March 22 (7:30 – 16:30)
Dawson County Park – Lakeside View (25 mi)
Total C2C miles: 45.5
Weather: Freezing in morning, cold all day, cloudy – intermittent breeze
In the morning, it’s below freezing. The water in my water bottle? Solid ice. The leftover dolmas, falafels, and couscous I’d saved for breakfast? Frozen. I check the weather on my phone. 28 degrees? Below freezing, when the last frost date for this region is March 15. Record-setting cold temps.
I’m grateful I selected the quilt with three-season use that’s designed to go down to 25 degrees. I didn’t expect frost, even in the mountains, but at high altitudes, you never know, and the trail will take me over 10,000 feet in the Granite Falls range. I was snug last night, but I’m cold this morning, so I pack early, pick up a latte and breakfast wrap from the park vendor, and hit the trail with the early morning sun.
I can see my breath.
The trail wanders past the cutest barge on the river. It looks like someone could live there. I imagine myself living there. What if instead of walking the trail, I traveled the waterways? What if it was one of those barges that you propel with those long sticks? Then, I’d walk up and down the length of the boat, while the boat traveled leisurely down the river. My arms and shoulders would get sore, pushing the big pole.
As I walk the trail, I try to figure out the math. Would I be walking more, poling along on the boat, for I’m walking up and down the length of the boat, or am I walking farther along the path, since the boat would be moving faster?
I think this is calculus.
I can’t really figure it out, but I get this nice sensation of moving along, the speed of the boat carrying my own steps more quickly, and this makes the trail travel faster for about an hour, until I notice that, even though I’m walking, I’m cold.
It is so cold.
I check the weather on my phone. It’s down to 25 now. The forecast predicts a high of 32, with temperatures tonight reaching the teens.
I wasn’t prepared for this.
A fountain in a park I pass is frozen.
The cherry trees are blooming, and I wonder if all the blossoms will freeze and fall off tonight.
The sun can’t really penetrate the clouds.
I just walk.
For a long time, I don’t think. I just walk. When I’m hungry, and I get hungry often, since it’s so cold, I munch on nori, which has like zero calories and a lot of salt, so my tongue starts to feel thick.
The water in my water bottle is still frozen.
At the parks I pass, the public drinking faucets have been turned off. Too cold.
The strawberries I bought are frozen. I put them in my mouth and let them thaw, swallowing the ice water as it melts.
The trail runs through another town, and I stop at a cafe in mid-morning. I drink three glasses of warm water, a coffee, and eat another breakfast wrap. I resist the urge to buy lunch, for it will just freeze in my pack on the trail.
Ice has formed along the edges of the waterway, in the shaded areas.
What will I do tonight? I’d planned to hike all the way to Lakeside Park and camp there. But I’m not sure I want to spend the night in my tent. My quilt can handle 25 degrees, but if it gets down to the teens, will I even be OK?
What makes it even this cold? It never gets this cold down here.
It’s the jet stream, all messed up. The polar regions warm, the temperature differential between the poles and the rest of the globe goes flat, and the jet stream gets wonky, and the cold seeps down here, while the polar caps melt.
I wonder if this summer will bring the Blue Ocean Event. When the polar caps melt, the sea level will rise a few meters. All the land I’m walking today is below sea level.
If the levees don’t hold, this whole region will be under water.
When my dad walked the C2C trail, he felt the continuity of it. “One thing lasts,” he always told me, “the land. The river may change course, the rain may erode the cliffs, but even if the course is different, we still have the land.” He meant the whole ecosystem. My dad relied on the patterns of seasons, knowing that the last frost came in early March, the cicadas sang in June, the crickets in September. My dad counted on all these patterns outlasting him, as if it didn’t matter if he weren’t here for the rest of my life, because the patterns would be. The rhythms of the land would go on, and in them, I wouldn’t feel alone, because all my dad taught me about the land and nature would continue in them.
Only that wasn’t happening. It wasn’t that my dad didn’t know about climate chaos, because he’d known about it since before I was born and was always talking with us about reducing emissions and our carbon footprint. I guess it was just that he was an optimist, and he felt that we’d make changes quickly enough.
After all, he’d made changes in how he lived, and how our family lived. He died before the jet streams got screwed up. He died when he still had hope.
As I approach Lakeside Park, my lips, my nose, the tips of my ears, my fingers, and my toes feel frozen.
I don’t think I can camp tonight.
There’s a motel in Lakeside View, near the park and not far from the trail, and I check in there. It’s only 4:30, but I can’t walk anymore when I’m this cold. I’m worried I’ll get sick if I do, and then I’d be laid up for a week or more, and my schedule would be messed up. I need to get through the desert before the heat sets in, for if it’s weirdly cold now, it could be brutally hot then, for that’s what climate chaos means.
I take a long bath. All my food, except the nori, is ruined when it thaws. I get a pizza then return to my room and watch Greta Thunberg videos on my phone. “We showed that we are united and that we, young people, are unstoppable,” she says, and I feel a little better.
I take out the deck of cards I bought yesterday, with the mice on the back and the adorable Jack of Clubs, and I play solitaire until I can’t keep my eyes open any longer.
As I lay in the lumpy motel bed, under the scratchy blankets, I imagine the water rising, slowly covering the trail I walked today. The red and green barge floats over the flooded meadows. The mice on my deck of cards live in the barge, and Jack Clubs mans the pole, walking with his little mice feet up and down the length of the barge, while the barge floats on.
“You walk farther,” he says to me, in his mouse voice, “for I am carried by the current.”
And I fall asleep.
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