In the morning Anne cooks us scrambled eggs with veggies, served with toast and slices of fresh ripe pear… It’s easy to go on and on about food, isn’t it? Later in the morning she drives us back to Snoqualmie Pass and we all eat one more time at Aardvark’s. Everything takes forever when we’re trying to get back on the trail — it’s almost 3pm by the time we leave pavement behind for dirt and duff.
Backup and I practice our hiking-independently thing. When he stops to check the weather and send a few texts while we still have cell phone signal, I walk on, but we agree to meet in a few miles at a creek.
I-90 is audible for miles, a dull noise like the ocean. When the trail hits a clearing on a slope, there’s a view down to it, snaking off into the distance. I feel strangely wistful to be leaving civilization behind again. On the trail I think a lot about what I want my life to be like when I’m done with this hike. Different than it was before. But the details are still vague. I guess I’m hoping that the more time I have to think about it, the more clear it’ll get and the better idea I’ll have of the steps required to get it.
Backup gets to the creek right after me, and we set our next destination: Twilight Lake. “Twilight Lake before twilight,” says Backup. The sun is sinking slowly, and the light is just beautiful, turning the edges of trees sort of yellow and glowy. We pass Mirror Lake first, a big beautiful lake with lots of campsites scattered along the shore. We want to get a few more miles in, though. Twilight Lake turns out to be not much to look at (Mirror Lake is a hard act to follow), but a bit later we make camp in the woods near a little stream. The spot we find is too small for both our tents, so we squeeze into Backup’s new one and hit the hay.
