"Oh, you want sun?" she asks as she yawns and stretches. "Here, how about a sunny blue sky 70 degree day. You've earned it after the long winter." She giggles to herself. "Just kidding! I'm going to make it snow tonight. A lot. Inches. Teehee." She giggles again. "Sorry about the snow. Not really. Here. I'll raise the temperature to 50 degrees and bring heavy clouds for a week. No, better make it two weeks. Will it rain every day? Will it snow at night? You'll have to wait and see! Oh, and wind! We need wind to go along with the heavy clouds. What's wrong? Your seasonal affective disorder just kicked into overdrive? Too bad. Hahahahahahaha..."
My good friend, Rebecca, is training for a 108k trail run in June. I am training for a high-altitude two-week bike tour in July. More days than not, we have a text exchange that goes something like:
This fucking weather.
I know, when will spring ever come??
I can't do the rain and the snow. I'm so grumpy about it.
It's so dumb.
I'm so over it!
We force ourselves out the door into the shit weather and get the work done. Spring training. No one said it would be easy. It's a test of willpower, grit, and determination, with a little bit of crazy thrown in for good measure. We are strengthening our mental game alongside our physical game.
I've commented many times that we tend to remember the bad days. I've experienced thousands of days of outdoor adventures in delightful blue sky sunshine. Thinking back, I can't distinguish one from another. I can't tell you which ride had the best sunshine, or which backpacking trip had the best blue sky. They all blend together. It's the bad days that make memories. Spend enough time outside and you are bound to get your share of bad days.
My friend Lisa and I had ridden up to Painted Rocks Lake one sunny spring morning. We had reached the dam and were having snacks and enjoying the view before heading back down the canyon. As we were eating, my lovely and caring husband pulled up in his truck.
"Hi!" I greeted him enthusiastically. "What are you doing up here?"
"There's a bad storm blowing in. Thought you guys might want a ride home."
Lisa and I looked at the sky. From our vantage point, things looked wonderful. Sunshine and blue skies. We were in a narrow canyon, so our view was not expansive, but we saw no sign of a storm. We made a terrible error in judgment.
"I think we'll ride home," I told my husband. "Thanks for coming up here though!"
He looked at us incredulously, shrugged, got in his truck, and drove away. Mother Nature witnessed our error, shook her head, and chuckled softly.
Lisa and I finished our snacks and started the 25-mile ride down the canyon to home. Less than two miles along, Mother Nature chose her moment to teach us a lesson. First came the wind, gentle at first. We rounded a corner and a hard gust of wind slapped us in the faces. The wind worsened as we pedaled, gusting from every direction, punching us from the left, then the right, smacking us head-on, then swirling around us like a tornado. Staying upright on the bike became the sole focus. Then came the rain. It pelted down upon us relentlessly, limiting visibility to a few feet. I heard Lisa shout something at me, but the wind whipped her words into the storm before I could grasp them. I kept pedaling, squinting through the downpour, bracing into the constantly changing gusts of wind as they hammered us mercilessly. Down the canyon we went, bracing, squinting, struggling, regretting not taking the ride in the warm, dry truck. Somehow we made it down the canyon, fingers shriveled to prunes, shoes squinching with rain water, shivering, but upright. As we turned onto the highway, Mother Nature smiled and rewarded our fortitude. The rain stopped, the wind let up, and we pedaled slowly to my house. My husband greeted us in the driveway.
"Bet you wish you would have come with me," he said with a laugh.
There was the time my friend Carol and I rode up the West Fork and got caught in a snowstorm. Nothing to do but keep riding, so we did. Another time I rode up to Como and got caught in a snowstorm. Judd Creek got me in a snowstorm as well. The first time I summited Ward Mountain, I was rewarded with snow and clouds so heavy I was unsure I had reached the summit. So much for the view.
One warm midsummer morning, I was on a group ride with the fast guys. The day was a typical July day with bright blue sky and ample sun. We headed up Skalkaho, trading places at the front of the paceline, riding the 17 miles up the canyon to the end of the pavement, where we stopped to regroup and have some snacks. As we chatted, I noticed a few dark clouds forming down the canyon. This could get interesting, I thought to myself. We shoved off and heading back down. We were pacelining again, sailing down the road, when the first rumble of thunder ripped through the canyon. I heard Mother Nature belly laughing. Uh-oh. Then came the hail. It was small at first, BB-sized, but that was only the warm-up. Thunder boomed and echoed as the hail grew to pea size. As I sped down the canyon at 30 mph, every piece of hail that collided with my body felt like it was a tiny ice ball filled with razor blades, chipping my skin away from my bones, hailstone by hailstone. I yelled to the group that I was pulling over, hopped off my bike, and awkwardly clip-clopped my way through the brush, finding shelter under a spruce tree. My skin stung and burned from the impacts of the hail. I rubbed my arms and legs as the hail continued to fall, bouncing hard off the ground like millions of tiny white basketballs. As quickly as it began, the storm passed. The sun returned, and the hail melted. We climbed aboard our trusted bikes and continued down the canyon. Just another day of cycling in the Northern Rockies.
