It's Rather Loud Out Here

I have spent a lot of time outside. So has my husband, and on his off time, he often hikes to scout for elk and deer. One day we were both off, so we went to check out an area he hadn't been to but thought had potential.

The trailhead was deserted, which was a good sign, and while the first part of the trail was uphill and oddly humid, the plants were in full summer bloom, making it enjoyable.

About a mile in, we came to fields of ripe berries. While we were trying to actually get to an objective (a hillside from which my husband wanted to look for elk), we became mired in eating thimbleberries and picking raspberries.

After we passed the berry patches, we crossed a creek and immediately smelled that big animal smell. We were downwind, so they knew we were coming, and finally, still going uphill, we turned a corner and there was a herd of cows, branded, tagged, and skittish. They squared off to us, screamed, and eventually crashed away.

By this point, the humidity had coalesced into heavy purple clouds. We stepped from the trees in to an open meadow, and I did my best to bury my fear of lighting. I come from a long line of people who get struck. My husband argues lightning doesn't work like that. I argue that we have no proof it doesn't not work like that either. After all, I have a lot of lightning scared uncles.

We continued to tromp uphill, the clouds all around us getting darker and heavier and scarier. Finally we came to a flattish, treeless area. We could hear marmots calling, and I stopped. We were well above the trees, and about five miles in. My husband admitted to get where he wanted to go, we had another mile and a half or so.

We had the discussion. The weather. The practicality of scouting for elk seven miles from a trailhead. The fact that we hadn't seen lighting yet, but I knew it was coming.

"I think it'll be really rewarding when we hike through the bad weather and see the elk after it clears," my husband said. "It always stops raining, but we will have to be in the open for the next several miles."

Then it started to rain. Then hail. Then the sky opened up, and rolling waves of thunder detonated the air.

I was done. With only a few tears and a new mantra of Hardly anyone gets struck by lighting I was hiking back over the steppe and toward the trees. I was not going to see the elk from whatever hill my husband had wanted to reach.

My husband though, as usual, wasn't worried. He strolled behind me, stopping at one point to check out a currant bush. He started picking the currants.

"These aren't ripe yet," he noted.

I had stopped with him, thinking he was doing something important, and when I realized he was just living his best life while I was not living mine, I left him and continued walking.

I could have run through the open area, but I didn't. I walked with intention, with alacrity, with purpose. Thunder made rolling gurgles and percussive explosions above us. My hands were freezing, my hat brim kept the water from streaming into my eyes, and then a high bugle split the air.

I turned. My husband stood behind me, grinned wildly.

"You have to treat these as musical instruments," he said, the elk call evident in his mouth. "Because that's what they are. Do I sound like an elk?"

He let out another attempted bugle. I went back to walking. The thunder continued, my husband kept bugling, and finally, blessedly finally, we made it to the trees.

But the stupid cows were there, in a line, squared off to us across the trail. When they saw us, the started to moo, and by moo, I mean SCREAM moo at us. We yelled, my husband bugled, he clicked his hiking poles at them, the thunder continued, and then finally, one of the cows turned, and that was enough. They all stampeded backwards, sending up a great puff of dust, despite the downpour.

"They are rather loud," my husband said, while we watched the running cows flatten a mass of young aspens.

"I think everything out here but me is rather loud."

He squinted at me and went back to bugling.

The cows, it seemed, had only four working neurons between the fifty of them, and they proceeded to run in front of us on the trail, like their tails were on fire. They could have just moved out of our way, but instead they put themselves in the constant position to be followed by us, for miles. They ripped up the trail and splattered shit everywhere, and I realized just how uphill the first five miles had been. I found myself skating in mud and cow shit down the trail, my husband finally, mercifully done with bugling.

About an hour after we turned around, it was still raining. I was hungry, and we stopped to eat. I pulled out my lunch burrito and began to eat. I thought about eating my peanut M & M's but decided to save them for a treat at the end.

"It's really coming down," my husband remarked. "I've not gotten stuck in this rainy of a day this summer... Are you going to eat that?"

I declined to say that turning around had been the right decision. Instead I said, "If I don't eat it all by the car, you can have it when I'm done," and wrapped the last part back up.

He rolled his eyes at me.

"Well, we are about to get real wet," he said. "The rest of this trail is overgrown, and all those plants are going to touch us as we walk."

Which is exactly what happened. It was like walking in a jungle. I had no idea if it were still raining, or everything was just so wet, water was everywhere. Eventually, we made it back to the berry patches. We ate until the berries were behind us.

"Let's glass this last hill," my husband said, berries now a thing of the past.

I knew we were about a mile from the trail, and we still had some daylight, so we set up the tripods and binos.

"It's better if you sit," my husband informed me.

Except I was soaking wet, and I would be cold in an instant if I sat down. So I stood, dancing from foot to foot, trying to find elk on a hillside across the valley, but I was cold and unfocused, and couldn't remember how to focus the spotting scope. Finally I stripped off my soaking upper layers and put on a fleece and a down jacket, and my husband said, "Are you cold?"

He had found several elk and a deer, and was happily sitting on the ground.

"Yes," I told him.

"I'm not cold. I think it's because I'm so excited to see elk. It's a mind over matter thing."

I refrained from suggesting that it might be a body type and surface area to mass ratio thing, and in that absence of a response, he suggested it was time to go, which I agreed with. He might not have realized how cold I was, but he did sense enough danger to know, it was time to leave.

On the way down, the overgrown trail soaked my pants so much that water wicked down my wool socks and I became intently aware of the underside of my ankle bones. With each step I took, the standing water inside my boots swelled up and tickled the underside of my ankles. It wasn't unpleasant, but it was weird.

When we finally got back to the truck, I sat on the tailgate and took off my boots. I tipped them upside down and watched muddy water stream out.

"Look!" I told my husband.

"I know what water looks like," he said.

I wiggled out of my soaking wet pants.

"I don't have any other pants," I told my husband.

"Can you wear mine?"

He handed me some work pants he'd been wearing earlier. I put them on. They weren't the worst fitting pants I'd ever worn.

"Those seem to fit you!"

"Wonderful," I said, digging into my pack.

I wanted my M & M's. I had saved them, and if I didn't deserve them now, I never would. My hand touched something slimy. With horror, I saw the rain had soaked through the pack and into the pocket with the M & M's. The yellow package had disintegrated, as had all the candy shells. My bag was just filled with sticky lumps of goo. I let out a strangled cry.

My husband came to investigate and, laughing, he dumped out the bag. The chocolates were ruined, but the remaining nub of my burrito was not, at least to his standards. My husband happily ate the burrito's soggy remains while chucking the melted M & M's into the trash pile.

For a moment I considered letting the ruination of my chocolate treat overwhelm me, then I thought about the thunder, the cows, and my husband all vying to be the loudest thing in the mountains, and I found myself giggling in my warm soft pants instead.