[Day 12] Crux of Fall

I found myself burrowed this morning, knees about folded to my chest. Supposedly, last night wasn’t warm. My watch gave the forecast for the day — high of 40°F, low of 25°F.

The crux of Fall — it’s the inflection point where the season now favors the side of winter instead of summer. Here’s a mountain metaphor for dwellers of the northern hemisphere. Seasonally, I’ve climbed the clean south-facing side of the mountain, the temperature dropping as I go up in elevation (summer transition to fall). And, now, the descent leads into the shadowed glacier of the north face (fall transition to winter). I guess it’s not much of a metaphor if you are explicit about it. The daylight hours taper. The cold holds through the day. The hourly breeze yanks the remaining leaves from their skeletons.

The smokey scent of yesterdays campfire masked the putrid foot odor of my socks and shoes. Last night, I removed my footwear to find the heel of my sock blood-stained with fleshy skin deposits. My OCD mother took it upon herself to scrub the roughness off my feet after the CDT. Now, I find myself with two odd heel blisters from hard-formed, 30-miles-a-day legs brutalizing baby-skinned feet. While it’s still flat, I’m downgrading mileage the next couple days to let blisters harden and to calm my springless, inflamed ankles.

After supergluing callous pads to the scabs on my achilles, I started into the crisp forests. Forests, even sparse forests like these, are quite impressively good at heat retention. At dusk, a forest feels noticeable warmer than a nearby meadow. In the morning, meadows will be considerably more dewy and often frosty. However, this means that forests have an inverse behavior in the daytime, retaining coolness of the night during the day. Today, the forests did not hit the high temperature until about 2:30pm. I do enjoy the coolness, except the 20mph winds give the shivers, especially when on break. Every bikepacker I’ve crossed doesn’t have a square inch of skin exposed. And, then there I am, wearing a Nike loincloth, being a freak on the Colorado Plateau.

I can’t say much happened today. I took a break at Foot in a Tree Tank (didn’t see any feet in trees though) for lunch and enjoyed the skies for a while. I walked slowly a bunch until it was dark. Then, I collected water from a Elk Tank, which was fairly silty with a bunch of swimmers and floaters, so I pre-filtered with a bandana. Then, I walked through more recent prescribed burn area in the dark to Blue Ridge Campground where I pitched my tent, ate dinner, and called it a day.

Signing off,

Zeppelin

“Freak on a Leash”