Hello Stranger by Maddy

To be totally honest, I was dreading it all week. On Saturday, I’d finished a 6-day trek on the La Cloche Silhouette Trail in Canada, followed by a ten-hour drive home. On Sunday and Monday I cleaned my gear and rested. Tuesday and Wednesday was a mix of work and catching up with friends and by Thursday it was time to pack again for another backpacking trip and I didn’t want to go.

Coming home feels like a crash landing. I’d left the house messy, the disarray our lives slip into as the summer wears on splayed across the dining room. A sleeping pad hangs on the drying rack. Andy is repairing gear on the dining room table. There’s a duffle of my paddling gear outside the laundry room, unmoved from where I left it two weeks ago. I shouldn’t have been surprised to return to it messy still.

On the first night I fall asleep to the sound of thunder. Rain lashes at the side of my tent and I am lingering in some in-between space — listening and gauging the sounds of severe weather but not fully awake either. Just a year ago, with the same friend who is sleeping in a separate tent next to me, I weathered the worst storm I’ve ever experienced in the backcountry with lightning so frequent the sky was a strobe, trees moaning so loudly I was sure they would crack in pieces over our heads.

It’s summer, and I’ll have been Out Of Office for about two weeks by the time you read this. This is the first time I’ve set an out of office response on my email and blocked off my calendar for a huge chunk of time… ever. If you’ve been reading along for the last six months, you may be aware that I’ve really struggled with work-life balance as a freelancer.

When I first started blogging I was in college and I had two main fears. The first fear was that no one would want to read what I’d written. The second fear was that people would read what I’d written and I’d have to endure the humiliating ordeal of being observed. My blog existed in a few iterations. The very first version of my blog was the website I built in college. I wrote a handful of disjointed blog posts there, with a readership of a couple of classmates and a few strangers on the internet.

In the Pacific Northwest a large coffee is the size of a Redwood, and I watch from my booth seat in a chain coffee shop as people funnel in and out. I am drinking a large coffee and a scone for lunch. On the way to the coffee shop I inched my car forward approaching a left turn, then braked as someone turned right into the lane. They flipped me off. I gave a frustrated confused shrug, because how am I supposed to anticipate their needs in advance.

Last night I drove north along on the peninsula. To my left, Lake Superior was an eerie blue mirror glimmering in late afternoon sun. To my right, birch trees dripped with fresh rain and the last of the thick purple lupine flowers stood stark against the green and dark sky of a just-past storm. I drove past three separate mothers with spotted fawns, eagles perched above the lake. Why is it, do you think, that the bluest the waters ever looked comes after a storm? It must be something in the light.

We climb a wall along a popular walking path perched over the St. Croix River. As the women in the group go up, mothers with knee-high girls stop, crouch over and point up. “Do you see her up there? That could be you some day. Would you do that?” the mothers ask. “Yeah!”the girls say enthusiastic, or if shy they shake their heads and grab their mother’s hands to pull them away and keep walking. This is my third year hosting a women’s rock climbing event in Interstate State Park with Climb Forged.

Summer is backpacking season on paper, but in practice when the snow melts in the mountains and the bugs begin to die off in late July marks the start of true backpacking season for me. So with that in mind, let’s get ready for the start of long hiking to sleep in the dirt season! This post contains affiliate links. That means if you choose to make a purchase, I make a small kickback at no additional cost to you. Also, you may recognize this post from last year. Wild week, please enjoy a re-run.

Way up north the lupine are blooming, big purple flowers flashing in and out of existence along the sides of the winding roads of Northern Wisconsin. In a coffee shop in Duluth I order a drink that’s a mix of lemonade and coffee, two things I like on paper, and gag on it, because some things are not meant to go together. Andy and I walk through Canal Park on a busy afternoon as a storm breaks above our heads. We hike the bare rock peaks of the Superior Hiking Trail.