The Next Six Feet and Anji’s Shoes

Miles 14.1

Camped at mm 159.4

We woke up at 5 and pretty quickly found ourselves in the Holy Cross Wilderness. It was beautiful, but the going was hard. We saw some tracks in the mud that coud’ve been a moose or an elk or something but we don’t know what moose feet look like so it could’ve been a 20 foot tall deer for all I know.Then we found some giant turd pellets and they could’ve been from moose or elk but we didn’t know that either so we put it on the list of things to look up in town…what does moose poop look like? Because then we found some poop that looked like horse poop but smaller and we couldn’t figure out what in the world was happening out here.

We scampered along steep hillsides and straight up hillsides. I mean Straight Up. Like, at a ridiculous angle. Anji got mad at the trail architects and a lot of the time it just looked like an old streambed.

I spent most of the day looking at my feet so I didn’t trip over this baby-head rock or that one, or this root or that one, or get my foot stuck in a random hole.The route was so straight up that I coudn’t bear to lift my head and see what lay in store for me. Even for a second. Even while catching my breath. So I climbed along, baseball cap on so I could only see the next six feet in front of me. The Next Six Feet, and Anji’s Shoes.

I ate a lot of poofy dust but I didn’t care. Watching her feet move along gave me the motivation to continue.

It took us 14 hours to make that 14 miles today. Every one of them hard earned.

We are worthy.