montana | the wilderness

even though i stayed in a lovely home in montana, i had to backpack for at least one night. so wednesday morning, i set out to camp at avalanche lake (where apparently, golden trout will jump straight into an iron skillet). but after talking to the rangers, they highly recommended i go somewhere without snow; they said it would be more pleasant. i fought the thoughts in my head that told me "so what? i can handle it," and deferred to their recommendation since i wasn't prepared to hike in snow.

i ended up setting up shop at the base of mount hebgen & hiking it that same day (6 miles round trip). everything about it was exquisite except for getting eaten up by mosquitos and thinking i was going to get attacked by bears. (ack, i wish i wasn't so good at imagining things.) anyway, i never got attacked by a bear, but the mosquitos had their way. to avoid those pesky critters, i held myself captive in my tent and fell in and out of sleep. (there's nothing very entertaining about being confined to a small backpacking tent.) between moments of consciousness, i watched the sunset, saw the sky light up with the cosmos, hand wrote an email, wrote out a treasure map, and finally woke up to the morning dew dampening my down bag.

through that process, i learned that the light shows up in so many forms, and every time, it can't help but unashamedly shine all of its glory.