09.06.08 Stevens, Sufjan "Chicago (adult contemporary version)".

Note: Due to some technical difficulties, m pictures were deleted in this section of the trip. It's ok, they weren't that great.

Road walk today from wolf creek pass through south fork towards creede. Oi. Pretty country, but man, I'm bored. Walking on the east side of the rio grande river on route 149 (probably the only place the rio grande is drinkable).

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Pretty good camping spot.

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Pine grove with almost fluffy needles, adjacent to the flowing and gurgling Rio Grande. Every few minutes a rainbow trout leaps out of and belly flops back into the water. This is almost as frequent as the semi trailer grinding up the hill on the freeway. The reverie is interrupted. Listening to the ipod a lot. Dancing while walking.

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The scenery is obviously much less wild than the first or second week. This unsettles me, sometimes I'm a little listless while walking. What am I doing? How am I not just wasting time? What does that even mean? There's no danger, no navigation, no GPS! But I clearly can't have a San Juan snow experience for the entire time. I'd go nuts.

Worthy, I continue to ask myself if this trip is 'worthy'. How do I judge this? How do I judge if anything is worthy? Its an odd sensation not to have benchmarks or standards or measures or scales. Eat, hike, sleep, eat more. Perhaps forcing myself to accept these facts makes this trip worthy.

Perhaps it is siply the act of putting myself in a position to have those experiences that makes this worthy. Eh, that's too zen and much too obvious for me.

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I am falling upside down. It is black except the dull grayness of the snow. An ice chute, I land but still the trail is spinning. There doesn't appear to be a path out of the ravine in which I've found myself. All I can see are the red lcd numbers of a wristwatch. Desperately, I reach through the brambling undergrowth and grab onto the clock. There is a moment when I am in two places: the forest and my tent.

Each night since my experience being lost, taking a few wrong turns in the snow, and having to bail out of the San Juans, I fall into vivid dreams about being lost, about falling into gnarled, complex valleys. I periodically open my eyes during these dreams and find my room or my tent has taken the shape of my nightmare. The bed is an ice chute, the window a wall of snow, my sleeping bag, a flowing river.

Will I continue to stay with the hikers I've found? There is still a latent terror of being alone. Of making my own decisions? Of deciding when and where to camp? Of being lost again. Why am I scared of this?

Theme # 2 for the trail = food makes everything better. I'll get up, after a nightmare, I'll get up, eat something, and everything will fade away. My two current favorite midnight snacks are Oatmeal Cream Pies and Pop-Tarts

Honorable Mentions:

-Flaming Lips, The. "The Sound of Failure" (he's decided to hear it out)

-Animal Collective, The. "Fireworks". (how's your mood / how's that song)