Miles 15.2
Camped at mm 441.9
It’s a Ghost River. Stoney said.
Yeah. I said. Because I still say that a lot to Stoney, which is why she still likes me.
But it was totally true. The water ran ghostly white with calcium deposits. We knew we couldn’t fill up our Katadyn BeFree water filter bags here. The deposits would clog our filters.
It was eerie. We took a hundred photos, hoping to capture it’s eerieness. An old log bent its way across to the other side, making a cool photo op.
But thirst finally won out and we moved on, hoping to get to a stream that came out clear from the mountain. One that we could filter from…
We traveled through hillsides, rich for once with actual live trees, unaffected by the bark beetle, and through wide meadows with short grasses, rimmed by mountains with unique and jagged skylines.
Flowers were still in abundance, though even now the corn lillies were starting to die off. The cold nights are taking affect on the landscape, turning the plants yellow and Fall-ish.
We had a long water carry, and Stoney put her water filter full and upside down in the back of her pack with the nozzle sticking out. As she walked, it gradually worked it’s way through a hole in the mesh until half of the entire full bag was sticking out through the bottom. I started giggling.
What? She asked, and started giggling too.
I started laughing.
WHAT? She asked, and kept giggling.
I had the Church Giggles at that point and finally said, Your Pack is Giving Birth. Water Is Life, After All.
I was laughing so hard, tears were streaming down my face.
Wait, wait, wait, I said. I took a photo and showed her.
She started laughing too.
We laughed our way along the trail for much longer than it was probably actually funny, reveling in how good it felt to belly laugh out loud.
It had been a long time since we felt so very, very good.