Uphill Both Ways by Andrea Lani

Author:Andrea Lani [Lani, Andrea]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000 Biography & Autobiography / Personal Memoirs, SPO018000 Sports & Recreation / Hiking
Publisher: Bison Books

7

Watershed

A withdrawal from man’s society into that of nature is our greatest safety valve (and also one of the most immediate reasons for retaining our wildernesses, great and small). The benefits of wandering are there for anyone who makes the time and cares to develop an observant eye.

—Ann Haymond Zwinger

Days 17–18: July 26–27, 2016

Mount Elbert to Hewitts Gulch

We wake with town in the air and get an early start. We have about five and a half miles to hike to Twin Lakes, where we’ll meet my two aunts who are serendipitously vacationing there. But instead of enjoying the gentle downhill hiking, I worry about next week, when we’ll head into unknown territory—the Collegiate West route. This eighty-three-mile length of trail was added to the Colorado Trail two years ago, forming a keyhole loop halfway between Denver and Durango. Beyond Twin Lakes, hikers can take the Collegiate East route, which, for the most part, follows the original path of the Colorado Trail, skirting the Collegiate Peaks along the range’s base, or they can take the Collegiate West route, which sticks close to the Continental Divide and entails climbing a high pass each day.

We’ve been taking it easy since Leadville, hiking eight to eleven miles a day. What if we can’t manage sixteen-mile days over rough terrain? Do I even want to hike big mile days, or finish this hike at all? This question nagged me our entire first Colorado Trail hike—why am I here and why should I keep hiking? I never came up with a satisfactory answer. Now I mentally revisit my motivations for hiking: To immerse myself in my heart’s home. To spend time in nature, away from “real” life. To have close, undistracted time with my children. So my children develop a close relationship with the natural world. To press a reset button on my life. To find happiness. Oddly, getting closer with Curry was one of my goals on the first hike, but nothing about our relationship made it to my list this time around. I’d taken it—us—too much for granted to recognize that even a twenty-year-old companionship requires work.

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