This past summer, my partner and I hiked the Colorado Trail, a 'thru-hiking' trail that is about 450 miles or so, but we ended up hiking extra side routes during the walk that addeaed on to our journey.
It was hard, but also one of the most amazing experiences of my life. Before the pandemic, I was traveling all over teaching and podcasting, and this past year, instead, we decided to get out into the woods and be on foot. The land was more like out of 'Lord of the Rings' and we were Frodo and Samwise.. looking for the ring... and hoping for hamburgers in the next resupply pit-stop.
We've been doing a lot of 'wild-tending' work this past year, so we actually carried pounds of native first food seeds to replant in existing wild gardens. If you didn't know, humans have been tending gardens for thousands of years, and it doesn't always look like gardens in straight lines or obvious cultivars. Many of the patches of Biscuitroots, Mariposa Lilies, and Wild onions were stands from previously tended gardens that were dug and tended year after year. It's easy to look over and dissolve this idea that native peoples tended plants in this way, but the reality is that there is no way they didn't.
We envisioned a participatory walk, not just about the sport of going fast across mountain ranges.
We did do some long days, but not as long as others. In the U.S. thru-hiking is a popular sport, especially in the West. It is seen more like a sport, often you see people going right through and not stopping to look at anything.
We ID'd plants the whole way and noted a whole catalog according to the ecologies we moved through.
Waking up and making coffee early before starting to walk is probably one of my favorite activities.. this is me before waking up fully. It's pretty dry in Colorado, so we often slept with our tent cover off so we could see the stars.
Often the trail looked like this, open and treeless, above 10,000 feet and chewing on Coca leaf powder to deal with the altitude. You'd be surprised how many edible and medicinal plants you can find in the alpine where Spring only lasts a couple weeks, and summer a couple weeks, and then Fall is already upon the land.
One of our campsites where we took a rest day. Much needed, and out there without cell or internet service. We even tried fishing when we could. We filtered our water, cooked on a rocket stove and with propane canisters. Technically there was a fire ban so the rocket stove was a maybe ok or not.
My partner Gabe overlooking one of the passes we went over on the trail. We had so many days with epic views.
We cooked up wild foods when we could! These are wild onions we gathered and made miso soup with. We also had cured deer meat we had made the year before we cut small pieces of into every meal.
I'm missing this journey right now. We will be doing another walk in April on the Appalachain Trail for a month. We GPS pointed every spot we planted wild foods, and also took note of exceptional camp sites. We hope to do the walk again in a couple years and check on our plantings.