The Stowaway in the Minivan

Looking for satisfaction in all the wrong places.

I tried snapping two tent poles together and it was like trying to get an elephant trunk into a mouse’s nostril. I shoved harder and groaned. My poles were being as unruly as my mind.

I hadn’t set up this particular tent in years and time had not been kind to it. My minivan is basically a bedroom-on-wheels, so I only sleep in a tent when I’m hiking miles from the road. And when that’s the case, I bring my minimally-ounced backpacking tent rather than the behemoth thing I was trying to wrangle into a tent-shaped structure.

I’m currently living out of my minivan while I run, and write, and eat pie in the mountains and brought this dusty tent with me so I could leave it pitched in my campsite when I intend to spend another night in the same spot, but can’t leave my minivan there all day. A popped tent falls into the camper code that signals someone’s sleeping in that site. It’s kind of like a cleaner version of a sock on a door knob. This space is occupied.

But, in the years of neglect, the string system that holds the poles together had frayed and tangled and severed itself into a useless pile of metal and cord that couldn’t communicate anything other than “when is trash day?”

I tried shoving a knot into a narrow pole hole and when it refused to succumb to my jamming, I threw it all to the ground and looked up.

My site was tucked into a gulch between spring green mountains. Rock walls jutted a thousand feet above me, speckled with emerald pines and enough willow to feed an army of moose. A creek rushed by, charging past snow white marigolds and bright pink primrose. A waterfall tumbled through a crevice in the rocks above. And another, just a few cliffs down. The adjacent hillside was covered in columbines and alpine buttercup.

The walls of my bedroom-on-wheels were straight out of Home and Mountain Gardens.

But, I couldn’t stop looking down the dirt road, eyeing the neighboring campsites.

Was the next pull-off a little more scenic? Were the rock walls that towered over it a bit rockier? Could I see a few more columbine petals from over yonder?

I picked the poles back up and looked at the tangled mess in my hands. But, my internal gaze stayed fixed on the other campsites – wondering if I could do better.

I soon gave up on the tent and left a pile of canvas on the ground, hoping it would be seen as evidence of a taken campsite and not the pile of trash it was, and then drove a few hills over to go on my first trek of the summer.

I snapped my hiking poles together at the trailhead, silently thanking them for being better behaved than their cousin poles back at the campsite, and started climbing.

The trail immediately pitched up, as if it were an elevator to the sky. The high mountain sun beat down on my bare shoulders.

My lungs felt like they were in a vice grip as I ascended higher into the alpine. The trail shot to an elevation of nearly 12,000’, which was a shock to a body that’s accustomed to living and breathing at 477 feet above sea level.

My body also felt every inch of steepness, as I’m still building back from my knee injury and the months of reduced activity. I’ve known fitter days than the ones I’m currently running in and that reality pulsed through me.

The trail carried me to views of endless mountains stretching across the horizon. The hillside was painted in wildflowers arching toward the summer sun. And soon, I would get to a lake that’s shocked with such an electric hue, it feels like nature must’ve put her finger into the outlet when filling it in.

I remembered doing this same trail last summer on my first day here.

I was on a different end of the fitness spectrum when I arrived in Colorado last summer. I’d gotten into Hardrock, a 100-mile run through these mountains, during the race’s lottery in December and I was a woman on a mission in the months leading up to the race. It was my third straight year getting a spot on the start line and I was determined to make it my best run yet.

I spent the spring building to the highest mileage and vertical gain of my life. I chased fast friends around the trails and pushed my legs to new gears of grinding. I studied my splits from my other finishes and attacked the areas where there was room for improvement.

By the time I got to Colorado, I was the strongest I’d ever been and felt it while I was on the trails.

My lungs interrupted my trip down memory lane, begging for a wheezing break. I looked up the hillside and could picture that version of myself charging ahead. That bitch would probably be close to the lake by now and I was still huffing my way through the switchbacks several hundred feet below.

As I climbed, I couldn’t shake the idea of a more athletic Emily leaving me in her dust. We’d left Eugene with a stowaway. And she was taunting me with her fitness and strength.

I thought longingly of last summer’s trained muscles and how it felt like there were no limits to the amount of alpine playtime my legs could handle. I said yes to every mile, and then some. Bonus outings with friends, uphill tempos, super-sized days in the mountains.

I would trade my left eye to slip into a more capable body and dive back into those days.

We got to the basin where the ground started to cede to the lake and Dilly bolted ahead, his memory also fixed on last summer and the many cattle dog cannonballs he got in this water.

I watched him ottering his way around the lake and thought about how fragile my summer running has felt for months. Back in April, when I was running just two tentative miles around the track, it was hard to believe I’d be spending any summer days in the mountains. For months, it felt possible that I might be stuck jogging short, flat loops of pavement in Eugene all summer, at best.

And here I was, every cell of me submerged in the mountains – wishing for more.

I followed Dilly and his wagging tail back down the elevator chute to the minivan below.

When we got back to our campsite, I finally wrestled the tent up. I looked at the waterfall behind it, cascading hundreds of feet through mountain goat meadows. Maybe the next pull-off over would be a little more scenic. Maybe the tent, and my body, have seen better days. But maybe, if I stopped looking away, the ground beneath my feet and the earth in front of me could be more than enough.