Dispatch 4: Into the wild
Dispatch 4: Into the wild
We traded Utah’s reds and oranges for Colorado’s blues and greens, setting out on a long hike to reach a series of glittering emerald lakes on our first full day in the Centennial State. It was a clear day but the wind was howling and the entire canopy was shaking. There were trees down along the trail with roots showing signs of fresh falls. I came to a rushing creek and met a young guy with a fishing rod sticking out of his pack. He was helping an older couple make the crossing, and mentioned that he’d heard some trees falling in the distance. We hiked together and listened for signs of danger.
He began telling me his story. Hieu (pronounced Hugh), like me, was a month into a road trip around the country. Unlike me, though, Hieu was only nineteen, on summer break from his sophomore year at Amarillo College in Texas where he studies engineering and works thirty hours per week packing boxes at the local Walmart. He’d been saving money all year to afford this trip, and was sleeping in his car to avoid any additional expenses.
As he was getting into his story, we heard a crack, looked up, and saw a tree falling towards the trail. I heard myself shout Run!, and Hieu, Dorothy and I all ran as the tree crashed down behind us. When the dust and the branches and the leaves settled, Hieu climbed up from the hillside where he’d slipped down in his escape, and we decided we’d stick together for the remainder of the hike.
Hieu went on. He was born in Xóm Biển, a poor fishing village in Southeast Vietnam. His mother left when he was a baby so he was raised by his father and grandparents, all fishermen. When we caught fish, we ate, when we didn’t, we went hungry, he told me. At thirteen, he and his father moved with his stepmom to join her family in Amarillo where they’d landed as refugees after the war. He didn’t speak a word of English and was bullied mercilessly for it, but four years later he was accepted into Amarillo College on a scholarship to study engineering.
Hieu was new to making friends in this country, but he’d made a few at college, and was now determined to make them all along his travels. By all accounts (mine, his), he was succeeding, though there was also an undercurrent of casual racism – a customs agent making a show of mispronouncing his name before saying, Or however the hell you say it; a state trooper searching his car for the crime of going 42 in a 35. For the most part, though, he’d met good people all along the way.
It didn’t take long for Dorothy to accept Hieu into our pack – she was circling the two of us along the trail and stopping to wait anytime we became separated. We reached the lakes after a final steep climb and spent some time fishing and playing with Dorothy in the open meadow. On the hike back we witnessed another falling tree, and I could not seem to stop Hieu from feeding Dorothy his entire bag of beef jerky. We said our goodbyes in the parking lot, and I told him he’s got a couch to sleep on when he makes it to New York.
The next day, as promised, Danny — my new friend from Utah — picked me up in his Kenworth T900, a massive dump truck, and we drove to the hot plant where it took all of fifteen seconds for 24 tons of asphalt to be dropped into the truck’s belly. We hauled assphalt (gosh I’m sorry) down a long mountain road while listening to Danny’s Keep On Truckin’ playlist (…I was a highwayman // Along the coach roads I did ride…) and then I hopped out so he could begin the real work of laying it down. He called me back to the cabin before driving off. Just keep bumpin’ around the asteroid belt, he said, and everything else will fall into place.
I drove on to Denver to spend a few days with my sister, Emma, and her husband, Jake. Emma had just entered her third trimester but was no worse for the wear, so we went to a Rockies game where she watched Jake and me chug as many $2 beers as we could before the first pitch. My forthcoming trip into Montana’s wilderness had been washed out by the Yellowstone River flooding, so we picked up a few decadent pastries and they helped me find a new backpacking route in the Bridger-Teton National Forest. This journey into the backwoods, as I viewed it, was the climax of my trip.
