Water dams. Chain saws. A belligerent grouse. These are a few of the highlights from our first hitch that I relate to my friends and family when I exclaim, “I survived the wilderness!”
Even though I can tell folks back home in Illinois that Montana is beautiful, just stopping to look around at the mountains and the tall trees keeps me motivated to continue working hard on the trail. Or I explain how empowering it was to use a chainsaw for the first time. I even tell them about my embarrassing moment of running away from a grouse that flew out of the bushes hissing at us (so much for becoming tougher after a few days in the woods).
However, I cannot quite convey what it feels like to live, work and play in the woods with 6 other people I just met. Not only do the woods sneak into your psyche, where a clearing of fallen lodge pole pines truly does become home and all the bends in the trail start to look familiar and meaningful, but the people you share that home with become your world as well. Whether it was playing a rhyming game while lopping or talking deeply about family and growing up, I realized how different we all are, yet we had become a true team.
Our differences are beautiful, but I am more amazed at the care and pride we all came to have in ourselves as a unit. We worked together to finish our trail work, learn new tasks, and make camping as comfortable as we could for each other. And that is something I cannot quite capture, and I hope it continues to grow beyond my reach as community unfolds in the woods this season. I also hope those grouse keep to themselves.
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