Written by: Amanda Lanker
I met Tim in the middle of the summer in Colorado when he was bikepacking the Tour Divide, and I was helping a friend with the influx of cyclists at the lodge she runs along the route. Despite some rather embarrassing digressions on my end during our hours of conversation, he wanted to reconnect after he finished his trip and I recovered from my attempt to complete the Colorado Trail on my single-speed bicycle. He was intrigued by the Wind River Range, as observed from afar on his bike route, and I was already in love with that zone. So, for our second time hanging out we planned a nine day backpacking trip to recover from our respective bikepacking trips.
Rawlins, Wyoming
We met up in Rawlins, Wyoming for Thai lunch before heading to Lander to stash three bikes and a parachute in a stranger’s shed. Then we went to Pinedale to buy garbage food to supplement our freeze-dried meals, pack, and set up our self-shuttle. We were both very chatty for the days leading up to departure, and we continued talking to everybody on the trail: late season thruhikers, haggard day-trippers, other enthusiastic backpackers, and older couples carrying what looked to be an insufficient quantity of food (who all explained that you get to eat less as you age).
A Startling Meeting
A couple of days in, we stopped to chat with a man in his sixties who was backpacking alone. We learned that Phil had been coming to the Winds for decades and was dismayed by the number of visitors, that the friend who’d planned to accompany him had canceled, and that he’d lost his wife and primary adventure partner several years ago. Phil was lonely and struggling to meet new people — whether romantic partners or hiking buddies — and he asked us how we met. We explained that we are both vehicle-dwelling nomads who crossed paths riding bikes, summarized by Tim as “two solo travelers walking together.”
Phil seemed rather relieved we didn’t meet on the internet, and I suggested maybe if he keeps doing what he loves, he’ll organically encounter other people with shared interests. But I know it’s not that easy, and Phil reiterated that people his age keep dying.
Tim empathized with this man, sharing that he’d lost his dad less than a year before and had been scattering his ashes along the Divide route, in the Winds, wherever he roamed.
Tim then removed the shaker of ashes from his backpack’s hip pocket, which he handed to Phil as requested. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of this, I have some of my wife’s ashes left, I can bring her with me.” Teary-eyed, Phil attempted a quick getaway, but not before accepting hugs from Tim and me. Both of us were also crying, and we embraced each other quietly as we watched Phil walk away.
Phil’s Impact on Us
Phil came up again in conversation towards the end of the trip as Tim and I were eating dinner. and watching the sun begin to set over one of the region’s 1300 named lakes. Neither of us wanted to return to civilization. Tim said that he could stay out here forever, and I agreed. Then I pointed out, “It’s easy to say that while we’re eating our $12 freeze dried meals from REI since neither of us know how to hunt, fish, or forage.” We laughed at ourselves. “No, we can’t feed ourselves like Phil,” Tim conceded.
Months later we still talk about Phil. Although we know he has long returned to Colorado, we both picture him as still out in the Winds, fishing for sustenance and missing his wife. However, Tim remembers Phil as “a huge, lumbering man, probably 6’6” and solid” whereas I recall him as small. Tim surmises he saw the stranger as large and heavy because he is carrying the burden of a pain he does not know how to put down.
Confronting the Darkness
I suspect I am projecting, and remember Phil as small because I feel smaller when I am grieving, like I was during my first trip to the Winds the previous year. I’d spent a few days backpacking alone, attempting to soothe my own lonely heart after a crushing breakup. It was the land of epiphanies, but nothing stuck. I spent another month afterwards in a dark depression, fully believing that I did not deserve romantic love. I now know this to be false. But my worthiness is not a guarantee. Phil reminded me that I am terrified of both loving someone that deeply, and risking loss, and of never experiencing that depth of romantic love. I do not know which scenario is worse, and it’s doubtful I get to choose my future. I just keep showing up and hoping that my commitment to independence is compatible with being loved.
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