A.J. Auger

_{A nonfiction personal essay:}

“You’re fist fucking me,” I said, so exhausted that I was on the verge of vomiting.

“No,” the other hiker winced. He had hiking poles, a very serious hiker’s flannel, and seemed to only be few years older than me, “I have it on my phone right here. We were behind you the whole time. This is the route.”

“There is absolutely no goddamn way that wasn’t at least six miles.”

“It was five.” The man was getting irritated, so he and his woodsey girlfriend and hardy, off-leash dog trotted past us down the trail and disappeared around the bend.

I was on this death march of a hike because it was my last opportunity to  complete a real Rocky Mountain hike before I moved to South Korea to teach English. My cousin Lizzie was proud and excited for me of course, but was also gunning to squeeze in these last great Colorado adventures together before I went. 

Like with a lot of what my cousin and I did, it was never just the thing. We couldn’t just go to the nearby hiking trails. It wouldn’t be worth it to go to a practice mountain that Lizzie could see from her house. It had to be four hours into the mountains, include an overnight trip, a stop at one of the only nude hot springs in the state, and the view from the top could do nothing less than take our breath right out of our goddamn lungs. 

“It’s easy, a good trail for my knees,” she had pitched to me, “15 miles, but Janet almost made it up. We’ll make it. We’ll have dinner after. A couple of hours and we’ll be done.” She was wrong. The hike was about 11 miles but took us nearly eight hours to complete; it was the worst thing possible for a person who is constantly saying that her knees were about to explode; and Janet, her mother, did not almost make it up—she almost made it up to the halfway mark, the Fish Creek Falls part of the Fish Creek Falls / Long Lake hike. Long Lake, where Lizzie had actually been dreaming of going, was another five miles past the falls and involved a couple hard scrambles and a glacier. I did not believe that it was only five miles but I was informed by a couple in far better shape than me on the way down that, yes, it was only five miles not 10, like it felt. 

It should have been clearer to me from the beginning that I was not in the right kind of shape for this hike, but I was, reasonably, anxious about leaving my whole life behind to live and teach in South Korea. I was already leaving behind my friends, my family (Lizzie belonged to both categories), but what else would I be missing out on? Lizzie encouraged me to quell that anxiety by checking items off of my Colorado bucket list, and the biggest was hiking a 14’er. I never had, despite growing up amidst Colorado’s religious fervor around hiking.

Coloradans are steadfast worshippers of ‘the hike’ who dutifully make their pilgrimage through the great trails of the Rocky Mountains every weekend, and at the right time of day (before the sun so that you can get back below treeline before noon to avoid electrocution from afternoon showers), and with all the right accoutrement (crampons, camel backs, health food, bug spray, extra layers of clothing—pretty much everything we didn’t have on our hike). 

I was more of a fair weather practitioner. Any of my friends texting me to ask if I’d be up for a hike over the weekend would get an immediate yes, but just 10 minutes after undertaking the trail I’d be wheezing, looking back toward the car longingly, wondering when I’d see it again, and trying to remember when exactly it was that I last went on a hike.

I wouldn’t call it “shame” that I felt for my athletic ability, but I was always keenly aware that it wasn’t good. Lizzie was the same, though for different reasons. She is a very small person—short, thin and barely any muscle on her, as well as the joints (particularly the knees) of a 40 year old by the age of 26. We both ought to have trained better for an audacious hike, but we were running out of time, and this might already have been the last time we would do something together before I left. 

And besides, I had to justify the armor of personality that I was beginning to build for myself, the personality of a smug Coloradan who took the stairs up a subway two of a time and never got winded because they were so used to hiking at altitude (that has never, and will never be true). If I couldn’t even hike a 14’er, then who would I be? What kind of person was I taking into a whole new society? What did I get out of my time in Colorado, to which I might not return?

So up to the mountains we went, with myself, Lizzie, and her friend Sam, who was also leaving Colorado soon. This hike actually started off quite strong with us making it up to the falls with few problems. We shared the reddish dirt trails with children and the elderly, stepping off to the side appropriately for the more in-shape people to pass us, and quickly depleting what little water and food we had. We started saying silly little things to each other like “we’re making such great progress” and “what a good pace we’re on” and “we must not be too far from the lake now.” We thought for a moment about turning back, but asked a hardy 40’s-something mountain woman at the falls about the lake. She smiled and said, “It’s just right around the corner.” 

