Squeezed into the rugged off-road bus, I kept pinching myself in disbelief. How was it possible for a risk-averse primary teacher to be jolting up a mountain track in an oversized jeep with a torn canvas roof? Granted it was a lovely summer day, but still, my teeth clacked with every bump.
Oh yeah, now I remembered. After retiring, I had resolved to reinvent myself as an ‘adventurous’ older woman. I started tenting with women friends; no husbands around to save us from bears, flat tires or lids that refused to open. On this occasion my friend Lorna and I were on the first day of our adventure in a wilderness park high up in the Rocky Mountains.
Three months earlier we reserved our seats in this all-terrain vehicle, that now rumbled upward toward the remote campsite we had read about in a camping magazine. The words in the article sent shivers up my spine: wilderness, isolated, rugged, mountain peaks, upper limit of the treeline, no services. This was a big stretch from our car camping of the previous summer.
Some segments of the rough trail retained a vestige of a logging road fallen into disuse. In other spots the track appeared nonexistent. Undeterred, our driver forged ahead around spindly trees and giant rocks. There were twelve seats in this austere vehicle, known as a ‘crummy.’ It had formerly been used to transport loggers, back when these slopes were densely forested.
The other passengers were headed to an exclusive wilderness lodge where they expected to be safe, comfortable and well fed. The rustic inn finally appeared and our fellow riders got off with weekend bags or backpacks. No tents needed for them. The crummy bumped ahead to our drop-off point, where the rough trail came to a checkmate against a rock wall.
“End of the road,” called the driver, as if this stop might otherwise be misconstrued. He pointed to a faded green and yellow sign welcoming us to the wilderness park. “Just follow the path behind that sign for a mile or so. Use one of those wheelbarrows to carry your stuff.”
Four rusty wheelbarrows were parked beside the sign. Choosing the one with the most inflated front wheel, we crammed in our tent, sleeping bags and duffel bag containing provisions. Backpacks we hoisted over our shoulders.
As instructed on the park website, we brought an envelope with our names and the camping fee: $40.00 for four nights. Like it or not, we were committed for four nights because that’s when the crummy was scheduled to rattle down to the parking lot at the base of the mountain.
On a post next to the big sign I found a locked wooden box with its own faded message: Deposit camping fee here. Pushing the envelope through the slot, I wondered if a park employee ever showed up to retrieve the money. This collection box felt like the final outpost of civilization.
The footpath threaded around rock outcroppings and clumps of scrawny sub-alpine trees. It took both of us to maneuver the wheelbarrow, one pushing and one lifting the front whenever the wheel became stuck between rocks underfoot. Every time I glanced up at the jagged snow-topped peaks encircling us, a vague apprehension niggled at me about the remoteness of our location.
“Do you think,” I asked Lorna, “that four wheelbarrows stationed at the entrance is a good sign or a bad sign?”
She looked at me quizzically. “What do you mean?”
“A good sign because park authorities expect at least four groups of campers, or a bad sign because only one pair of idiots actually accepted their invitation to camp here. Do you think anyone else will join us?”
Ever the realist, Lorna noted we were the only campers on the bus. “Unless other campers are currently slugging up the eight-hour hiking trail, we will be residing here alone.”
Somehow this response did not give me the reassurance I sought, but I didn’t want to look like a wimp. With a deep breath I refocused on the sights and smells of twisted fir trees and cheery fuchsia fireweed. Finally we found ourselves in the protection of a bluff where the evergreens were thicker and taller.
“Engelman spruce,” Lorna informed me.
A sign announced that this was the backcountry campground. We found a dozen sites well spaced from each other, each providing a framed dirt bed for a tent, a rickety picnic table, and an iron cooking grate within a stone fire circle.
The tops of the trees swayed in the wind, but down here we were sheltered and cosy. Sunlight flickered across the ground in a dancing grid of light and shadow. Through the upright tree trunks we spied the sparkle of a small turquoise lake. In the warmth of a sunny summer afternoon it all seemed magical.
As we pitched our tent, I was grateful for Lorna’s experience with wilderness camping. She brought a filter system to obtain drinking water from the lake and she knew that the purpose of the wire cage atop an eye-level platform was to store our food. From which predators we had no idea, because the park literature assured us there were no bears here.
Lorna checked the brochure again. “Hoary marmots,” she reported, showing me a photo of a large ground squirrel.
“Cheeky little rascals,” I said with relief.
