With my arms resting at shoulder height on the railing of the wooden bridge spanning Hellroaring Creek in the backcountry of Yellowstone National Park, I spoke aloud the phrase that had formed in my mind about an hour previous.
"Hell hath no roar like that of a backpacker's belly."
Our guide for this 4-day adventure, who stood to my right, turned toward me when he said, "Oh, that's good, Jill." A smile softened the face that earlier in the day had looked at me with some mix of dismay and annoyance. I had gently asked if we could chill out the pace a bit, which would give us time to look around more, take in the sage brush-covered mountainsides that around a bend would morph into a pine forest with a floor of basalt rock and shocks of the vibrant yellow blooms of balsam root. Almost as if he realized what he was about to say, but wanted to forge ahead anyway, he mumbled rather than fully enunciated something about thinking we were already going slow.
No doubt we were, for a sturdy, professional backpacker in his early 50s. The 5 of us hikers who came together to see the oldest National Park in the world on foot rather than from the window of a vehicle were all women, ranging in age from our early 40s to early 60s. We had trained to carry up to 35 pounds on our backs for the trek, but on Day 1, we were still getting our legs under us. We had traveled from Washington in the west and Vermont to the east, a day's journey for all, which had included hours and hours of sitting. Even getting to the trailhead that morning required 4 hours in a van traversing the lengths of Grand Teton National Park and Yellowstone National Park.
I carried the small satisfaction of his delighted response to my re-writing of a well-worn phrase about the underworld with me as we turned south once on the other side of the bridge and followed the creek to its confluence with the Yellowstone River, where several hours later we made camp for the night. Not once that I recall over the next 4 days did he lead again. He let one of us set the pace and fell in line usually as the last or second to last hiker. A tacit acknowledgment that we weren't there to slouch through the days, but we were there to revel in the wonder of Western Tanagers, lone bison grazing near our trail, and bones picked clean by predators then bleached and dried by the four seasons.
She figured out our most comfortable pace, knowing instinctively when to pause for a few moments' rest, and always stopping when she spied something worthy of further inspection.
It was 10 years ago that I first tried out a guided backpacking adventure, where so much of the planning is handled, before and during the trip, that all I have to do is walk and gaze at the stunning, quiet beauty extending in all directions for miles upon miles. It is a tremendous privilege to see sections of National Parks that 1% of the annual visitors ever lay eyes on. It is also much more than just walking and gazing.
Most humans alive today do not live out of doors for any significant number of hours, let alone days. I relished having no cell phone access, but only because I was with an expert hiker who carried a satellite phone in case of emergency. I relished not having to cook or clean up after meals, a privilege that comes with carefully saving up to afford this kind of trek. I loved lying in a warm sleeping bag listening to the river rush by, and I slept like complete crap. From hour to hour, my legs might feel satisfyingly strong or irritatingly weak, my back might ache, but just on the right side, my shoulders might begin to sag under the weight of gear, food, and water enough to live in the wild for multiple days.
This was not an easy trip for me physically. My body is another decade older and talked back to me every mile. Midway through Day 2, when rain came and went, but mostly came, and came hard, this body of mine said the thing that fueled my belly more than any packet of trail mix or bag of gummy bears or full-sized Snickers bar ever could.
You are doing a hard thing, you can do hard things, she whispered.
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