B.B.

Today is an odd day, I know, but, then again, aren't they all? Maybe not, and maybe that's a lot of the problem, but I digress. I'm trying to blog on Twila's day because I've been suffering from the dreaded "Blogger's Block".

When I was in NY and couldn't think of anything interesting to blog, I blogged about NuSTAR. Back in CO and empty-headed, I could always rant about politics - until I became apolitical. Even though I'm on Medicare now, I'm not at the point where I want to talk about my bowel movements, although they have been really excellent lately. People don't steal my passwords and, if they did, I don't have the chips to complain as elegantly as Twila. Now, I know I just have to do *something*, so here is my attempt, a potpourri of random thoughts.

We had some serious rain today, plus thunder and lightning and all that stuff. It's a +1 for Colorado. We're sitting on our back porch now, smelling the air, looking over our yard and our lake… I'd say it's another +1, and our expert would probably agree.

Hmmm…

Well, Twila said that if there is one mosquito in the area, it will bite her. But that is no longer true! (If you eat orange rinds, mosquitos won't bite you. They don't bite me, even if I haven't had an orange rind in a while, and I don't really know why. The alcohol content of my blood? My lightning-fast bug slap? That I'm a sour kraut? Whatever.) Today we were in a mosquito-intense environment and Twila was not bitten! Her theory is that the zinc oxide based sunscreen she was wearing kept them away, and maybe that's true. Unless she encounters a mosquito with a cold, she might be okay from now on.

Oh, yeah, our environment. We have friends from California, one of Twila's classmates from high school in India and her family, who recently bought a pied-à-terre a couple of blocks from us. (I hate saying "pied-à-terre". I don't even know what it means. Isn't there an English word that would do the job?) They are in town at the moment, so last night we had a nice dinner together and today we went on a hike that proved to be more interesting than we'd anticipated.

We went to the Glacier Gorge trailhead in Rocky Mountain National Park, headed for Alberta Falls. It was the same route Twila and I attempted a couple of months ago, when the park was almost empty and snow was 4' or more deep on the trail, and on which we became hopelessly disoriented and never even came close to Alberta Falls. We still don't really know where we actually went. But it is a popular trail, nowhere near as difficult as Round Mountain, and we expected it to be a walk in the park. Twila didn't even wear her regular hiking boots.

It was mostly a walk in the park for a while, as it happened. The trail was almost all uphill, but gently, and it was comfortable walking. There were plenty of people going up, and plenty coming down. Before long we arrived at the falls and it was magnificent, angry water fed by an unusually deep snow pack. We took photos and smiled and were satisfied. And then, somehow, perhaps overcome with confidence, we decided to hike farther, which absolutely no-one else was doing.

It got more interesting right away. It was clear there was a trail beyond the falls, but it was rocky and uninviting. In moments we were beyond the crowd and on our own, heading into the unknown. In retrospect, if the unknown had been known, we would have made a mutual decision to turn around, mostly because of one particularly hairy segment.

It was, really, a great hike. The views were magnificent. (I'll do my even-day job by posting some photos.) But the trail was both poorly-marked and poorly-made, and several times we found ourselves scratching our heads in the wilderness. It was also very uphill. We struggled from vista point to vista point. (Twila and I didn't really struggle, mostly, and I have a facility for recognizing trails, which helped, I think.)

The trail itself was narrow and very rocky. The hardest parts, though, were over snow. There were really slippery places on slopes, snow bridges over raging streams, and then we came to the biggest test of all.

Twila, the strongest person I know, has acrophobia, and walking on a trail that has a steep drop-off on one side will generally freak her out. Today we hit the exacta. We had gone far enough that turning back was uninviting. We were on a steep part of the mountain, with a drop-off on our right that we would have had no chance of surviving if we fell. Twila was eating her fears and moving on. Until the snow.

With the terrifying drop next to us, the trail disappeared, replaced by a 30-yard long slab of icy snow. There were some faint tracks across the snow, but hardly a path. I was in the lead - what to do? I just went on.

It was creepy, even for me. I had to kick my feet into the hard snow to make steps to support myself and those following. Even then, they were tenuous footholds, nothing that would inspire confidence. I kept moving, knowing that drawing attention to our circumstance would totally freeze Twila. Every few steps I glanced back, and she was bravely moving on, staring resolutely at the steps and supporting herself with her bare left hand on the snow. I had an idea what she was going through, but there was nothing I could do. It was all up to her.

She made it. She was shaking when we finally got off that steep snow slope, but she had done it. I was very proud of her. It isn't easy to face and overcome your deepest fears.

After that, we did know one thing - no matter how difficult the trail ahead of us might be, we weren't going back. There were some scary places, but finally we emerged from the "unimproved trail" section and enjoyed the easy hike back to Bear Lake and the park shuttle.