The Lake Where I Peed

Backpacking. Eagle Cap Wilderness. The Wallowa Mountains. They call this area the Alps of Oregon.

This is Glacier Lake.

This is me and Pilot at Glacier Lake.

These are my friends at Glacier Lake, minus one person and two large dogs that stayed back at base camp because pretty much nobody could walk after day two but we still had to hobble four miles to check this view off the list.

I peed in this lake while taking a dip in its frigid, glacier-fed waters. I had taken a copious amount of vitamin B supplements that morning to get me through the hike, and the urine billowed out around me in a neon cloud. I shrieked with delight. My friend could see it from the shore.

I didn't get a picture. Wish I had.

This is Frazier Lake.

Because of our aching bones and busted dogs we made base camp here for two nights rather than trying to log those extra miles and extra vistas. The pass we came over the day before was called Tenderfoot. Pilot was lucky his tender feet were small enough to fit in my pack so he could take the day hike.

And ride out the next day in the drizzle.

These photos are in no particular order.

I never know how to tell the stories from trips like these. We hiked, we sweated, we worried about the dogs. We looked longingly and lovingly out at the earth around us. We saw goats, real live mountain goats, my first time ever, but I didn't have my goat camera.

"Isn't it crazy," my friend says, sweeping her arms out dramatically, "that while we're off working, living our lives in the city, this place is... just... here?"

I want to say how much I think about it, this kind of here, away from work and the city, all the time. That I long for it the way most people long for love and companionship. Later around a fire that first night I share the deep question I often ask myself: that if all the things that I love to do in the city are only because they distract me from missing the place I would rather be, and if I would miss those things if I stayed out here, living a pure, day-to-day life with all of its challenges.

The words come out of my mouth and hang in the air. Nobody voices a response outside of a few contemplative hmms.

This is Aneroid Lake, where we camped the first night. A few days later some dude proposed to his girlfriend at this same camp site. She said yes. One of my friends found the post on instagram.

No dude has ever proposed to me. I hope to keep it that way.

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