We passed several small parking areas on this road. I finally stopped at one of them as I figured I was close to the mountain trail I wanted to take. There were two other cars parked here and nobody was around.
“Take your time,” she said.
“I shouldn’t be longer than two hours. I didn’t bring any water with me.”
She tried to hand me a half full plastic water bottle she was using.
“No, thanks,” I said. “It’s okay. I drank a ton of water at the hotel.”
And I was telling the truth. When we were at the Mammoth Springs Hotel, I consumed enough water to float the building. So I was ready. It was a good time of day, and it wasn’t too hot here or anything. With that said, I took off on my trek.
It has been said that there is no purity in this world. Art, in all its forms, attempts to create purity, and math finds it but only in the idea of it, not in the tangible way. I can think of the number three, the idea of three, but I cannot touch it, nor is there ever a perfectly straight line in reality or a perfect contrast that can be experienced. Art is only a symbol of purity, just as math is. The other pursuits of men, from business to sports, never come close to finding purity. Fairness, such as in sports, is a nebulous concept. No one really knows what it is. And profit in the wider sense can never be measured or explained or made. So it is that men cannot create true purity.
But nature uninterrupted is pure. When I am alone in nature and I leave it untouched, I exist in a state of purity. Or at least I like to think so. I am present, and therefore what I am experiencing is just snow with a speck of dirt, not pure snow.
So there I was, trying not to disturb my natural surroundings, and yet every once in a while I would clap my hands, in order to scare off any bears that may be lurking about. I was preoccupied by that one fear, and my hike suffered because of it. Oh, I got out of breath and I walked plenty, but I was not one with nature, as I should have been. My mind was elsewhere even though my eyes saw only trees and rocks and landscapes.
It was my first time hiking up this steep mountainside, and I was not keeping track of the time. Because of the novelty of the situation and of my preoccupation with possible bears, time passed in a vacuum, and I was now hungry, thirsty, and weary. I turned around and headed down. The day was almost over.