The Wandering Mind | Wind River High Route | #30

But I think that what I love most about backpacking is your sole responsibility for the day is to wake up and to just walk to put one foot in front of the other and I think that By stripping life back to being so simple. I feel like it gives me space to kind of mull over Chew on so to speak the great many of things that I just sometimes feel like I don't have time to really marinate on About a month ago owen and I set out on a week-long backpacking trip through the remote corners of the wind river range in wyoming We were out there documenting a trip for a film called sideways that is actually out now on youtube But while we were out there hiking I decided to record a different side of the experience one That seems to never have time to be shared in our video work But I wanted to explore the organic thoughts that come up From hours on end of walking and just letting my brain Go for a stroll entirely on its own Here's where those mental wanderings took me Welcome to camp nowhere I I like that about backpacking because it kind of lets you Meditate in motion so to speak and go to these You know Corners of your mind that you don't often visit But uh, I like having those types of things built into my life because i'm definitely the type of person who I feel like I need time to mull things over before I can You know make decisions or feel solid about something We are currently hiking along The headwaters of the green river Which is the river that goes on to carve the green canyon Sorry, we're climbing but it's so wild because this water that I am Hiking along is in the middle of nowhere in wyoming And to think that it goes from here to carve the green canyon And then historically made it all the way to the gulf of california and that Is very wild My next sip of water will be that water I think that's kind of cool Feel the need to describe this place where we find the headwaters the green river We are hiking In the back country of the wind river range in wyoming And we are in this deep bowl um with sheer incredibly craggy rocks kind of Erupting so to speak out of this valley on all sides We're about 18 miles in from the trailhead that we started at This is really cool. We've been back here into the river wind river range before We've even done a little pack rafting on the green river here in this area, but I've never been to the headwaters for such a massive And important body of water For the western united states that has quite humble beginnings humble beginnings in a Staggeringly beautiful place. Wow. Oh and also the water is like really milky like glacier milk blue Glacier milk That's a technical term I don't think it was ever a goal of mine to see the headwaters of the green river But as we were hiking past it in its truly smallest form as just glacial runoff high up in our favorite mountains It struck me how cool it was to be there seeing the headwaters of such a mighty river To see where it is still small and silty knowing what it goes on to do and create in fact as we headed south this fall we Entirely unintentionally followed the green river south until where it meets up with the colorado river in utah Right before it goes on To create the grand canyon. Once again, it was not a goal But still cool and a fun call back to our time on trail So last night Night of day one We Saw smoke coming in And we had clear conditions coming out And the smoke was coming from where we came from Which was really confusing So with our garmin in reach we sent out a message to a friend of ours Hi stewart if you hear this and stewart kindly looked into the fire conditions in the area and it sounds like A big and fast moving fire broke out right at the trailhead where we came from Very shortly after we left And the crazy thing is You can't go back that way now And we were considering keeping our car down there at the beginning And then getting shuttled to the end We're having somebody move our car And thank god we didn't Because the road is now closed And that's where the fire is Oh my heart goes out to people who have Their car there But the other crazy thought Is that if we would have just started like a few hours later I don't think this trail would be happening Oh, man Yeah, lots of lots of close calls in this scenario We almost had our car there We Oh, man, yeah We almost started two weeks later And it just seems like with how big and fast it is just Less than 24 hours in I don't know that many people are going to be hiking in through that area Oh crazy Feeling very thankful things shook out the way they did though That fire that i'm talking about was called the dollar fire and it was actually started by a storm That we drove through getting to the trailhead Thanks to our friend stewart's intel we were able to pass along all of the information that he sent us to those who are still hiking Towards the trailhead that we saw on trail the next day as of this time recording this episode at the beginning of october the fire is only about 85% contained and has burned over 20 000 acres It has been going For well over a month That is so insane to me This is actually the second time that we've run into a fire on trail and it made us realize How incredibly important it is to have a safety plan in place When you are spending time in the back country I think it's important to Have people who are not only keeping an eye on you when you are in the back country and can know where you are But also having somebody know where your car is and to be able to keep an eye on it So I do want to say thank you so much to our friend stewart pally for keeping an eye on us in terms of the fire but I also want to thank my dad because after the fire broke out and having