December 16, 2017

At the border between Colorado and Wyoming I had had a brief talk with two guys who were about to hike the Colorado section of the CDT SOBO, they’d done Wyoming the previous year.  One of the guys jabbed his thumb at the other guy and said, “He loved Wyoming, I hated it,” and that statement stuck with me because I was so sick of Colorado, and was so looking forward to different terrain in Wyoming–the Red Desert, the Wind River Range.  And a night and day later, the country WAS different and I joined the Fans of Wyoming club.  The CDT is a weird beast and state lines are imaginary lines drawn by surveyors, you’d think. So how could Wyoming be so distinctive from Colorado?  I didn’t know much about Wyoming before hiking through it, in fact I had to buy and mail myself a road map so I would have a clue.  I’ve read all the Craig Johnson novels in the Longmire series and watched the whole TV series, that’s about it. But of course Wyoming figures prominently in the history of the American West.  What I will research over the winter, what I want to know about, are the first people who were here and the people who are  now on reservations.  The little towns I’ve visited in Wyoming present as overwhelmingly white, and since I’m a white person you’d think that would not be uncomfortable.  But when I went home and landed in Anchorage, Alaska, my home for 25 years and walked through the airport, I realized that was the reason Wyoming felt odd, it was white.  In ANC I was home–the concourse was filled with Alaska Natives of all affiliations, and Pacific Islanders, and people speaking assorted European and Asian languages.  I have often told the story of the first phone call home from my white boy son 3 days after he went to college in Bozeman, Montana.  “Mom? It’s so weird here, everybody is white.”

I took it in steps, leaving the trail unfinished, like the neighborhood kid game we used to play called “Mother May I?” Yes, you may take 2 baby steps–2 nights in Dubois, WY. Yes, you may take 1 giant step–1 1/2 hour shuttle ride to Riverton Regional Airport. Yes, you may take a flight to Denver. Yes, you may fly home to Alaska.

It would have been easier to justify to myself if the weather was horrible or I was injured. But what I wrote in my journal was:

1. I am exhausted.
2. I am depleted, even the tightest pair of jeans I’ve ever bought, hang on me.
3. I’m lonely hiking on my own.
4. Winter is coming.
5. I have to go volunteer in Yosemite.
6. I miss my cats, um, and my husband and friends.
7. I have no voice, I have to get my vocal cords scraped again.
8. My ankle has not healed from rolling it in Colorado in June.
9. I have to train to RUN the NYC marathon November 5.
10. My sleeping bag stinks even though I use a bag liner.

These are all true. But it’s no easier to be a quitter.  I can’t call myself a thru hiker any more.  Oh wait, I just call myself a hiker anyway.