Meditations: Hope at the Dardanelles
The weather can change quickly in the mountains.
The day began with a clear, blue sky. When I emerged from our tent to boil water for coffee, my breath condensed when it met the air, but my ungloved fingers didn’t hurt as I opened our bear canisters and assembled our stove. We drank our coffee and ate our oatmeal comfortably in the crisp air. As we packed up and began our hike for the day, the morning carried on that way, warming steadily, but never abruptly hour-by-hour. We walked easily through an expansive meadow, past small creeks and tall grass. These are some of my favorite times backpacking, where we find time to discuss a myriad of topics from personal finance, to societal inequity, to our philosophy of life. But, where we also find periods of silence to be present in our surroundings.
The weather warmed more quickly in the early afternoon as we made our way down a canyon, stopping briefly for lunch at the aptly named Round Lake. We were a few hours hike from a nearby road and there were a combination of weekend backpackers like ourselves, runners and hikers spread evenly along the lake’s edge. We observed a series of large birds flying overhead through the clear sky. Without binoculars it was difficult to confirm what they were, but we speculated for a while. As we made our way downhill from our lunch spot, the trail became busier and we were relieved to veer off of the main trail toward that afternoon’s destination.
Grey clouds began to blow in just as we set our packs down at our campsite alongside the granite lined Dardanelles Lake. With its many peninsulas, this lake was not so round. In order to reach our campsite, we circumnavigated the lake, discovering quickly how many arms of water reached deeper into the surrounding land than we expected. As we pitched our tent, small circles began to appear on the lake's surface which rippled from a gentle breeze. The grumble of the clouds could be heard in the distance, the sound of incoming artillery growing closer. Just before the first flash illuminated the sky, the small specks of water pimpling the lake grew larger, creating craters. The heavy drops rained upward as they struck the granite rocks and broke into many smaller pieces jumping back toward the sky like shrapnel. The rain quickly turned to hail and then back to rain again as the thunder began to yell.
We sheltered in our tent at first, but had pitched our tent on a granite slab just beyond the tree line. As the lightning grew closer, we retreated into the nearby trees to watch the storm blow through. Sitting on a log, being struck by rain, we remarked at the beauty of the storm. All our gear was tucked neatly under our rain fly and we knew the storm was just a passing spectacle. We continued our conversation from earlier that day, this time about the merits of nihilism as a guiding philosophy. Similarly, we found those same moments of silence to let the feeling of the rain and the sound of the thunder ensconce us.
When the rain turned back to hail it sounded like thousands of tiny pebbles hitting concrete, amplified by the giant granite bowl that created the lakebed. The omnipotent flashes of lightning turned briefly to a gorgeous view of the culprit bolts themselves, branching across the sky and supplying life like veins.
The wind picked up and as the hail turned back to rain again creating sheets of water. We got wet and laughed, eating baby carrots and hummus from our log nestled in the forest. Then, the storm began to calm. The thunder became more distant, the lightning less bright, and the sky turned blue again. The sun returned and warmed the rocks. The air was still and it was quiet.
The weather can change quickly in the mountains, but not only in the mountains. Conditions can change just as quickly in the plains, on the coast, and in the ecosystem of our own lives. After the storm had passed, the air began to warm again. It became hot and I was grateful to swim out into the lake and cool myself down while my wet socks baked on the rocks.
When I had finished my swim, I laid myself out on the smooth granite rocks to let my skin warm in the sun. As I reflected on the day in my journal, I wrote about how quickly the sky can go from blue, to grey, to back and back to blue again; that knowing the storm would only be brief had allowed me to truly appreciate its beauty.