This close call and this realization that our truck very well could have been at the trailhead We reached out to my dad and we were like, okay So fire's broken out. We're fine. Everything's fine But this is where our car is can you please keep an eye on it like twice a day Can you just check to make sure no fires have broken out? because I think that a new part of our plan needs to also be ensuring that People know where our car is and can keep an eye on it. And if something were ever unfortunately You know a fire was to break out that somebody could potentially go in and get it and later Further down the trail I kind of came to this realization we had asked multiple other couples friend groups to come with us and do this hike and You know ultimately no one was able to do this hike with us But the realization was If somebody else had come with us We would not have hired a shuttle service, which means that somebody would have had a car at that trailhead so Based on how things ended up shaking out. I think it was for the best that we did this trail alone Because I shudder to think of the alternative At the start of this journey. I spent a lot of time thinking directly about why it is I crave backpacking I just wanted to understand it and to be honest this trip came up because we were Craving a long hard backpacking trip But like why did I feel that way? Why did I feel I needed it? It's just so rare that in adult life We just have like so many responsibilities so many things that we have to take care of so many things that we have to do so many things that we need to be thinking about Backpacking really sets the stage for me in a way that few activities do to churn through this seemingly Endless backlog of things that I think that I really need to spend time thinking on But while I was out there, I think I came to understand that Maybe the thinking i'm putting it in quotes that I needed to do was actually less direct or Specifically thinking. Oh my gosh, that makes no sense I'll just let myself explain and particularly with this trail being so much off trail We I mean we are not on trails no, two steps are guaranteed and any Misstep could be a broken Leg ankle rolled ankle sprained something and we are out here But I really just love that Continuous problem solving and it just demands so much of your focus to Pay super close attention to everything that you're doing And there's sometimes just like no time or space to think about anything else other than where you are placing your feet And I feel like that does like a hard reset on my brain that I really really like obviously, I can only speak for myself when I say this, but Activities where your body and brain isn't focused Entirely on the task at hand It gives my subconscious space and time to work entirely on its own on things that I feel like i've mentally stockpiled I think that this is actually Probably the root of why I crave backpacking It's this constructive time where I don't actually have to think about anything Other than just putting one foot safely in front of the other that time of kind of Distracted thinking on a simple task allows for the problems Slash questions that I have to untangle themselves very organically in the background Without a doubt when I am exercising that is when I have my best ideas I feel like I always have these thoughts that just come Bubbling up from the dark corners of my being seemingly out of nowhere But I think that i'm starting to realize that it isn't actually coming from nowhere. It's coming up because i've set the scene to allow These things to sort themselves on their own in my subconscious And you know, I don't think that we as adults get enough time In our day-to-day lives for this type of focused non-thinking And I think that it's just another reason why this feeling of craving Comes up to spend long arduous hours Strapsing through the wilderness But this also got me thinking about the other end of the spectrum And it's so funny because there's been so many occasions where i'm just like why the hell do I like doing this um It's just like a lot of pain uh almost continuously But I think that There's something somewhat Gratifying about it Because you just have to keep going. So okay, like I said, this is a bad thing and now i'm already saying it's a good thing but You come to realize that you can keep going past the discomfort And oftentimes if you don't give a power if you don't talk about it and you Just keep going pushing forward That stuff will often recede for me anyways into the background And i'm not talking about like severe pain. I'm just talking about general aches and pains from Exerting yourself for 11 hours a day but uh I think that while you're in pain That is when I particularly am like why the hell do I like this? or when I'm laying in tent in the tent at night And I can't fall asleep because literally everything in my body hurts Every corner is aching There's no way to lay comfortably because everything hurts So yeah, that's definitely a downside and then I also just really despite the fact that I don't know. I live the way that I do. I really don't like going to bed dirty like feeling Sticky and nasty. Oh It's the worst So yeah, those are definitely some downsides But at least one of them comes with a positive I'm clearly delusional In the end I think that pain Can wear on you over time if it's not the right type of pain, which i'm fully aware Sounds very sadistic But the right type of pain can be a very meditative experience And I think that there's a lot to be learned from that variety But there's also the wrong type of pain and I think that that's the kind where you know That something is not performing the way that it should it just feels like something is