Backpacking by nature is a strenuous endeavor. Taking a trip where all you need to eat, drink, and sleep is strapped to your back is not exactly the easiest form of leisure. You are at the mercy of the weather, and often have to trudge the mud, snow, or swollen streams. Wind, rain, cold, and heat can affect how your trip turns out.
I can recall sitting through four hours of lightning and thunder that kept rolling off the mountain above me.
I have woken up to ten degree mornings the wind blowing, when even my cold-hardy border collies were willing to lean against me next to the fire.
Backpackers must possess a certain restlessness of spirit. They are the kind of people not entirely happy with the comfort and artificial light and busy found in cities. They have a heart that yearns for the blessed quiet and darkness of wilderness nights.
It doesn't take very long for a trail to blur the memories of life in the city. You are drawn more to the present - the hard climb, the wild rose and blue asters, and crimson paintbrush, the deep green of the subalpine fir and spruce.
There is satisfaction and renewal in finding you possess the physical and mental toughness to handle yourself in any kind of mountain weather. I can't imagine better vacations than going backpacking.
I tend to remember every detail of my backpack trips, even though I often can't recall what I did the a week before this one when somebody asks. Perhaps that is because I have accomplished something worthwhile, climbing up there and staying for a few days. It may be that up there I experience the heights of my existence, literally and figuratively. That's the way it feels anyway.
And up there, when I expect it least, the light over the mountain changes, and I witness a moment of sudden and mysterious beauty, that I am pretty certain I will never forget.
