refer to it as pirate geek. This latter seems to capture the essence more exactly.

My entire ensemble at this point has attained the status of fully-blown geekhood. I consider this to be one of the great underappreciated luxuries of tramping through empty wilderness alone – the license to be thoroughly disheveled and disreputable-looking, just as the whim strikes me. Hiking all alone gives me unlimited latitude to dress myself to meet my practical (or piratical) needs. Comfort is the order of the day and anything, literally anything at all, that increases my creature comfort can be instantly embraced, however sloppy, weird, garish or unbalanced it may appear to others. Speaking of others, I haven’t seen a single solitary soul for the past 24 hours. If this uphill trudge is a fashion show, it is sparsely attended.

My sweating abates a bit with all the ventilation I have opened in my clothes. The bandana both protects my bald spot from sunburn and sops up the sweat of my brow. As I walk I catch every little breath of breeze and it cools me briefly. It seems as if there is never enough of a breeze on a day like this. I no sooner feel its blessed touch than it dies away again.

All this sweating means I am losing fluids rapidly. I pick up the drinking tube that is pinned to my shoulder harness and put the business end into my mouth. This tube leads back to a collapsible water bottle hidden in my pack where it stays cool. The end of the tube that normally dangles off my shoulder strap is equipped with a valve that opens when I place it between my teeth and apply gentle pressure. With the valve open I can suck water from my bottle directly into my mouth and drink without removing my pack or even breaking stride.

This contraption is a hiker’s delight, but I resisted getting one for many years. Even now I feel like an infant with a baby bottle whenever I suck water from my ever-handy nipple. To make matters worse, the first manufacturers of these contraptions decided to call their ingenious collapsing water bottles bladders, thereby increasing their appeal to the very threshold of absurd delight. One imagines the advertising possibilities: “From our bladder to yours!” or “Thirsty? Empty our bladder!” You have to shake your head sometimes at the wonder of it all.

Beyond all expectations, I am motoring up this hillside and its dozens of switchbacks at almost the pace I kept on my downhill leg, before lunch. In part this is because I’m deliberately testing my engine, pushing myself a bit, but not too much, feeling my lungs and heart as they try to gear up and supply the need of my muscles. They’re responding quite well. No dire gasping or sucking wind, even up here, back at 7000 feet. No pain in my joints or muscles. My heart isn’t pounding right out of my chest and my head feels well short of needing to explode. I guess I’m not ready to be put out to pasture, yet. That will do for now. I slow down a bit.

The trail, too, has reached a change of terrain. It has crested over a lip of land and grown less steep. It’s even leveled out briefly, although it is clearly not the end of my climbing by any means. It is just a wooded bench on the landscape, a tranquil spot. As a reward for my surging up the switchbacks in excellent time, I let myself take off the pack and rest. I’ve started to recalibrate my body and its activity to the basic needs of hiking. When I hike, there is little wasted effort. When I rest, I rest with minimal fussing in my pack or fiddling about. The pack props against a handy tree or rock. I prop against my pack, legs splayed, and simply soak in the world around me, like a man recumbent in a tub of forest scenery. There aren’t many sounds here. It’s close to pure forest silence. I hear the occasional insect, the occasional sigh of wind that riffles the high tree tops. I hear the dull thud, thud, thud of hooves directly behind me and a large body shoving the underbrush.

Hooves? I turn and look in the direction of the sound. A mule deer, a doe, pulls to a standstill in the huckleberry bushes about thirty feet up the slope from where I am sitting. “Oops!” it seems to say, “I didn’t know you were here.”

- Looking for someone?

My tone is calm, perhaps a bit arch. I frequently talk to animals when I hike alone. It seems perfectly natural to me when I’m doing it. During a close wildlife encounter the conversations are rarely one-sided. The eye-flicks, head motions, posture and such usually speak rather eloquently.

The doe stands still for five seconds more. She watches me carefully, but without a trace of panic. She bobs her head and neck slightly, then turns and walks away, not slowly, but with sufficient restraint to preserve her dignity. Many animals appear to feel the need of dignity in moments like these. She seems to convey, “Well, then. I can see we have nothing more to say. Don’t get up. I was just leaving.”

Parenthetically, I would recommend that the best way to see wildlife when you are on a hike is to stop hiking. Sit. Be still. Be quiet and wait. It is very hard to sneak up on wildlife. Your movements will unfailingly grab the eye of every beast and fix their attention on you. The odds are they’re much better at this game of seeing and not being seen than you are. And, if you are better at it than they are – well, then you certainly don’t need my advice.