maybe off or not working properly due to exhaustion On this hike in particular. I was dealing with a very confusing mixture of both the good kind of pain and the bad kind uh as far as the bad kind of pain is concerned, I was having shooting pains in my ankles and my One ankle, excuse me one ankle and then it was radiating up to my hip And all of these are places I have never heard before so this is a note to myself to look into shoe inserts I'm, hoping that's going to help but to summarize I think that there is so much more that I get out of backpacking that I really love versus what I don't Which is why this was kind of a short list So on this high route that we're hiking we didn't see a single person yesterday That seems pretty rare and kind of cool. We did two mountain passes crossed a glacier Went past like four or five Alpine lakes all of which were stunning one of them looked like what I think baffin island will look like when I Do eventually get there? Mark my words So yeah, just like really unique and rare experience to go a whole day of hiking in a very popular area And not see a single soul The wind river range has a large network of established trails a lot of which are very very popular And as we started researching the traverse routes, we realized that the high route goes through many sections That the established trails just do not come anywhere close to That was our initial attraction to the trail and it was so special to get time in a mind blowing Landscape and to be the only people in sight That is such a rare luxury and I will always cherish those occasions when I get them there is great satisfaction In developing a fluency with your gear As in you're fast You're efficient You know what you're doing full stop end of thought Another thought that i've had on this hike Because so much of it is off trail Is that like it just like never occurred to me That some of the trails that we hike that feel like they're truly in the middle of nowhere But our designated trails have received a great deal of like physical human power labor To bring them to life And by stark contrast what we have been doing lately or these last couple of days, I mean no Semblance of like where you should be going And the great deal of yesterday, which was about 10 miles Were just boulder fields that we were crawling through And so I just now have this immense Appreciation for the people that I will never know that have made these trails walkable that we enjoy so much um, but also just such an appreciation for How easy a trail makes it to access place different places that are hard to get to because You pay for it In grueling agony to get to places that do not have trails. So my hat's off to all the people who are probably the ccc Uh for putting these trails together that we love so much. Um But also I think that it's nice to see the contrast. I think that that appreciation is important So I did some research on the trails and the winds and they were not made by the ccc However, I do feel like the history and the information about the ccc is pretty cool and is not widely known So we'll circle back to that but before that I do feel the need to give credit where credit is due the trails and the wind river range have been built over centuries of human presence in the range First and foremost, we need to thank our indigenous tribes of the wind river range Primarily being the shoshone people They have had a long and very close intimate relationship with the wind river range for a very very long time However, there have been a lot of other cultures presence in the winds over time including the crow people Cheyenne arapaho blackfoot and the lakota people all have ties back to the wind river range and its early trails The present day trails have been maintained and some of which have been built by the u.s forest service due to the land being wilderness status as well as a lot of local organizations such as The wyoming wilderness association. So thank you to all who have brought those trails to life As for the ccc which stands for the civilian conservation corps. It was founded in 1933 to create jobs for young unemployed unmarried men from the ages of 18 to 25 So they could have jobs in environmental conservation and land management projects Obviously, that's a pretty cool program Obviously, I wish that the ladies could have been included but a cool program nonetheless Ccc workers were involved in a wide array of projects that ranged from planting millions of trees to developing And improving national parks and other types of public land according to the u.s park service the ccc made over 125,000 miles of roads and trails and constructed an additional 13,100 miles of just foot trails The program actually came to an end because we entered world war ii but over the course of its existence They accomplished an incredible amount of projects all across the national park and public land systems and if you travel to national parks Keep your eyes peeled because often you will see their name come up because they have been involved in some form of development Of that park, which is always cool to see along your travels We're already looking ahead at our travel plans for next year Scary that next year is already so close but thinking ahead to our next adventures is an incredibly exciting process Next year, we're going big and checking off our number one bucket list destination in the form of a group trip In july 2026, we're heading to namibia Think climbing epic sand dunes hiking to the iconic mud pans and seeing wildlife on not one not two But three safaris We'll be exploring ancient rock art getting to know a new culture and camping underneath the incredible desert skies These trips are always life-changing not