I drove to Pinedale, Wyoming, the foothills of the Wind River Mountain Range – or The Winds, as it's called there – a small town where you choose between the Corral Bar and the Cowboy Bar, Spirits and Reds. The plan was to spend one day in town prepping for the woods, but stormy weather in the mountains kept me there longer than expected. I went to the Cowboy Shop — a Pinedale institution — where local legend Bob Bing fitted me for a hat and taught me how to flip it across my wrist. You’re a cowboy now, he told me, smirking, just make sure you’re ready when you head into the wild. It’s no joke in there. I met a botanist named Pete who’d worked for a Big Oil company refilling their drill holes with vegetation until he was laid off in the past year. Your role is no longer needed, he’d been told, so he’d gone back to hunting moose and elk to feed his family. He’d lost two kids to heroin, so it was just him and his wife now, and one kill could last them a whole season. I met a local fishing guide named Gabe who took me out on Meadow Lake where we caught more Arctic graylings than I could count. He told me a story about being stalked by a grizzly in The Winds. The bear followed him for two hours and charged him twice, without his bear spray he’d have been toast. You’re going into the wild, he reminded me. Grizzlies, black bears, mountain lions, wolves – this is their home, not yours.
I made a final stop at the Pinedale Ranger Station to review the details of my route. The plan was to follow the Continental Divide Trail from the Green River Lakes to Summit Lake and back, a 36 mile round trip route (assuming you stay on trail) that I hoped to complete in three days. The rangers told me they’d sent somebody out there the week before who’d made it fourteen out of the eighteen miles before turning back because of deep snow. They also mentioned reports of higher bear activity than normal. I asked if it was safe to go and they told me that ‘safe’ was a subjective word. You’re going into the wild, they reminded me, and, phew, it was about time somebody did!
I drove out to the trailhead in Cora, Wyoming and camped by Lower Green River Lake. The temperature dropped to twenty degrees overnight and when I woke up my gear was covered in frost. I packed up camp, and shortly after dawn we hit the trail. The view during the first few miles was breathtaking —the Green River Lakes are surrounded by yellow banks and lush green forest, and the rocky, snow-covered Wind River Mountains, Squaretop Mountain in particular, dominate the horizon. After mile five or six you lose the day hikers and enter pure natural solitude.
There are three key precautions to take when backpacking in bear country. The first is to continuously make noise – the most dangerous bear is a startled bear, so it’s critical to let them know you’re coming from as far away as possible. Dorothy wore a bear bell on her collar (called a ‘dinner bell’ by a well-wisher at the trailhead), and I sang Pancho and Lefty over and over and over again. The second is to keep your food at least one hundred yards from your campsite and to store it in odor-proof bear canisters or to hang it from trees – I did both. And lastly – assuming that, like me, you have no firearms training – carry bear spray. The spray is said to be 90% effective at stopping a charging bear assuming there is no wind and you’re able to get it out in time, two fairly significant caveats. So I kept a can of bear spray on my belt and a second one in the water bottle pocket of my pack.
We hiked for twelve miles on the first day and then set up camp in a wide open meadow with the Green River running through it. By six o’clock I’d already eaten dinner, fed Dorothy, eaten a box of Raisinets, changed out of my hiking/cooking clothes, eaten a bag of Sour Patch Kids, pulleyed the food and waste and dirty clothes into a tree, and lay down in the grass to rest. I was completely exhausted and beat up – my pack was about fifty pounds on the first day – so I probably could have fallen asleep right then and there if not for the fact that it was literally the longest day of the year, and the sun was still high in the sky. We had at least three and a half hours before I felt we could head into the tent and have a realistic shot at falling asleep. I wrote in my journal, read my book (Lonesome Dove), built a fire, wrote some more, read some more, took some photos, collected more wood for the fire, walked along the river, spied on a herd of elk, sang more Townes Van Zandt, whittled a stick, whittled a spear, and finally, at close to ten o’clock, the sun went down and the fire went out and we got ready for bed.
Dorothy was fast asleep on the grass outside the tent. I finished prepping for what would be another cold night, and then, suddenly, Dorothy rose from her slumber, walked towards the dark line of trees west of us, and began to bark and growl. I looked over, and in the glow of my headlamp, a pair of eyes lit up. I immediately knew what it was. The eyes were too high off the ground for it to be a raccoon or a pika or some other small critter, and an elk or really any ungulate would have run at Dorothy’s first bark. The bear, which I’d been thinking and hearing about for nearly two months, had finally arrived — I willed this beast into existence, I thought.
