Day OneOhOne, September 26, 25 Miles
At Mile 2007, Poptart 748/1000
You stir, roll, groan. Your eyes open. The moon is shining the sun's light into your face but the grey predawn tells you it is time. All around you, the world is covered in frost. The sleeping bag is wet from condensation. But you are warm.
Up. You pack your bag methodically. The same exact way you always do.
Up. Up goes the trail, switching back and forth. Up, across, down and around it swings to Blue Lake.
The lake is blue. Inviting.
Around, up, across open grasslands. Twelve thousand feet high.
The trail is evading you. You walk, cairn to cairn, as the trail appears above, below, over there. Taunting you.
But the trail needs you. It needs your footsteps. Without you it is nothing. It knows this. You know this.
It cooperates.
Sparkling Trail Lake, identical in colour to the cloudless sky. Lunch is consumed, throttled, devastated.
You dry your wet items, including the tarp that has not been used for days.
Across, down, between two majestic valleys of splendour to Dripping Lakes. Shimmering.
The lakes today have been as picturesque as any, anywhere. Colorado's one last surprise.
Up, up and across. The abrupt end of the mountains. There is still divide to walk, but it stretches southward with a much flatter, rolling tone. Save for a few monsters in our future.
Aspens, lakes, mountains, trees and cliffs.
Down the ridge, the sun golden before it sinks below the horizon.
You find a suitable place of rest. Amongst blowdowns and logging paths you eat.
Between two tents you sleep, nothing between you and the inky, star filled sky.
Joy.
Today was the same as the hundred before it.
But different in every way.
This is your bread and butter.
This is how you walk across a country.
2000 miles!!!!!
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