One of my all-time favorite “visitor contacts.” (Our meager record-keeping consisted, in part, of keeping tallies of individual contacts and numbers of individuals.) Throughout my entire ranger career, it was really unusual to meet a woman hiking alone. In twenty summers, I met probably maybe half a dozen. It was rare to see all-female groups from pairs on up. Hopefully this has changed.
2 Aug (Thu) ◦◦◦◦◦ No problems going out. Had one fairly amazing viz contact: riding along the shore of Lane Lake—nobody around. But there’s a lady having lunch in the “No Camping Here” site by the edge of the water. She had her pack leaning against the log and was herself sitting on an ensolite pad and leaning back against her pack. I veered off the trail to go talk and she didn’t hear me coming over the roar of her little gas stove til I was 20 feet away. She was startled when she saw me and a little embarrassed because she was pants-less! As soon as this became apparent, I discreetly gazed off into the trees while she hastily put her shorts back on. A “big boned gal,” strawberry blond and muscular, rosy-cheeked; a pleasant, soft voice. She had been on the trail alone since June 15 and most recently had come from Tuolumne Meadows. (She had no permit, she said, because she’d hitched to The Meadows late and the permit booth was closed.) She’d gone out of the mountains several times for supplies and hitched rides to towns and back. Also, she was a couple of days overdue because she’d fallen asleep in the sun one day (with no clothes on, I assume) and had sustained severe burns that had made her really sick. To top it off, this woman is from Manhattan where she’d lived most of her life. She made her living as a roofer (had “done a lot of roofing,” she said, wearily). An amazing woman—would’ve loved to have heard her story. ◦◦◦◦◦
©2018 Tim Forsell
23 Nov 2018
No comments:
Post a Comment