We turned that corner and found a wall. It had to be the trail, it was marked so. We started climbing, real hands-and-knees hard scrambling. Sam was the most capable, and led the pack. He got up one set of rocks and boulders and turned to offer us a hand up. We got to the top, sat and ate our last snack. What a beautiful view! But I don’t see the lake. We’re here for the lake. So we pushed on.

We got up and started off through the trees, which turned into the most beautiful meadow we had ever seen. It was so green, and so bright, I could have sworn it glowed. It was blessedly flat, and we thought the hard part was over. We stopped again, killed the water, and admired the thick flowing stream that sent the lake water down our recently conquered cliff to the falls. Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it amazing? But was it enough? No, let’s keep going.

The trail crossed the stream, the bank of which was more of a sprawling marsh. Crossing it got us wet and caked our shoes with a fat lip of mud around the sides. “I didn’t know it was going to be like this,” Sam said, “I should have worn boots.” And where there was mud there were also bugs and mosquitos. “Shit,” Lizzie said, “we should have brought bug spray.” I had to pee. After getting bit in a sensitive place, I was fully done with the mud and bugs. The trail finally brought us back into the trees, our heavenly meadow was behind us, but now, a glacier. “Fuck this,” I said, “I’m going in the snow.” 

“Good for you!” Sam approved of my adventurous spirit, though he opted to stay in the mud and help Lizzie navigate. Not long after I’d scrambled up the mound of ice and snow, grateful to wipe off my feet, the sheet caved in and I fell to my waist into the glacier. “Bah!” they heard me yelp. Sam had to leave Lizzie atop the safety of a tree root and scramble over to help me. I couldn’t see over the mount of white, but I heard another, “Bah!” as he sunk down to his own knees. 

Bugs, snow, mud, cliffs, and finally, us three musketeers made up the final hill to meet Long Lake, in all its glory. A perfect darkened reflection of the cloudless blue sky, it was calm, peaceful, and the epitome of our idea of unspoiled nature. It took the air right out of my goddamn lungs. “This is amazing,” I said, exhausted.

“Yeah,” Lizzie and Sam started and nodded. We stared a little longer, took some pictures. We stared and nodded. “Welp,” Sam looked at the time, “I guess we gotta head back down now.”

“Was it worth it?” I asked him and Lizzie.

“No.” He smiled, and nodded, and let Lizzie use him as a walking stick. I laughed, and didn’t even look over my shoulder as we ran back down the mountain. Free from our hiking hopes, we thought of nothing but McDonalds the whole way down. I found myself walking floppily, almost bowlegged, and thought, I’m actually not in control of my descent right now. I really could break both my legs.

At some point, not long after we were told off about our inadequacy by the other hikers, Sam asked us to go ahead. “No man left behind, brother,” I said, slowing for him.

“No, no, you go.”

“Sam, what’s wrong?”

“I don’t know if you want to know.” He looked at us funny. We stared and waited. “Well, my body doesn’t know what to do with my blood.”

Lizzie and I looked at each other, “What do you mean?”

“Well…” he put his hands on his hips, “I have a halfie.”

“A what?” Lizzie spat, starting to laugh.

“Like a half boner.” We broke down laughing.

Around 4 pm we saw the car and ran to it as fast as we could. Sam opened the door and even though all the hot air was still rushing out we flopped in a wept with joy. Sam started unlacing his boots and said, “Here comes the cream,” and made guttural noises as he took off his shoes.

Tired beyond belief, hungry, thirsty, feeling nearly regretful of our choices, we sought food, shelter, and headed home. 

Sam, the true hero of this story, dropped us off at Lizzie’s car after volunteering to drive all the way back down the mountains. Lizzie drove me the rest of the way home. “Next time,” She was telling me, “We’ll be better prepared.”

“Of course,” I nodded.

“We’ll bring more snacks. No, sandwiches. No, no, a whole picnic, blanket and everything.”

“Oh yeah, that sounds nice.”

“I’ll get on the treadmill, and up the incline a little every day to train for the next one.” I could see the wheels turning in her head, plans breaking off into fractals, structuring a whole life around this one (of many) goals.

“Oh that’s a great idea, great strategy.” 

“And next time we will do a real 14er, and start much earlier in the day.”

“Well, you gotta, right? Because of the lightning,”

“Totally, because of the lightning.” 

I smiled, knowing we were going to do none of those things, but pleased because they were hindrances anyway. Plans, goals, hopes and dreams, just unnecessary hurdles to the real hardscrabble. Lizzie and I were just two crazed women trying to soak it all in.

 We came, we saw, we conquered, if only barely.