Smoky Mountains

Mountain meadow wildflowers of early August have mostly turned to seed.  And something new and unwelcome has come to Wyoming.  

I had a plan for this trip—escape the pandemic and go to Wyoming where incidence was low, restrictions almost nil, and where clear air and wilderness awaited a pent-up hiker.  After six weeks of solo adventuring, I would come back to Pasadena when the pandemic would be mostly ended.  While gone, I would send inspiring blog posts, then return, and we would all have fun again.  And so it was for five weeks.   

Starting from a rabbit hole, in which a long rocky history of this place was explained to me by geologists, I emerged to the surface experience of seeing, feeling, and contemplating the Wind River Mountains. I am almost on my way home after millions of years.  I had thought it would be a beautiful, well planned, moment. But that’s all gone now.    

I can photoshop out some of the smoke,
but the left picture is real

My plan started well, but the result that followed was simply wretched—a  descending chain of events not planned for.  It isn’t easy to think of something comforting to say.  They call the eastern Tennessee mountain range “Smoky,” for the haze that usually envelopes it, but the Wind River Mountains, known for clear, dry, high elevation air, have changed.  It’s not our smoke (I speak to you Californians) that covers these mountains, it’s yours.  It must be hell there, judging from the amount of smoke the wind has brought all the way to Wyoming.  

Surprise sunrise on August 21

A normal sunrise in Pinedale, Wyoming

Before sunrise, a thick eerie orange cloud foreboded a sun that rose dark orange.  The day and the sun were so dark that at mid-morning I looked directly at the sun without fear of eye injury.  As it happened the pandemic in Pasadena was increasing.  

  

A Lake about half a mile away is clearly seen below me, but the lake below it is hazy with smoke.  

I hiked anyway—defiance maybe, optimism perhaps.  I even carried the heavy pack and camped at Glimpse Lake, where views would be mostly close, and disappointment reduced.  I am called a pessimist sometimes, one who backs out easily.  I would prove them wrong.   

To be the only human at a beautiful setting

my tent set up on a million-dollar lot

to own a lovely lake

a chipmunk came to visit

a woodpecker thumped a tree  

a thousand water striders

slid across the lake

on a film of surface tension

their shadows

on the shallow bottom   

dimples of their feet

in water surface

like Einstein rings

of gravitational lensing 

a leaf of grass explains  

Basement rocks come tumbling down

back to where they started

lifted high only for a time

they crack and break

and may eventually be buried 

Michael Angerman is making a map of nightly locations, as he has done for many of my trips.  Please see  Michael's Map