There’s a book I’m supposed to be writing… Instead, I stealth camp outside of town after riding the dog into Flagstaff.
The deal was that I’d take time off-trail to finish writing the second book in my hiker trash romance series. Sit still. Write. Pay for the future. But to my body, writing felt like a prison.
I didn’t want to be in my head anymore.
I wanted to run.
Instead of heading east like I’d planned, I took the #5 bus to Schultz Creek. From there I’d climb Humphreys Peak, a side quest on the Arizona Trail that I’d never done, and apparently a distraction that I needed.
I hiked through the Aspen trees, along the winding trail to Alfa Fia Tank, the only reliable water source through this section. I was already a couple thousand feet above Flagstaff when I found Monk there, heading north toward the Grand Canyon.
Easy conversation the way trail conversation is, stripped of all pretense, zero posturing. People looking inward for answers rather than checking societal norms before fabricating an answer that was moment dependent.
Then the Aspen’s thinned. Snow crossed the trail as the Kachina Peaks Wilderness opened up ahead of me, with the next five miles gaining 3,600 feet of elevation.
The wind howled louder, the trees thinned out, and I hiked along the exposed mountainside. A wind that threatened to push me off the ridge. My fingers frozen under my thin gloves, exposed skin hurt, my eyes tear up from the brutally cold wind that makes it painful to breathe the high mountain air searing the inside of my nasal cavity.
12,600 feet and I’m short of breath… then I notice how much I’m smiling.
How much fun I’m having.
I wrap my arms around the sign at the top, to take a summit picture, to prevent me from being blown away.
I can do this on a whim, but I can’t bring myself to write anymore? I feel invincible, and like a failure at the same time.
The descent was slow because I wanted it to be. I camped behind a fallen tree near Alfa Fia Tank that night and didn’t move for a long time. The tired had gone somewhere deeper than my legs. Deeper than my body.
The kind of tired that doesn’t come from altitude or wind or miles.
#headless #hikertrash