With a capital S.
Back in the days of our mid to late teens we could make tracks with the best we had seen or heard of. We could roll out of bed at first light, wash, dress, make and eat breakfast, wash dishes, pack up camp, and by the time the sun rose, the only thing remaining in our night’s camp was a faint bit of dust that had been gripped by the playful fledgling day’s air currents and not quite settled yet.
Yep, trail or no we could blow across 13-15 miles of up mountain and down; over boulders and snowfield, across rivers and streams. And all before noon was very far gone. Twelve-thirty usually found us with camp set up and out on some lake swimming just after we had chewed the last of our homemade beef jerky. Thick, crusty, and delicious as it was, it mostly got wolfed so that we could get in the water sooner.
The soles of our feet were callused and toughened to the point that we could nearly go without boots. Heck, in town we would regularly walk blocks and blocks barefoot just to make sure our calluses stayed thick and resilient for our next trip. We trimmed out nails hard to make sure they didn’t hang up on some imperfection in our boots. Boots were rubbed and folded, and stretched and wrinkled nights around the campfire until they were as supple as our skin. And most nights around the campfire the smell of paraffin completed with pine and smoke as Snow Seal was buttered on thick and melted into the leather until it could absorb no more.
Our calves were so thick that the tops of them could get sunburnt during the noon hour, and the bottom of the muscle never saw the sun. We swam in lakes that had glacial ice floating in them, and jumped off of granite cliffs into water that while crystal clear, the bottom was too far down to see, and certainly too far down to reach.
We added fresh fish to our meals, and fresh roots and berries to our dinners. We cooked over more fires than stoves, and regularly handmade granite ovens to bake cake 25 miles from the nearest car.
We were trim, and muscled, strong and quick, and the tougher it was, the more we liked it.
A small group of us, usually Barry, Jeff, and I and along with any Moxon’s and maybe Chris Bystroff would break away from the rest of the troop and follow a different path. Every night during dinner we would sit around and plot alternate routes that would get us to the same night stop as the officially agreed to route. These side trips started one year when the map indicated that there was a crashed bomber from WWII high on a ridge across the valley from the trail the adults had plotted.
We broke off from the group as soon as we stepped into the valley, dropped down through the trees to cross the raging rock-strewn San Juaquin River high up in the John Meir Wilderness area and started an angling climb up towards where that plane wreck was supposed to be. One of the adults saw us and yelled for us to come back, but we just pretended we couldn’t hear them and kept up a pace that we knew was fast enough that no one would even try to chase us down.
We reached the plane, crawled in and around what was left, imagined ourselves (or at least I did) a gunner, or pilot, or navigator on that fated last flight. Blistered paint was pealed, and ailerons were flexed up and down, and we stayed long enough to eat lunch in the shade of the one remaining attached wing.
Oh sure, we caught hell for it when we rolled into camp about the same time as the rest of the troop that afternoon; but the price proved small and the experience remained huge. That was the first of many unofficial side trips we took. We took some to sled on glaciers in our cut-off jeans and bare chests in the July or August sunshine; we took others to stand atop some peak that all other backpackers just stared up at while walking past; and still others to take a shorter (though often more arduous) route to the coming night’s camp.
The adults didn’t let up the pressure on us to conform to the planned route, and they threw up halfhearted impediments to keep us from breaking away, but in all truth, I think they wished they could go along with us, because they never triggered the nuclear option of suspending us from backpack trips, or even splitting us up. One time they took a good shot at it mind you, but it wasn’t good enough.
That morning as we were getting ready to tear out of camp, Leroy Greene called us over to where the adults were making breakfast to inform us that they had made changes to the days plan and that we were not to leave until they finished up. After cooling our jets what seemed like forever, the troop was finally all ready to hit the trail.
Our group which normally left first, was told that we would have to hike in the middle of the troop.
This way the adults had some slower boys and adults in front of us, and some slower boys and some adults behind us. We were fairly, neatly trapped. Or so they thought.
Now one of the problems of hiking in a group of slower hikes is that most often, part of their speed issue is that they take too many and too long of “breaks”. On this occasion, the first break was called after only 30 minutes on the trail, and that gave us the chance we needed. During the break, we broke out the maps and scouted the terrain and vegetation based on the topo map. We immediately saw our chance to break out of the group about 1 mile ahead. We made simple quick plans.
So, when the break was over and everyone was back on the trail, we immediately began our plan. As the group in front of us moved down the trail, we slowed up just a little bit so that they were walking away from us, creating a gap in front of us without an adult in the gap to keep tabs on us. Now the adults in the front group didn’t think a thing about it, we were after-all behind them.
And the Adults in the group behind us couldn’t see that there was a gap growing up front, and so felt secure because we were in front of them.
At a preselected location on the trail, we boys kicked it into high gear.
We blew away from the back group in a cloud of trail dust, and sped towards the group in front. Just on entering a long meadow with several twists and turns, we stepped off to the right side of the trial and cleared our way into the far side trees long before the trailing group came to the same point on the trail.
Now I can’t tell you what it was that we did that day, it may have been sledding, it may have been a bit of stream fishing, it may have been nothing at all. What was important to us at the time, was that we were free, on our own, and the unquestioned champion backpackers.
© 2018, Marty Vandermolen, All Rights Reserved
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