The bear was maybe 75 feet away. I pulled out my bear spray and switched off the safety, waved my arms, and began to shout. Hey bear! Hey bear! Don’t come over here! Lots of great woods out there, buddy, head some other way! But the bear didn’t seem to mind my passive aggressiveness. Its eyes swayed and Dorothy’s barks turned more aggressive and it was clear that the bear was walking towards us. I switched tunes and tried to bully the bear back into the woods. You fucking idiot! Don’t do it you big idiot! We don’t want you here! Go away dumbass! I was holding out hope that it was a black bear, but soon it was close enough that I made out the unmistakable shoulder hump in its shadowy outline. The bear stopped about forty feet from us, well within my headlamp’s range. I could see it clearly — it was an absolutely beautiful animal — and it appeared to be taking inventory of our camp. Dorothy positioned herself between the bear and me and continued growling and barking and snarling, making sounds I’d never heard from her before. The bear hardly paid us any mind, so I began threatening it. Don’t fuck with me! One more step and I’ll spray you! I’m from Brooklyn motherfucker! Yes, I’m afraid I really said this.
The bear was not behaving aggressively – it was behaving curiously, but a curious bear can quickly turn aggressive if it finds reason to, and it was very clearly evaluating whether or not a meal was worth the fight. It stayed about forty feet away but moved its head around to get a better look, at one point even standing up on its hind legs. I held out the can of bear spray and was ready to pull the trigger if it charged, but it never did — after about ninety seconds the bear turned around and walked off. I watched it disappear into the dark, but its eyes continued to light up from time to time, so it seemed the bear wasn’t through checking us out. I stayed outside for another hour waiting for it to come back. I thought I might stay up all night waiting, but I was falling asleep on my feet.
If adrenaline kept my fear at bay during the encounter, that all changed in the tent. Somehow I fell asleep, but I woke up at 3am because Dorothy was standing with her head against the tent wall, growling. There was something moving around outside. I crawled towards the middle of the tent and held the bear spray in one hand and my knife in the other, though I’d read enough stories of bears dragging people out of their tents to know that neither would do me much good. I felt completely defenseless. I shouted all sorts of ungodly things, and debated trying to get outside so we’d have a fighting chance. I remember thinking — If it came back, that means it’s made up its mind. It was very, very scary — in fact I’ve never felt anything like it.
But whatever animal was outside soon left, and Dorothy went back to sleep. At some point, so did I — I guess I knew that Dorothy would warn me if it came back around again. I cannot explain how good it felt to wake up a few hours later and see daylight. It was another frosty morning, but the sun was shining, and instant coffee and a cinnamon raisin bagel awaited me.
We were hiking again by seven a.m. The climb started right away – we had 4,000 feet to gain in four miles – and before long we’d passed a mile of switchbacks and then hit a straightway that went right across the river. We left the trail and walked up and down the bank looking for decent stepping stones, but there was nothing, so finally I picked the calmest spot I could find, crossed over, and then lured Dorothy across. We came out on the other side cold and wet. I checked the map and this appeared to be the only crossing, but the snow soon forced us off trail and back into the rushing water many times.
Shortly after the first crossing we came to a snow patch. Dorothy bounded into it, exactly as she does on snowy days back home, and then looked ahead and ran to the next one. Snow patches soon turned into fields of deep snow which we avoided for as long as possible by bushwhacking through the more heavily forested areas. By mile sixteen there was no avoiding the snow, that’s all there was, so we began trekking right through it. But this proved nearly impossible. Soon I was sinking into waist deep snow with every step. Dorothy was having slightly better luck staying on the surface but often hit soft spots and sank down to her belly. It took about fifteen minutes to traverse 100 feet of snow to a small dry area. I knew we couldn’t make it the final 3-4 miles this way, so I decided to ditch my pack. I took the essentials out – map, compass, water filter, snacks, warm clothes, GPS – and put them into Dorothy’s pack. I hung a red shirt on a tree so I’d be able to spot it from a distance, and then Dorothy and I went forward, down about forty pounds of gear.
