Monday, March 19, 2018

My heros

Everyone has a hero or two. I found two of mine along the White Rim Trail at the Gooseberry campgrounds last week.

Andrew & Kevin
Why are these two my heroes? They're two college students from the Univ of N. Dakota. Kevin studies PoliSci and Andrew is a C.S. major. They were on their spring break from Fargo ND and decided to go for a hike. Hmmm ...

I can see them thinking, "Let's go someplace we know little about that's 1200 miles away and go camping. Nah, that's too easy, let's throw in a 60 mile hike to make it interesting. That's it !! What could go wrong?"

So they did.

We met them on our White Rim Trail bicycle trip. (More on that next post) We had cleverly brought our food, tents, and sleeping bags but had neglected to bring matches for the stove. My stove has a self lighter but we brought Diane's which is old school and requires fire to make fire. We were looking at 3 days of cold beans and oatmeal. This is know as The Bad Plan.

There was nobody around except two people we could see about 100 meters from us. Diane went to ask them if they had any matches to spare so we might cook our dinner.

Better than that, they had a couple of disposable lighters that they we willing to give us so that the rest of our trip wouldn't be spoiled.

After dinner and watching the sunset over the mountain ridge we struck up a conversation with Andrew and Kevin. We found they had with amazingly vague plans for hiking the trails in Canyonlands NP. They had gotten a back-country permit and were winging it!

We all talked for over a hour before the cold told us it was time to creep into our sleeping bags. Looking up I could see the Milky Way clearly. The Big Dipper was rotating around the North Star, eternally telling time if you had the sense to read it.

The next morning we thankfully had hot water for coffee and oatmeal thanks to our generous benefactors. We packed our gear for the next leg of our trip and chatted with Kevin and Andrew before they walked off into the distance ready for whatever came.

They are the very definition of adventurers. Going with what they had and not waiting for everything to be perfect. Plans, sure, but not so many that they couldn't take it as they found it. Easy going, gregarious, humble, and generous.

That's why they are my heroes. Every day is another chance to find what is new in the world. They may be back with their books by now but I have every confidence that they are already planning their next trip. I hope to run into them again.


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