When I get moving again I discover I have not walked more than half a mile before I reach my destination, the junction with the Bench Canyon trail. The junction is marked by a post propped in a pile of rocks. On the post is a trail sign, but even more prominently the post is being used as a coat rack. The coat is bright red. I surmise there is an owner somewhere nearby. I hastily de-geek my appearance (in a small way). By this I mean that I button my shirt a few notches higher, remove my hausfrau bandana and run my fingers through my hair, which is plastered to my scalp by sweat and salt. The least I can do is to give it a consistent grain and direction.

The owner of the coat turns out to be plural, a young man and woman, possibly married but definitely a couple. I would place them in their twenties. They are resting beneath a tree a short way from their improvised coat rack. No young children lurk nearby that I could frighten by my appearance, so I approach and engage them in conversation.

It’s the most garrulous I’ve been in days. We exchange the usual pleasantries, ask the normal questions. I tell them I’m looking to camp for the night in the near vicinity. The young woman volunteers the very spot where she and her hiking partner are sitting. They’ll be leaving shortly, she says, and I’m welcome to it.

They inquire about the way I have come. They seem interested in hiking to Traverse Lake today. I give them a fairly detailed account. It’s about 3:30 in the afternoon and Traverse Lake would be quite a stretch today. Then they inquire about intermediate camping spots along the way. I don’t have any good news to share. The meadow where I surprised the elk (and vice versa) did contain a camping spot, but not a very inviting one by my standards. What with the general steepness of the trail, it was the only campsite I saw today. After a few minutes of exchanging such information and pleasantries, I bid them good afternoon and strike off up the hill. I haven’t talked so much since I left home a couple of days ago.

At least, I haven’t talked this much to people. I suppose that should be other people. My more eccentric conversations with chipmunks, trees, and with myself I do not record here. They are private matters. I am willing to reveal that I often refer to my pack and myself as we, as in “I think we should stop for lunch soon”, when I am transparently the only person around. At least I presume my pack is the other party included in this we. I am careful not to inquire too deeply into such delicate mysteries as my apparent multiplication when I am alone on the trail. It seems better to accept such aberrations calmly. After all, I wouldn’t want to upset us unnecessarily.

The junction with Bench Canyon Trail lies at the bottom edge of a meadow, surrounded by rugged cliffs on two sides. A more gradual hill defines a third side. The fourth side, the bottom of the meadow where the two trails meet, is low and open. Several small springs in the meadow drain into a single creek that exits through that opening and seeks Trail Creek below.

It’s time for me to find a campsite. In spite of the spontaneous offer by the young woman, I have no interest in the campsite where she and her hiking partner are resting. It is the only obvious spot to camp, but the reason it is obvious is because it is located a few feet from the trail. You couldn’t miss it if you tried. I much prefer the unobvious spot, the secluded spot, the private and quiet spot. I have a hunch that, if I walk to the top of the gradual hill over here to the north of the meadow, I will find a more secluded campsite.

This proves to be the case. I walk up to the brow of the hill. It has a fairly large flat area out of sight of the trail. It would be an excellent site but for one thing – it has been co-opted as a horse camp. The more I explore the site the more I am dismayed. Here under the shelter and shade of these alpine fir trees is an inviting flat spot to pitch a tent – or it would be inviting, except the ground is covered with old manure and straw. The same is true of each of the other potential tent sites I investigate. This could have been so nice.

The fire ring here is extra large for accommodating a large group, and some vanished party of campers has left behind the metal grate they used for cooking over the fire. It is rusted and warped. While the site is not egregiously trashed – I’ve seen much worse – there are several rusted cans, frayed bits of plastic rope, small shards of plastic and foil strewn about. Some branches have been nailed up between trees as permanent crossbars where horses may be tethered. Orange rope hangs down from them. There’s a haphazard pile of firewood surrounded by a litter of wood chips. A small tree has been chopped down and dragged near to the woodpile, still festooned with dead brown needles.

I scarcely know what to think or do. Without any conscious purpose, I begin to tidy up as I wander around the site. I stack the wood as best I can. I gather up fragments of trash and collect them into a small heap. If I am going to camp here I certainly don’t want to feel like I am living in the middle of a dump.

I move slowly, aimlessly, poking everywhere, trying to reconcile myself to the place. After what might be fifteen or twenty minutes of attempts to repair and restore the site, I realize it’s no use. If I camped here I’d be living with far too many ghosts. They’d be overpowering. With some reluctance I set out to find another site where I can camp with a relatively peaceful mind.

