Missives to Moose

Her force can be heard before it is seen. A feeling washes over my body, reducing it to flesh and bone. My mortality is felt in each step. One, two, don’t look down, three, four, heart pounding in my chest, five, six, I take a moment to ground myself. She doesn’t care how strong, how cunning you are. A thunderous roar echoes off the narrow walls carved deep into the gorge. Sparks and flashes of water transformed to mist fly through the sky. A place few choose to venture, a hundred or so feet below, a waterfall cascades into a perfect clear blue pool of water. A tumultuous current swirls, in stark contrast to the still, ancient cliffs, fungi covered trees and bearded moss hanging off the ferns. A deep breath to fill my chest, oh the feeling of being alive! 

By: Will A common question Katie and I get when discussing backpacking is "what will you eat?" This question is posed in a more strained voice when we discuss the idea of a long trail. In this case, we're hiking for two months. While I've spent plenty of time backpacking before, I've only ever been out for 4-8 day hitches. So this 2-month idea made me nervous, as well. That was until Katie reminded me that we would pass through towns every 3-8 days and never carry more food than we needed for those stretches. This is also how I reassure concerned friends and family.  With that said, there's a careful calculus to meal planning that soon becomes second nature for backpackers. Perhaps it's less like calculus and more like algebra. I'll try to lay out the considerations before I get in to what we've been eating lately. 1.   Weight, esp. water weight: First and foremost, backpackers want to reduce the weight of their bags. The pressure to shop light gro...