just because of the places that we go But because of the people that we share those experiences with we'll handle all the logistics All you need to do is show up ready for an incredible adventure Space is limited. So check out all of the details via the link in the show notes Grab your spot and let's make namibia unforgettable You didn't Seriously think that I would let you go without spending at least a little bit of time being super nerdy about nature. Did you? Okay, good because here we go Yesterday as we were coming up and over a pass we came across the single largest weasel I have ever seen It was the single largest weasel we had ever seen because it wasn't actually a weasel but we'll come back to that It was bigger than our cat boo It was also really playful. It kind of followed us down and then proceeded to play In a snow drift that we slid down but it's made me realize or just seeing where plant life lives and all these animals It's amazing how persistent life is and where it can flourish truly Sorry, i'm so out of breath. I don't know why I decided to do this while we're climbing But this is a note to myself to look into Do weasels hibernate? And do pikas hibernate? We've been seeing a ton of pika So cute the cutest Rodent that I think has ever graced the earth pretty much a ball with fur But they collect flowers and plant matter And they stash it under rocks to eat in the winter Which leads me to believe that they don't hibernate but it's quite Interesting when you because we've come across a couple of plant caches And it is amazing how much Plant matter they have gathered It's like billowing out from underneath rocks So yeah, definitely want to look into that more Turns out my on-site knowledge of animals in the mistellid family is not great Mistellids just so you know are the carnivorous mammal family that contains weasels badgers otters pole cats martens Grissons which I wasn't familiar with and wolverines After some careful research I did find that what we saw that day was actually an american marten I just had weasels on the brain because we had just seen a weasel a few days earlier Which is much smaller and it ran through our camp that first night on trail still really cool though All right Now let's answer my own questions about these characters weasels martens and pikas Pikas, by the way are not in the mistellid family They do not hibernate However, they all prepare for winter very differently and it's quite fascinating Least weasels, which is what we saw on that first day run through our camp They have a chestnut brown coloration with a white chest in the summer, but in the winter their coat turns completely white They remain active all year and have to store a surplus of food in their burrows to survive the winter But I think that the craziest adaptation that they have Is that their brains? Shrink in the winter to use less caloric energy You can always count on nature to do some crazy ---- in the name of survival. That is so insane to me Martens like the one that we saw coming up and over the past. They do not change colors Their brain does not shrink which sounds kind of lame I maybe shouldn't have led with all the crazy stuff that at least weasel does However, they do become far less active in the cold months for the sake of conserving energy which same Last but not least pikas. They're very active year-round and have extremely high metabolisms that require them to eat Nearly constantly including through the cold months of the year Pikas spend all summer collecting and storing large piles of plants called hay piles, which is what we saw stuffed underneath the large rocks on trail And to access these hay piles in the winter, they travel through self-made tunnels under the snow Pretty dang neat, but y'all it's so cute the pikas they run around they look like they have these huge Bouquets of flowers and grass in their mouth. It's Absolutely adorable. I will say regardless all of these critters live in incredibly unforgiving landscapes and I just find it to be Incredibly fascinating that despite their size they have made Full adaptations to make their life work for the environment that they live in life, uh It always finds a way On the second to last day on trail. We missed the entrance into a small valley that we were supposed to be traversing And we had been off route for well over an hour And we're having a hard time reading the topographic map to know if we were actually going to be able to make it Up and over the terrain that laid between us and where we were supposed to be on route and then Out of the middle of nowhere this thought popped into my brain the path forward is not always clear But if you take a few steps forward it will make The next few steps known And you just keep doing that over and over and over And it eventually will get you to where you need to be Lessons from the trail Far too often. I feel like we want to have everything figured out before we make a single move But in reality you have to start taking steps forward to make it clear what your next move even should be Eventually, we did make it back to the trail The detour probably cost us over an hour and I think that we probably also hiked an extra mile It wasn't until later that we realized that if we would have stayed on pace We would have been in an incredibly dangerous place when a storm hit us later that afternoon So see you always end up Where you need to be If you enjoyed this episode consider giving our film sideways a watch Even though the film documents the same trip they cover very different aspects of the trail and the experience You can obviously find a link to that video in the show notes of this episode Thank you so much for listening and we'll see you down the trail