[Elspode]

I don't know exactly when the storm subsided. Somehow, all five of us, hunkered down in our marginal shelters, had managed to sleep through the event. I awoke feeling amazingly horny, almost as if something inside me felt the need to procreate before an even more terrifying event befell us. Sadly, my wife refused me (even though Dan had awakened earlier and vacated our tent) on the grounds that some literature we had read before leaving cited bears being attracted to human sexual activity. Of course, we could have seen a bear coming at us for hundreds of feet around (in fact, the imagined attacking bruin would have had to have been quite a swimmer to have approached from most directions), but I let the subject drop.

One of the great things about riding out a storm on a rocky area is that there are no mud puddles to make the morning difficult. All the water had run directly into the lake behind us, and so the morning was freshly washed and sparkling, providing one of those rare tent emergences where you take a single breath and feel more alive and aware than you ever thought possible. We packed up and then set up for a timer photo or two. We lined up five abreast at the crest of the bowl, with the mountains and sky providing a boundless backdrop. The resulting pictures are amongst my most cherished posessions (or rather, they were. My ex has them all), testament to having ventured and risked something real and tangible. These photos are proof that once, I took everything I needed on my back and struck out to be *in* the world, rather than on it. I will never forget the experience as long as I live.

It had taken us three days to get to the top of the mountain. Even without the stopover to dry out on the first day, it would have taken us two. We made the hike back down to the cars in eight hours, and none of us even drained the single one-liter water bottle we each carried. Everything we had seen before, every place we had rested and taken time to absorb went whizzing by, almost as if being played in fast forward. The weather was perfect, the going was easy, and we were nigh on ready to get back to warm showers, soft beds and fast food.

Driving the 70 miles of gravel road back into Boise from Atlanta, we were curiously quiet. Aside from the occasional comment on this mountain, or that mine shaft cut into the stone wall alonside the river, we didn't have much to say. I think we were all absorbing what we'd seen and done, processing just how fragile and insignificant we humans truly are when faced with the uncaring and mighty forces of Nature.

I kept up hiking on a fairly regular basis here in Missouri for several years after that, but as the 90's dawned and my life began to unravel, I stopped, got fat, and have never again been anywhere with my bare needs for survival strapped to my back. I still camp, lugging along my popup complete with TV and PS2, stereo, cell phone, three burner stove, electric fans and lighting, soft comfy bunks, room for my guitar, for our myriad lanterns and lawn chairs and dining pavillion and sun shade...and on and on.

It is wonderful - but it is not profoundly amazing, not in the way that that week in Idaho was. Still, each moment in the out of doors is precious, and it is what forms me, grounds me and fills me with the energies I need to face the rest of the workaday world.

No disaster has yet been too big to put me off of being in the world in some way. I pray that none ever will.