An ill-fitting down jacket sparked it. I had a blue down jacket and after denying it for a year or two I admitted the arms were too short. In the 1970’s I had made a down jacket from a kit and knew it wouldn’t be hard to add a section and make the arms longer. I am sure I had some ripstop in my inventory and I could get the down from a pair of down booties I had stuffed somewhere that I hadn’t touched in a decade.
As I extracted the booties from the boxes of stuff I hadn’t touched for years I pulled out my red sleeping bag and laid it on the carpet. A flood of memories filled the room. Everything from camping with my dad in Sequoia to backpacking with my children in Washington and California to praying for warmth on Denali.
Evo with Duncan at Charlotte Lake, 1979
I successfully modified the down jacket and put the sleeping bag back. The seed, however, was no longer dormant.
When my rhythm issue caused me to wonder if my cycling days might be over, my bigger fear was that I would not be able to backpack again. At this point it had been ten years since I had been on a backpacking trip. I took note and realized I needed to course correct.
Tim and Evo on Forester Pass 2002
That summer Tim and I returned to the John Muir Trail to finish what we started in 2002. We did not complete the trail in 2017, but we did do another section and there is still a final chunk waiting for us.
Tim wading across the inlet to Lake Virginia, 2017
Our plan is to complete the trail this August. So much has changed from the seventies when I started backpacking in the Sierras. The gear is much, much better and I am an old man that is, let’s be honest, much, much slower.
Note the required old man hat......
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