Return to Cody

After two months of listening to the summer sun bake sand to glass, I step into the early morning air of Thermopolis and smell the gentle slight perfume, the coming autumn caught in the north wind. It is time. By mid-week I will again be yoked to cart and shoulder my pack in Cody, feeling my legs grin toward new miles, new towns, and adventures ....and the 30 miles until Montana. Montana. This will be the last northern state that I will walk across before I ascend Washington's northern coast in winter. From Montana I will spill across Idaho's farm country, gravitate south through more desert to southern Oregon and northern California, then my eyes, legs, and heart will rise in the cold of snow as I straddle ocean and shore to Washington's coastal peak.
The fear I held for the grizzly has been replaced with wider eyes, and ears that reach out to decipher every sound, sounds I don't know I hear. Free range fire eats roads and forests in my direction, then there are wolves, bears, crazies, snakes, drunks, lions, the need of water and the hope for a camp I will survive nightly; I set it all down and prepare to walk away without looking back at my gutted pile of worry. There is only room to carry what I now own. What I own is that I have come this far. It is enough to carry with the feelings that come with so many good-byes.