Comfort in Crying Together
Well its Saturday, for most that means the weekend. The weekend means you have time to relax, unwind, feel the fall air on your face, and whatever you do, don't do it, we are warning you, get it off your mind, do not, think about Monday. Well, yea now we are thinking about Monday as well, this started off fun and quickly became depressing... hmm. Even though Saturday is another work day for us at ElevenSkys, Monday just has a harsh sound to it. It sounds as if it should be spoken in hushed corners and around a dimly lit campfire whispered to your neighbor. If spoken too loudly it can inflict too much fear, the fear of it becoming a reality. If thought of too loudly it can be manifested into a tangible feeling. So let us quietly and carefully shift away from this world of Saturday's feeling like Monday's and into a tale of incredible courage and a tale of one of the strongest partners we ever had!
A story of love that was built and bonded through many miles and hardships. A story of loss that was felt as deeply as the Gila River itself and as swiftly. A story of sacrifice, where all the love and strength in the world could not help this event from happening. A story of courage where one does not know how they can continue on without the other, but boldly has to find their way through. Ultimately, a story of failure within the grip of despair that leads into triumph once the way through is found. Simply, a story of a pair of shorts.
A little preface to how all of this unfolded. The where is just as consequential as the how. We were in the Gila River Canyon. A canyon in the wilderness of New Mexico, that has THICC with two C's bushwhacks abundant, river crossings frequent, and trail mostly non-existent. This pair of shorts had been with us since the beginning. The beginning of the CDT, the Continental Divide Trail. They had traversed pieces of the hot desert with us, had the first shin splints with us, and gifted us our first extremely uncolored thighs and butt (CHAFE) of the hiking season. They meant so much to us! They were quite literally a part of us. Until it all fell apart (quite literally again).
The Gateway to the Gila
The arrow pointed us into the Canyon. The arrow pointed us towards our fate. It began with a steep uphill to drop down into the canyon. RE-READ that sentence, it does not make sense does it? Nope, but for some reason it made sense to us. Our hiking partner also was puzzled by this but sometimes you must put your faith and believe in the trail. The trail will provide! This turned out to be extremely true, the trail did provide. It provided us with a bushwhack before the bushwhack on the side of a mountain. It was not the correct way to drop DOWN into a canyon. We were able to puzzle this out after a few hours. The shorts had begun their accelerated descent into destruction on this ascent.