I don’t want to give the impression that I am dead set against groups of horse campers or that I discovered some sort of ecological disaster site. On the contrary, this site is highly appropriate for a large group of horse campers. It’s well-removed from the alpine meadow, where the horses could do real damage to the fragile system. The trash is minimal and somewhat incidental. It’s the sort of stuff that would be overlooked during a quick policing of the grounds before leaving. Some of it, such as the woodpile, the felled tree and the fire grate, could even be viewed as an attempt to be neighborly and helpful to the next party to camp here. The old manure and straw are unavoidable concomitants to this kind of camping.

It’s just that the human hand has lain too heavily on the place for my comfort. I can almost hear the voices, and feel the jostle and hubbub of a large group of humans and horses going about their business. It’s not what I want. How can I best express what I want to say?

Imagine you are walking a dog in the park. The dog has plenty to occupy its senses – all the many smells and sights of the outer world. It eagerly investigates the other people you walk past, trying to get a sniff or cadge a scratch behind the ears from various strangers. But let one other dog enter the scene and your dog’s attention is riveted there. You become uninteresting. Strange people might as well be so many garden hoses for all your dog cares now. The other dog is all that matters. And what smell could be more fascinating to a dog than the scent of the last dog to pass by? To a dog, dogs are the sine qua non of the universe. Everything else is decoration. People are similarly affected by the presence of other people. In a group, the group’s actions, words, and preoccupations grow to fill the entire foreground of our thoughts and desires. Wherever the group happens to be becomes a backdrop, a setting, mere scenery against which our human drama is played.

Conversely, I find that by hiking alone, what was a backdrop moves to the foreground. A veil falls from my eyes and I discover to my astonishment and gratitude that I am in the world and of the world, not merely a bug that floats and skitters about on its surface.

The horse campers who preceded me were only human. By congregating together and moving in a large group, they were only doing what comes naturally, at the expense of subtly devaluing the place they inhabited. They couldn’t spare the attention required to harmonize with it. They were too busy harmonizing with one another, dancing that sociable dance of constant readjustment in their relationship to the group. Being alone, I can see them clearly in the clues they left behind. Even their tiniest artifacts, like the scent of the last dog that had passed by, are too much to ignore. I have to find another place to camp.

Figure 2: Wonker Pass, as seen from the author’s Bench Canyon Junction campsite.

I put my pack back on and begin to walk a circuit of the meadow. Up under the cliffs there is no flat ground. I choose not to camp in the meadow, either. Not only is it damp, but it is too open and exposed to view. It is also destructive to the meadow plants. Looking back across the meadow from under the cliffs I see that the hiking couple I met earlier have set up their tent, occupying the site where they had been resting earlier. They must have rethought their plan to continue hiking and decided to stay.

I’ve scouted all the perimeter of the meadow now. There’s nothing here in the way of good camping. However, I see some promising terrain across the creek from the trail junction, up beyond the meadow. I go and investigate further.

Eventually I stumble onto a wonderful, secluded site within an easy 150 yards of the meadow and water. It’s on a rocky brow that juts out flat, then drops away abruptly, giving my site a fabulous view that encompasses miles of mountain scenery. I can stand and look out over the valley of Trail Creek and all the way back to Wonker Pass. This site is as pristine and pleasant as I could possibly ask for. I’m not the first to use it by any means, but it is exactly the sort of out-of-the-way place that only gets discovered by experienced hikers who are well-attuned to their surroundings. Consequently, it is small, neat and well-groomed. I settle in happily.

After I set up camp, I walk back to the meadow to fetch water and wash up in the creek. I still have enough energy left to rinse out some of my sweaty clothes (and slap mosquitoes). I rinse my socks first, repeatedly running the cold, clear water through them and wringing out as much sweat and grime as I can. Partway through this task, I glance down at my wrist and see that I forgot to take off my watch. I remove it and put it in my pocket. I’m unconcerned. It’s been through many similar dunkings in its lifetime. No doubt it will survive this one, too.

Back in camp I spread out my damp clothes on a broad rock that faces the sun. I fix and eat supper. As the sun goes down I gather up my now-dry clothes and retire to bed. As I stow my watch safely for the night I notice the inner surface of the crystal has fogged up with damp, but shrug it off. After reading for a bit, I turn off my headlamp and sleep.