To allow time to orient ourselves before needing to cook, we packed sandwiches for supper. These we munched while exploring our new domicile like a pair of cultural anthropologists. We detected evidence of former human occupation: charred wood in a fireplace, toilet paper behind a big rock, a rusty baked-beans can under a bush.
After admonishing these previous sloppy campers, we promised each other to be pristine in our wilderness etiquette. To underscore this point, I gingerly extracted the rusty can with two fingers and dropped it into our pack- out garbage bag.
The sun sets early in the mountains. Sitting on a flat rock beside the lake, we were treated to a long rosy sunset reflected in the still water. As promised, we were at the upper limit of the treeline. Grassy slopes rose above us, their undulating forms either bathed in pink or deeply shadowed. They held the promise of exquisite alpine flowers blooming in the late July meadows.
In the lingering twilight we collected dry firewood from a dilapidated lean-to.
“Probably windfall from winter storms,” said Lorna, “sawed into rounds when the wood was dry enough.” Lorna knew these sorts of things.
“It’s reassuring to think that some park official was here within the last few months sawing up fallen trees,” I said.
“On the other hand, the wood looks very dry, easy to chop. Coulda been a year ago.” Lorna sounded completely nonchalant.
Didn’t she realize I felt uneasy about being so far away from the settled world? To calm my disquiet I inhaled deeply from the pristine mountain air, redolent with the scent of spruce needles.
After a campfire with hot chocolate and conversation, Lorna and I crawled into our shared tent. The campfire embers emitted a glow that filtered through the tent wall, etching shapes in charcoal hues, providing enough light to find our backpacks and sleeping bags. Once the embers faded, we lost this
tenuous anchor to the external world. Deep night descended, a darker black than I had ever experienced.
While Lorna fell asleep quickly, I lay awake staring into a void so black it obliterated the physical world. This primitive camping area had no electricity, no yard light to guide a night visitor to the outhouse. I hadn’t considered my reliance on a bit of background lighting at night, until the moment when it all vanished.
Of course I packed a flashlight, but I had no idea where it was. “Novice!” I chastised myself.
Moving my hand in front of my face, I saw nothing—not a shape, not a shadow. It was unnerving to feel physical sensations without any visual confirmation that I actually had a body. With no reference points I lost my sense of gravity, of being rooted to something. I was floating in a pitch black sea.
In the glimmering afternoon the setting had felt magical. Now it shifted to downright eerie. I listened intently for sounds, but there weren’t any, not even a faint whisper of wind. The outside world had vanished.
I felt unmoored, as though I had drifted through some portal into an alternate universe. Because of our vigorous activity getting here and setting up camp, I was dead tired. Soothed by the familiar rustle of my sleeping bag, I eventually drifted off in my weightless, black cocoon.
As per usual, I awoke in the middle of the night needing to pee. The thought of leaving my cosy den sparked those butterflies in my tummy again, but the call of nature was urgent. I felt my way to the end of my sleeping bag, where in an orderly world I ought to find the zipper to open the tent flap. Ah,
there it was.
Thrusting my feet into flip-flops, I crawled outside into the freezing night air. Under the spreading evergreen canopy it was darker than a thousand midnights. Absolutely no light existed to aid my navigation to a spot suitably far from the tent entrance. I strained my ears to listen, but couldn’t detect any snuffling sounds of animals lurking nearby with malign intent. Testing the void with outstretched arms, I shambled a few steps and then several more.
In the next instant I stopped and stared. Somehow I had stepped past another portal into some enchanted sphere of brilliant light and jet black shadows. Beyond a grid of ebony tree trunks a million diamonds glittered in the void. I shuffled forward through the inky shadows until I was at the lakeshore, where a shimmering universe embraced me, above, below and all around.
The silence was profound. The immense dome of sky danced and pulsed with light and the mirror-smooth lake reflected everything above it. I could not tell and did not care where the sky ended and the ground began. Again I was floating, now in a sea of crystal light. How long I lingered there I don’t know, because time lost all meaning in this kaleidoscope of swirling stars. Every faint star since the beginning of the universe became visible, filling my senses.
Eventually I noticed the soft exhalations of my own breathing. I sensed earth beneath my feet again and felt the tremors of shivering. My body had returned and my thermal underwear wasn’t nearly enough covering for this freezing night. I made my way back through the murky night to the tent. After I was zipped up in my cosy sleeping bag, I remembered my original mission.
I had totally forgotten to pee.
Under normal circumstances I would be annoyed by the need for a second venture into a cold dark night. Not this time. I rummaged through my pack for socks and jacket so I could stay longer in that otherworldy realm of light and shadow.