Our First Solo Backpacking Excursion

Returning to the ranch and the West in the winter of, what was it, 2003, and the beginning of 2004 was like a rebirth, or maybe even better yet a plain old birth. Growing up on the ranch I'd never appreciated it and had always preferred to escape into a book, traveling, pretty much anywhere, but after living years in the East the ranch and the West became, and has remained, for me a magical landscape. We were basically just fresh city kids returned to the ranch (in my case) and introduced to the ranch (in Coco's case), refugees from Tidewater Virginia life and ready to explore.

As Edward Abbey says:

East . . . if you can live in the East you can live anywhere. But if you can live anywhere, . . . why live in the East?”

Which brings me to the spring of 2004, with nothing too pressing going on, I loaded up my backpack and left the ranch, destination pretty much wherever. I had been backpacking before (it was Coco's first time), but this was the first time that I would ever go by myself.

There is, to me, something intense about backpacking alone, aside from the obvious additional risks. It allows for the direct and unmediated experience of a place. Like a turtle, carrying one's home on his or her back.

Ditty's Country and the Jackson Mountains in the distance.

We started out midmorning in a nice spring sunny day. I set out across the hills and low rocky ridges to the west of the ranch that we call Ditty's Country. Across it, I came to a water hole and thought I would stop and purify water (which is an oddity, since I spent most of my childhood drinking straight from every spring and creek on this mountain). As I bent over to drop my water purifier in the water, my camera fell out of my pocket and into the water. Not a very auspicious beginning to my trip! I considered turning back, but in the end decided not to and started climbing the steep massif of New York Peak. Why New York Peak? I have no idea, although I did once, when I was about eleven or twelve, convince an English girl visiting that it was named that because New York City was on the other side of the peak (or maybe she just humored me). As I neared the top, I started coming across these strange iron sculptures that someone had put in several rocks. They were quite the mystery. 

Our desintation: New York Peak in the Pine Forest Range

Coco is a natural at this backpacking thing!

Indian paintbrushes as I cross Ditty's Country

Last pic before I dropped my camera in the water, but at least I still had the notebook.

It was still fairly early when I reached the peak of New York Peak, and so I decided to continue onward, dropping back down the peak along a creek called Sagehen. It was getting fairly late when we made it down to the bottom of Sagehen, where they is an old homestead where we set up camp under old Lombardy poplars. Set up my tent, made and ate dinner. Coco walked down the road a little bit with her hair up barking, so as it just got dark we climbed into the tent, wrote for a little while, and went to sleep.

It lives!

When I woke up I tried my camera, and . . . it worked! The lens wouldn't open right, but it was working.

Coco relaxing in the morning.

Our campsite

Getting odd.

Leaving the campsite.

Coco, now an experienced backpacker!

Self-portrait, with New York Peak in the background, now a more experienced backpacker as well.

We had near a large mountain pasture we call the Seeding, and we walked across it leisurely, then dropped back to Leonard Creek and followed it back to the ranch.