“Wow. It must be really great to have hiking poles when you ford a stream,” Amy said to me as she rock hopped across the water.
“Yeah,” I replied. “The only thing is that sometimes…”
This is the point where I land butt first in a stream. I’m not kidding. Falling has almost become almost cliche in my stories. Apparently, in the two months since my return from the Appalachian Trail, I have not become more coordinated.
I had intended to backpack in the Columbia River Gorge this weekend, but my friend Carl said to me, “You’re crazy! You are going to freeze to death alone in the woods and no one will know how to find you.”
I told him that I have a warm sleeping bag, good rain gear, and plenty of food. If worse comes to worst, I might be a little miserable or grumpy, but he would not have to drag my icicle-laden body out of the forest.
He insisted (and insisted is actually not a strong enough word) that backpacking solo in the winter is dangerous, and I should stay on his property instead. Carl lives on some land with his family near Hood River, OR. Eventually, I gave in and camped out there for the weekend and did day hikes in the county land that borders their property. He told me that if I ever got too cold or hungry, I could come sleep in his house. As you can imagine, this really helped my ego.
I originally had misgivings about staying on someone else’s land. It felt a little like camping in my parent’s backyard. But after Carl and Amy took me on a few trails on the 250 acre property, I changed my mind. I decided I would never leave. I setup camp on a ledge above the river with a stunning view of Mt. Hood. Stunning in the “I’ve lived here three years and have never seen a better view of Mt Hood” way.
It has been cold out here, and at night it gets down below freezing, but, all in all, camping out here is pretty easy. As I was hiking in, I met Carl’s dad who said to me, “You are either extremely naive or one hardcore woman.”
I thought, Aw, man. Pretty soon they are going to offer to bring me rice crispy treats on the 4×4 and tell me ghost stories.
Wrong. Actually, they offered me wine and firewood. And perhaps it seems insane to you that I would turn down my friend’s offer to load up the 4×4 with goodies and drive it into the woods for me, but I did. I like to at least maintain the veneer that I’m roughing it.
“What about socks?” Carl asked me me. “Yours are wet from falling in the stream. Do you have another pair?”
I thought, no. But I said, “Yes.”
“Really?” Amy asked. She’d found me out. “Listen,” she said, “I am going to take off my socks and hike back to the house without them so that you can take mine.”
Now, I’ve done my fair share of solo hiking and I should start this by saying that I would almost always prefer to have a hiking partner. For me, there are only a few downsides to hiking with friends. The main one being that they don’t want me to make fun of them on my blog. So I will say that, to her credit, Amy only once tried to mother me, and is always supportive of my independence. She has, however, given me permission to make fun of Carl.
To sum up, I turned down the socks.
It’s not that Amy didn’t have good reason to mother me, because she knows that I am somewhat accident prone. Falling into the water was not my first mishap. Not long after we arrived at Carl’s house, I realized that the seat of my pants had split, again (reference the falling problem.) This is not a big deal unless you are, oh, the type of person that doesn’t wear underwear. So as Karl’s dad joked with me and warmly welcomed me to the property, I tried to keep the ripped side of my pants pointed away from him.
Here's to bright pink duct tape
Once I setup camp, I laid my pants out in the sun. My friend Abe had sewn them up a while ago, but clearly no thread is up to the task. After they dried, I patched them with duct tape. Unfortunately, the rip goes right up the seam and, as my duct tape is a bright pink, it now looks like I am wearing a giant pink thong over my hiking pants. I can live with that as long as I don’t have to start wearing actual thongs.
After being told repeatedly by Carl that I could come back to the house or that he would bring me firewood if I wanted, I thought my plans for a solo backpacking trip were shot. But, as it turns out, you can hike on a 250 acre property for several days and not run into the other people living there. One night I stayed up until 2 am watching the moon illuminate Mount Hood. I went bushwhacking, forded the river, and even did a little hiking on the county land that borders their property. In all that time, I only saw one other person. Granted, that person was a strange man standing on the trail and peeing into the woods, but that is close enough to solitude for me.
Related posts: