People say that pictures don’t lie, but of course they do.
They certainly don’t tell the whole story. I have a similar problem with my
memory.
The link will take you to digitized slides from several
backpacking trips Scott Stewart and I took in the summer of 1976. Some of the
time we were hiking in the Gore Range in Colorado between the trailhead off
I-70 on the Vail side and I-70 on the Frisco side. Some of the time we were in
the Indian Peaks area along the front range west of Boulder. In between was hard
hiking with weight on, eyes on the next step - and more amazing scenes than we
could have imagined.
Looking at these pictures, my memory tells me that I have
been in these places before. Kodachrome has altered the color of the sky, at
least. These are about a quarter of the 120 pictures, or so, that we took. I’ve
placed them out of order, thinking that for you, they might seem more coherent
that way. My own memories are not continuous either. I don’t remember nearly so
much snow. And what picture was taken where or when links to my memory
sporadically.
Never mind.
On our trip in the Gore range, we packed what we thought
would be enough food for two-and-a-half weeks, our ride to meet us on a particular
day on the Frisco side. That meant that for part of our climb, Scott or I was
carrying an extra backpack with food to be retrieved later that we eventually tied
up in a tree before heading for higher elevations. The pictures show that we
got very high up, indeed. And what we saw was worth the efforts we made, but I
can’t really recall what it felt like then.
There’s a vague recollection of us sitting on top of a high
peak after a morning climb, squeezing a peanut butter and honey mix out of a
plastic tube onto club crackers, a portion of dense bread called Logan bread
for each of us. Looking out and around and down. At our campsite it was oatmeal
and orange drink from powder in the morning and either macaroni and powdered cheese
or tuna and instant rice cooked on a tiny stove for supper. We made pudding for dessert – powdered milk, an artificially flavored pudding mix, and cold stream water.
Scott and I took turns dipping our spoons into an aluminum pot, scraping the
sides until it was hardly necessary to wash up. I don’t ever remember relishing
food more. It must have been partly the setting and partly our efforts. Call
it, high mountain air.
We woke up one morning to fresh snowfall. Scott was always
out of his sleeping back first. I enjoyed the comfort a little longer. The
ground must have felt hard. Sleeping bags warmed up when you were in them. We
weren’t much for bathing, but each of us took a dip in a lake at the base of a
small glacier, shards of ice floating around us, hollering at the other one to
take the picture already. I better remember sitting on boulder in the sun
waiting for the cold to seep out of my bones.
The picture of me peeking out of our tent was at a favorite
campsite, as if at this distance one can distinguish paradise from perfection.
We were up on a ledge of sorts, looking out over a valley of grass and boulders
and trees, forest around, and out over open space to mountains on the other
side.
That’s all it was: mountains and meadow and trails and what
we carried and who we were.
I remember more, but not as much as I would like to. We ran
out of food that trip. Hiked down early and into town to buy more food for our
short wait. In the library, I read a book I couldn’t check out.
I guess you had to be there to feel what we felt and some of
you have had your own similar experiences. Tell me what it was like for you if
you can. Maybe it will help me remember more what an extraordinary time that
summer was for me.
In the top photo, I’m the kid on the left, Scott’s the one on the right. That’s
a glimpse of who were then.
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