The Working Muscle

Laying awake, e-scouting Colorado landscapes in anticipation for covering ground to find wildlife when I finally get to return home from work, reminds me of these sunrise hikes I was doing abundantly in 2022. The objective then was simply to bag peaks and enjoy the wilderness before other people would be on the trail. The fresh air. Solitude. Hard work. Breath. Smallness. Reward. And back to the city in time to still have something of an afternoon and evening. But the deeper my understanding becomes, the more I realize that those dark evenings on the trail were prime predator hours. And I remember each time I vividly had that feeling of being watched. The forest sounds. The creeping of something in the distance. But mostly, that hard, uneasy feeling, of being watched. It stays with me. I feel like the ignorance then was bliss, even though those moments were unnerving, the reality was more mysterious. I hike with the least amount possible. Headlamp. Water. Electrolytes. Some trail bites. Going forward I feel like I should be more prepared. But I’ve hiked several times alone in the darkness up drainages and thick timber in predator terrain and predator timing without a problem. But now I read these articles of people being attacked in broad daylight on exposed trails. Do I react and prepare based on this fear, though I never have before? Or do I just continue as normal with more awareness? Maybe a mixture of the two. In either case, there’s something about it all that pulls me back out there into the wilderness. The silence and solitude. The breath. The sweat. The work. The mystery. The reward. And maybe it is the risk, though I hadn’t really considered it as much as I am now.