The hike was much easier without my pack, but it was still completely exhausting, the most challenging and intense outdoor experience of my life. Dorothy led the way – I followed in her footsteps when she found solid ground, and tried my luck on a different route when she’d sink into the snow. At one point I took a bad step on a steep pitch and slid about 30 feet downhill before stopping myself just short of the river. There were times when I stepped into snow up to my stomach and thought I might be stuck. By the last mile we were essentially burrowing our way through. And then the ground suddenly hardened, and Summit Lake, frozen solid, came into view. We basically ran the final hundred yards and then, seven hours after we’d started hiking that morning, collapsed at the shore. I hugged Dorothy and cried very real tears of joy. It was one of the great accomplishments of my life.
The way back was slightly more manageable since we were able to follow our footsteps. There was one point, though, when I nearly lost it. We’d been walking back for about two miles when I looked at Dorothy and, to my terror, saw that she’d lost her pack. I dropped to my knees and screamed. There was no possible way to go forward without the essentials that she’d been carrying. Dorothy must have understood what was going on, because once she got over her shock at my tantrum, she put her head down in shame and led me straight to the pack, about ten minutes back towards the summit. My fury towards Dorothy receded when I realized that on steep downhills the pack was sliding over her face and then right off of her. So I strapped her pack around my shoulder, and we continued on. We retrieved my pack, trekked back to where we’d camped the previous night, and then hiked for an additional three miles before setting up camp twelve hours after we’d broken the previous one down. It was a sixteen mile day.
That evening, Dorothy started growling again. I think I laughed, and then I looked in the direction she was facing and this time I saw a cow moose about 100 feet from us. Dorothy settled and we made dinner and watched the moose graze peacefully in the meadow as the sun went down, and then finally the sky was dark and we went to sleep. The next morning my socks and boots were frozen solid. I had a dry pair of socks, but I had to make a fire to thaw the boots in order to put them on. We hiked out of the woods without incident, and Dorothy fell asleep in the trailhead parking lot while I packed the car. We’d covered 40 miles in three days.
I saw a Park Ranger back in Pinedale and told her about my experience with the bear. She shook her head, and told me that the day before that had happened to me, a grizzly bear tore through somebody’s campsite, ripped their tent to shreds, and got a ‘food reward.’ Luckily the campers only arrived to see the aftermath. We’ve got a problem bear on our hands, she told me, I’m sure it was the same one. She looked down at Dorothy and said, Who knows, that dog may have saved your life.
I had no plan after Wyoming, so I went into the local outdoor shop and asked for a recommendation which led me to the No Return Wilderness in Salmon, Idaho (yes, it’s really called that). We camped by the river and I cooked two steaks — one for me, and one for my very, very good dog. The next day we took a natural shower at the Goldbug Hot Springs, and then continued on into Montana. I spent a night in Missoula where I drank beer, ate a cheeseburger, and talked to a grad student in orthotics & prosthetics about how to fit amputees with new limbs.
A local Uber driver offered that he could tell me the problem with New York if I was interested in hearing it. Sure, I said, tell me the problem with New York. He turned around. It’s the salt, he said. The salt? I asked. Yes, the salt. You’ve got to mix the salt with sand before you use it as ice melt. Okay, I said. So why don’t we do that? We stopped at a light and he turned around again. Your city government is in bed with the salt industry, he told me, bunch of crooks. I laughed. Of course they are, I said. He went on. The salt erodes the roads and sidewalks. Know what happens when the roads and sidewalks start to erode? The whole city erodes. The fabric of society erodes. He pulled up to my destination. You’ve got no society without good roads, he said, and then he thanked me for riding. How do you know all this? I asked. I used to live in New York, he said. Couldn’t stand the roads, so I left and came here. I thanked him for the ride, and he handed me a business card before driving off. The card said Manager, Public Road Maintenance, Montana Department of Transportation.
After Missoula, it was time to begin the final trek back East – I was due in Chicago to see my family in just a few days. But I decided to take the scenic route, and make one final unplanned stop in Augusta, Montana. That turned into one of the most fascinating weekends of my entire life, but more on that later.
Addendum (7/22/22): Here is an article from yesterday about a fatal grizzly bear encounter in Montana that was strikingly similar to my experience, minus the outcome: Woman who scared off a grizzly bear on a Montana camping trip was killed when it returned later and attacked her in her sleep, investigation finds.
Another steak for Dorothy tonight.