Day Seven, Pointy Fanged Carnivores

Wasn't back on the road until noon or so. I was hoping my laundry might dry. It didn't. So I turned uphill, sore and under rested, carrying a bag of wet clothes, a gallon and a half of water and enough food for three days, which brings my bag to well over forty pounds. Poop.

I did not get far before I was met by a new friend from Carnation, up the road on his motorbike. He brought me a banana and some banana bread and an apple, of all earthly things. We sat under a tree and had a picnic and sparked up a philosophical discussion of the sort you may have enjoyed in college.

It left me dazed if not downright confused with dry mouth and a case of the munchies. Too tired to walk more than a few hundred yards at a time, I drank up all my water and ate up all my food. I am still miles from the next town. Oops. Live and learn.

I didn't really find my pace until eight o'clock or so, by which time it was getting dark. I still hadn't made it to the summit but I did get to meet my first bear. He was a littlish bear as bears go; he could not eat me in one sitting. But he was a bear and he looked at me from not more than forty feet away. I of course looked away like it says to do on the bear safety posters they've got plastered all up and down this highway. I didn't want to provoke him. He seemed like a very nice bear.

I left him eating his blackberries or bamboo shoots or eucalyptus or whatever and continued slowly up the hill. I had to put in another couple of miles, looking over my shoulder to make sure he wasn't following me like a puppy, then set up my tent in the woods. There is snow all around me. Dirty, rather tired looking snow, but snow nevertheless.

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