Even smoky mountains have flowers

This post is maybe an homage to this woman Caroline from Calgary who I met backcountry in Kootenay National Park.

(I don’t have a picture of Caroline, but here’s a picture of a cool snow cave and waterfall on Tumbling Creek that I hiked past!:) I did see lots of cool waterfalls again:)

Air quality has been shit here, for the longest stint yet since it’s been pretty bad since Thursday and is supposed to persist in its “unhealthy” gross state for another who knows how long. Yesterday the sky kinda tried to be blue, anyway, but this morning it’s back to total shit. Setting aside the existential rage I feel about climate change (that’s a whole other post, ha), I’ve tried to be zen about it, like some days are great weather and others aren’t and I don’t get to pick which ones I get. (Though dude. We don’t have to live with ridiculous fire seasons. We — every single one of us — deserve clear air and clean water and a healthy planet and we can have that if we — again, all of us — stop pretending like our actions don’t matter. Omg the existential rage I have about these largely self-inflicted things that we just pretend are normal and something we have to live with these days.)

(The paint pots were pretty cool and colorful even if the sky was gross)

Point being, it was not the best weather for a backpacking trip to see the mountains, although I suspect that’s also exactly why there were backcountry permits available for this coveted location at the last minute for me.

I was pretty stoked to camp fully backcountry for two nights though. I’ve done three actually backpacking trips so far where I stash my bike at the trailhead, switch my gear over to backpacking mode, and pick my bike up again a day or two later — one in Valhalla Provincial Park, one in Glacier, and now this one. (This is not to be confused with long day hikes, where I also stash my bike at the trailhead somewhere and switch over to hike mode, but don’t sleep too far away from my bike.) It’s definitely my preference to camp deep in the woods where I don’t hear cars or even other people if I’m lucky. So I was psyched for two whole nights, and smoke or no I’m grateful for my time sleeping by streams and hearing the birds and eating the huckleberries (this was by far the best huckleberrying of the trip so far!).

(Yummmm:)

Where Caroline from Calgary comes in is that my second day, I was considering hiking back through the forest to get to my second campsite rather than taking the loop I’d planned through the high meadows. I get a little cranky when I can’t see the things I want to see, especially cuz see aforementioned comments about deep existential rage about climate change (which, of course, at its core, is deep, deep sadness). But Caroline was very much of the mind that mountains or no, she was an alpine meadow kind of gal and that it would be worth it despite the air quality. “You know what your soul needs,” she told me. She wasn’t trying to convince me of anything, but for her, she said, who has been out here a bunch, the meadows would be worth it no matter what the mountains looked like, and the air quality meant that the normally-full campgrounds were peaceful and empty.

Even with that, I still wasn’t sure what I would do until I actually shouldered my pack and started walking. And then I decided that I’d at least go up the pass to see what I thought from there. Which brought me to doing the loop. And Caroline was right, the meadows were lovely, and for a while I could at least see the mountains that were right in front of me, and could tell that there were some that were further away.

(More pasqueflowers:) There were so many of these both in flower form and also totally gone to seed)

(I also ran into my alpine larch friends!:) I could still see the closer mountains in this one too)

So I was grateful to Caroline for the lesson I need to learn over and over, not to get discouraged that something isn’t the way I want and then let that keep me from doing a thing that is still, it turns out, pretty good.

(I cut the mountains out of this one cuz they made me sad, but the flowers were indeed outrageous)

That being said, this morning I feel like I have run out of zen about this again, I think in part because I thought with the rain we got it would get better here, but if anything it’s worse and I am feeling a little despondent about that. Like fully not motivated to do anything today.

(I probably need help remembering that there are still cool rivers and rocks;)

When I stayed in Spokane, WA at the beginning of my trip, the woman I stayed with asked me if there are days where I don’t like bike trip anymore or if it’s all psyche for me all the time. I told her it’s honestly mostly psyche though there are always moments that are less fun. This is definitely a less fun moment where I have to hold on hard to the wildflowers and huckleberries and rivers and just take the small steps to get rolling again.