June 25: Big miles; big bear

We walked long and hard today, putting in 28 miles and stopping at nightfall. The days are so long now. Daylight has become less of a factor than just sheer stamina. Both Eliza and myself feel much better today -- more into the hiking, stronger, more aware of and sensitive to the mountains and rivers and trees around us.

The sun came out bright and bold after we lunched at around 1:00 atop Methow Pass. We took a long break there, laying out all of our gear to dry and putting ourselves down on our sleeping pads as well.

It had rained earlier on this morning, before we got up, for an hour or so. We have our fingers crossed every day now that we are up in Washington. The weather here is infamously unpredictable and can potentially be very nasty. I recall all too well Angela and Duffy's two weeks of misery passing through Washington's wettest.

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Lying under the sun today, I had sunglasses and my baseball cap pulled down low over my eyes. The grey ominous ceiling overhead had dispersed and the sky had assumed the Simpson-esque, endess cartoon cumulous patchwork I learned to love so much in Portland.

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I saw a black bear tonight while going to filter water, as Eliza was setting up our tent just a few hundred yards back. Its form was pitch black and sharply defined against the dim greyness of the dense sheltered forest floor. It must have been coming from the stream that I was headed towards, only 300 ft uphill from where I stood on the trail. Walking exhaustedly, by myself, with no pack, I noticed a crackling and the snap of branches breaking and, as my breath caught, looked up to see this good-sized adult bear gracefully, lazily traverse up the hillside. I watched for a minute or two until I couldn't see her anymore. I couldn't tell if she had just stopped moving and had faded into the shadows, or if she had ambled on, up and away from our camp.

Returning to the tent and Eliza, I thought twice, then decided I'd better tell her what I had seen. She was a little spooked, although no more than I, and as we still don't really know how to go about hanging a bear bag, we settled for bundling up all of our food related items and hanging them on a branch just eight feet from our tent. We figure, perhaps foolishly, that we'll be able to hear if any big night-stalkers come near and have a slim chance of frightening them away with our best low, non-aggressive, commanding tone voices. We'll see. I just hope that the damn thing keeps its distance and morning arrives uninterrupted.