On our first day back from Denver I scouted trails for us to go up and over Pikes Peak, but I could not find a practical route that would land us near Cripple Creek. We would either be doubling back or landing on the wrong side of the mountain. Our gracious host Dick Bratton drove us to the top of Pikes Peak for the day, but my goal of climbing a 14,000 footer in Colorado would remain unrealized for now.
Cindy had her own unrealized hiking goal. We met while preparing with a group to hike the Appalachian Trail in 1980. Her desire to hike long distances predated our relationship, but since that time my outdoor adventure objectives also became hers, even if she had to do them independently of me.
This was true for the Long Trail, which I hiked twice as part of an interdisciplinary course I helped to organize, called Frost’s New England, and once more with a nonprofit I founded for family disadvantaged teenagers. Cindy was not on any of those hikes, though she provided support for the nonprofit journey. She instead hiked the Long Trail with her friend and college roommate.
On our wall hangs my Triple Crown plaque, awarded after I became the third person to achieve the Triple Crown of long distance trails when I hiked the CDT in 1985. Cindy became the first woman to thru-hike the CDT on the same journey, but I hiked the PCT before we met and that remains missing from her resume. The plaque on the wall served as a constant reminder of her own unfinished goal. Had Cindy not been afflicted with dementia she undoubtedly would have hiked the PCT someday, with me or without me.
Cindy’s unfinished goal gave me one nagging doubt about our journey. Should I have chosen the PCT for us to hike instead? I chose the ADT for three reasons: as the longest trail in the country we would have the most time to reboot our lives; all the towns along the way facilitated my public mission regarding kindness and community; less wilderness meant a safer journey if Cindy became challenged. The fact that Cindy handled the wilderness portion of the ADT well led to further doubt about my choice on which trail to hike.
Leaving Great Mountain Falls we became the first ADT hikers to walk the excellent new trail that Dick built, accompanied by one of the builders. As usual, a guest hiker (or were we the guests on a new trail tour) provided for conversation, and I learned that Mike served in the military, proclaimed to be a Buddhist and retired as a physicist. He also declared that as part of his Buddhist faith he could not harm a flea, yet he holstered a gun. I have no problem with hunters, sports shooters, former military or police officers carrying a gun, but a man who could not harm a flea carrying a gun for protection?
I could not help but point out the irony in that, which led to a series of increasingly bizarre hypotheticals as a reason I should carry a gun as well. I made clear I would consider myself cowardly, given the probabilities, to carry a gun for protection from hypothetical dangers. That led to his eventual hypothetical that a mad man could be standing behind the next tree and rush out to viciously attack Cindy before I could do anything (on a trail for which we were the first official hikers). Through this hypothetical reasoning Mike asserted that carrying a gun for my wife’s protection was the morally right thing to do.
I bring this up now because of what I have learned about brain health since then, as well as what has been happening to our society. Hypotheticals and other logical fallacies are used to sway beliefs by engaging emotions such as anger and worry. Living your life according to logical fallacies, instead of probabilities, fills your brain with metabolic toxins, but that is not the concern of the “news” outlet, interest group or social media influencer seeking to sway you. The more enraged or worried you become from believing a trusted source, the more likely that trusted source is using alarming logical fallacies and undermining your brain health. Fortunately, I never became worried about a man jumping out from behind a tree on a brand new hiking trail to harm Cindy.
Ky slack packed us from Green Mountain Falls to Cripple Creek, where she left us with our backpacking gear at a campground in town. She needed to head down out of the mountains right away before an impending blizzard arrived. Before she left, none other than John Nicholas pulled up to greet us. John had been the source of my biggest regret during the journey, when our Leadville host left for work too early for us to thank him or say goodbye. In the interim since we first met him, John was transferred to a mining operation near Cripple Creek. He seemed as genuinely enthused to see us again as I was to be able to thank him and bring some closure. Yet one more serendipitous moment!
We set up our tent at the campground just as snow started to fall. One other tent already was set up near us, but otherwise mainly campers and trailers resided at the campground, which was much like a KOA. The snow fell heavily throughout the night, causing me to occasionally get out of my sleeping bag to dig us out of the snow covering the tent. The next morning the snowstorm still raged and the tent next to ours had collapsed.
Cindy always sleeps soundly, while I am a light sleeper. If Cindy snored I woke up; if I snored I woke myself up. Neither of us snoring ever seemed to wake Cindy up, but as I dug us out of snow throughout the night while Cindy continued to sleep, never moving a muscle or showing any sign that she knew a blizzard was going on, I could not help but wonder …. Maybe Cindy was just smarter than me.
As the snow continued into the morning we took the day off. Since Cripple Creek hosted casinos, our rest day allowed us to partake in two 49 cent breakfasts, and we only had to pay for one. When the owner of Bronco Billy’s found out what we were doing he comped us breakfast on the second morning, before we packed up and headed down out of the mountains. I tried to give our waitress a tip but she refused to take it.
While hanging out at the campground office we listened to a guitarist who resided in the campground and listened to his tale of woe. Cheap breakfasts may have been available in Cripple Creek, but where the establishments of the mining town once supported local musicians, Cripple Creek the casino destination featured DJs or out-of-town acts. Cripple Creek was starting to resemble other resort towns such as Moab with plentiful but meager income opportunities, growing wealth disparity and elevated housing costs.
Our route down out of the mountains was on Shelf Road, a road not meant for your average vehicle. As we headed down we recapped our journey in reverse, hiking first among mountains, then canyons, then arriving at desert twelve miles later for lunch. We snacked on our trail mix sitting next to cacti and reflecting on how we broke camp that morning in the snow. We did not quite meet my scheduling objective of getting over the Rockies before a blizzard hit us, but we came close enough.
Once we reached Canon City, Ky resumed slack packing us from there to Pueblo, while her friends Don and Lauren Craven provided us a base camp in West Pueblo. Lauren arranged for me to speak at her church discussion group, the first time I talked about kindness and community for that venue. This became a foreshadowing of our journey ahead, across the neverending but ultimately rewarding plains.