Two summers ago, Lisa, Rebecca, and I did a three-day backpack trip up Tin Cup. July had been hot, and Mother Nature had retired for her midsummer nap. The first weekend in August looked to finally break the hot spell. The forecast was for cooler temps, clouds, and a chance of rain. Lisa, Rebecca, and I, along with our doggies, packed up and headed to the trail. We brought all the rain gear just in case, but it never rains in August, so we thought we would be fine. The hike into camp was great. The weather was cloudy and cool. We did a day hike on the second day and hiked into the clouds. The forest was wet, but still not much rain. At camp that night, we ate our dinners, visited, and went to bed. The moment we crawled into our tents, Mother Nature woke up.
She stretched. CRACK POP went the lightning and thunder. She stretched again. CRACK POP. She rolled over and sat up. CRACK BOOM BOOM BOOOOM. I felt the ground shake as the thunder tore through the canyon. Mother Nature stood up and stretched again. CRACK CRACK POP BOOM BOOM BOOM BOOM. The entire canyon seemed to quake and quiver with each peal of thunder. Mother Nature realized her cloud bladder was full. The time had come to empty it. Splat split splat. The rain started slowly, pattering against my tent fly as my doggie Juno and I huddled inside. Splat splat splat. A little harder. SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT. Then the clouds opened up. A cacophonic wall of noise exploded from the sky. BOOM SPLATSPLATSPLAT BOOM CRACK POP BOOM SPLAT SPLAT SPLAT. The roar of the rain and thunder was deafening. I tried to offer soothing words to Juno, but I had to shout to be heard over the storm, so I gave up. We huddled together in the tent, listening to the fury that was raging all around us. I hoped my tent fly kept out the rain. I hoped Lisa and Rebecca and their doggies were ok. The storm raged relentlessly, consuming all of my senses and thoughts. Sleep was impossible, so Juno and I lay in the tent, snuggled together, waiting and hoping for the end of the storm. I don't know how long it lasted, but Mother Nature finally emptied her cloud bladder. The rain slowed, then stopped. The thunder and lightning quieted. The forest breathed a deep sigh, inhaling the badly needed rain. Mother Nature giggled to herself about these silly girls who were out in the forest in the storm.
It's not always rain or snow that causes problems. A few summers ago, my best friend, Denise, and I were on a three-day backpacking trip in mid-July. The forecast looked perfect. Clear skies and sunshine. We enjoyed a great hike nine miles up Boulder Creek and set up camp beside a clear mountain lake. The next day, we hiked up over the summit and down the drainage on the other side. The views were spectacular. We hiked back up and over and settled into camp that evening. As we started the process of rehydrating our dinners, I looked up at the sky above the ridge behind camp, the same ridge that we had summited earlier that day.
I noticed a strange cloud forming above the ridge. I stared at it. Kept staring. It looked weird. "That cloud looks weird," I said to Denise. She looked up. We watched for a few more minutes as it grew and grew, then started to turn orange. "That's a smoke cloud," I said. "Something is blowing up." It was 6:00 p.m.
I immediately got on the inReach and started messaging my husband.
Can you find out if there are any new fires up here? Something is blowing up right now.
I waited for a reply as Denise and I continued to watch the cloud. We had just been over there earlier in the day and seen no sign of smoke. What in the world was going on? From where we were sitting, it looked like the entire back side of the ridge was engulfed in flames. The orange glow in the clouds intensified. The smoke column grew bigger and bigger, moving across the sky. The inReach dinged.
I can't find any new fires up there. I don't know what it could be. If it just started, they might not have any info on it yet.
"What should we do?" Denise asked, trying to keep her voice steady as she watched the sky disappear.
I envisioned us getting in our tents that night, waking up every half hour, waiting to see the fire crest the ridge and come down on us. I pictured us racing to pack up in the middle of the night, trying to outrun the forest fire. I saw the headlines, "Two hikers caught in a forest fire." I imagined people shaking their heads and wondering why in the world we didn't get out of there when we had the chance. I didn't want to be the people in that headline.
I looked up at the sky again, but there was no more sky. All we could see was the orange-gray smoke column that had now consumed our entire field of vision. Then the ash started falling.
"We need to get out of here," I said to Denise.
We both jumped up and started packing, quickly disassembling our tents, shoving items into our packs willy-nilly wherever they would fit. It took us ten minutes to pack and hit the trail. In those ten minutes, the ash had intensified, falling heavy like snow in February, blanketing everything in the forest. It was 6:30 p.m. in mid-July, normally still broad daylight, but now the forest was cast in an eerie orange glow. We hit the trail fast, packs on our backs, dinners in one hand, sporks in the other. We took bites of food as we sailed down the trail, not knowing if Armageddon was chasing along behind us. The ash kept falling as the sky grew darker and darker. We hiked hard and fast for nine miles, reaching the truck in darkness and more ash.
We threw our packs in the back, climbed in, and hit the road. I finally took a deep breath. We made it. We didn't have to call a rescue team. We didn't burn to death. We were safe. We were alive. We made the right choice. Phew. We made it. (We learned later the next day that the fire was 20 miles away from where we were camped. We would have been safe staying there, but we didn't know it at the time).
I sometimes hear people make comments about trying to conquer nature, and I always laugh to myself. There is no such thing as conquering nature. More often than not, Mother Nature gives us the green light of a beautiful sky and a lovely sun. Every so often, though, she decides to mix it up, keep us on our toes, and give us a great story.
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