in anticipation of Cjo

Courtney Jo is a comin' to see me again! It's been two years this month that she was last here and so much has happened in her life since then. Who'd have believed she'd have met the man of her dreams, married, and found a great new life in Clear Lake just half a mile from where my parents lived?

Cjo and I met when I had just come back from a June spent in Santa Fe and a July conference in New York. That was my first time to NYC and I was completely alone. That's a different blog (soon) but suffice to say, it changed me in a lot of positive ways. So when I returned to Blinn that Fall semester, I presented a lot of the great ideas to our English faculty and right up front sat this new, eager fresh young face. Courtney had just been hired part-time.

Her mentor in the department was Lynne, so naturally the three of us went to lunches together and it wasn't long before Courtney and I were fast friends. From College Station, to her move to Brenham, to her move to Clear Lake, I've watched with pride as she's blossomed into a wonderful professor. We co-presented at CCCC in NYC my last semester before I moved to Colorado and it was one of the best times I've ever had.

So I've been researching hikes for us when she comes in June, because, well, the main thing we do NOT want is a repeat of the last visit's hike.

I had been up to Bear Creek in Morrison many times, just for short hikes along the water, but decided, looking at the map on the computer, it would be fun to go farther around the trail with Courtney who was eager for a challenge.

I know if she's reading this, she's already laughing.

So that morning we get going around 9:30 at the main parking lot and set off along the beautiful running creek. We'd packed a couple of bottles of water, a sandwich each, some trail mix, and, of course, the camera for a morning's worth of hiking. I'd figured probably three hours round trip.


It was all smiles and morning sunlight then...


and butterflies...

So we are hiking along, taking a million pictures, loving life.

Here's another good comparison weight loss picture.


Tra-la-la...
We had all the time in the world to stop and smell the cactus flowers. Or so we thought.


(Remember this face. You are going to see it later.)


So here at the bridge we're getting toward the end of the trail I had been on. We stopped and I put my feet in the water and then it was time for the ascent. We'd passed groups of mountain bikers, some who'd just come down the trail we were going up, and they looked whipped. That should have been hint #1.


Part of the ascent was really steep and littered with boulders. But we're still huffing and puffing and stopping as we go thinking we're almost to the top, halfway through the hike.



Ta-da! The summit is gorgeous. We stop and eat the sandwiches we packed and then hit the trail for the descent back to the car.


Now going down is actually a lot harder than it sounds. The incline starts to shove your toes hard into the end of your shoes and you take a lot of pounding on your feet. So we didn't take as many pictures after the summit.

But I start to wonder, why haven't we begun to hear the water yet? Shouldn't we have descended enough to begin to see the creek by now? It seems to be taking an awfully long time.


Cjo, much more in shape than me in 2008, what with doing triathlons and all, begins to get ahead and wait for me to catch up. Note the body language here.

When it got to be about 2:30 and nothing was looking remotely familiar, I start to really worry. No, I don't have a map. We ask a biker how to get back to the parking lot at Bear Creek. He tells us we have to turn around and go back the way we came. As in the last 5 hours. Uh, surely he's mistaken.

We keep going, knowing full well I could not do another five hours back up and over. At this point, it's become more like a death march. We're out of water and muscle fatigue is setting in. It's not as though we're going to die in the wilderness. People are on the trail. You can see houses up on the ridges in the distance. But there's this sinking sense of doom pervading our sunny little hike now.

I call Bob (there is spotty cell reception in the valley) who, of course, can't help at all because there are no roads or markers to tell us where we are and, even if there were, it's not like he can drive to pick us up.

And we keep walking. and walking.

Finally, around 4:00 we find our way to a road, a real honest to God road where cars can go. We are slap happy and crack up over seeing this sign.



Following the road, we hit another trail head parking lot. It bears no resemblance to the one we were expecting to loop back around to, but it has a name and it has cell phone reception. We're saved. Bob googles the name and leaves work to rescue us. While we wait for him, Cjo takes this self portrait which we still giggle about to this day. THIS is the mood at 4:30, some 7 freaking hours after we took off for a half-day hike.



Bob arrives and picks us up and says, "do you realize how far you walked??" and we try not to kill him. But he was gauging this by the distance where my car was parked to this trailhead lot. As he drove us back to my car, we could get a better sense of how horribly off course we'd wandered. No, Bear Creek is not a loop. Yes, perhaps printing the map would have been helpful. Shut up.

So now the Cjo Bear Creek Hike is the stuff of legend and Bob is demanding we not leave the house without a compass (whatever good that would have done, right? Yes, honey, we're heading due west. That help?)

This time I'm a little better versed in hiking, in choosing good loop trails, and in much better shape. We may just tackle a fourteener this June.

Kidding. I'm kidding.

Maybe...