The other side of Beauty

- By Brazil Nut

  After hiking almost 700 miles through New Mexico we slowly started seeing the far away green mountains and they looked very high from the desert,  although we were already over 6,000 feet to begin with.  The colors of the landscape changed dramatically from orange, red and brown to blue and green , not to mention the amount of fresh water coming down from everywhere, an amazing change right in front of our eyes,  every day, every hour, every step we took heading north getting one step closer to our goal of accomplishing a CDT thru-hike.
 The beauty we see is immense and covers 360 degrees from everywhere we stand, but we were also e hit with the other side of nature or perhaps consequences from us humans changing so much to fit the constant evolution of our species.
We entered Colorado climbing up to the magnificent beauty of the San Juan mountains which have been compared to the Alps.  I must say it takes your breath away to look at them, and for us it was even more incredible because we were living in those mountains. Many times we stopped to catch our breathing from the altitude and the hard work our bodies were going through climbing up to those peaks.  We also took the time to be grateful to be there doing what we love and loving what we are doing, respectfully appreciating our journey and the companionship we are sharing with one another. I keep telling JP I am super happy to have a partner who is enjoying this as much as I am.  I have had my share of solitude thru-hiking  the AT and the PCT.
  As our journey progressed and we entered deeper into the forest we started to see the other side of beauty.
First I realized the ground was moving funny, little brown and yellow hairy things moving by the billions-they were caterpillars!!! I thought to myself it means change, they will soon be flying in a different format.  They kept multiplying as we kept hiking and every time we stopped to look at our maps they would start crawling up our legs, on our packs, clothing, every where. Our eating brakes became kind of a stressed moment as Jetpack had  zero tolerance for those little creatures. Well when you put billions of them together things become a little out of control. I kept laughing harder and harder everytime she took one off herself, all we could do was keep hiking hoping that eventually it would come to an end, and it did but it took a few days going through caterpillar world.
  I guess it truly hit me how massive the infestation was when we climbed up to one of the mesas and could see for miles and miles how bare the trees were. I have never seen anything like that before on such a gigantic scale. We were happy when we could finally sit down on the ground to take a peaceful  break without things crawling all over us.
   The forest became green again but not for too long, this time we were confused by what was happening. All around us the hardy pine trees were completely dead, like something sucked the life out of those trees with a needle and left them standing still without any life left. We hiked day after day, mile after mile and kept seeing the same damaged forest, only the new growth was still alive, the older ones were all dead and we were still not sure from what.
  We went down to this little town of Pagosa Springs and learned about another infestation from some sort of beetle taking over thousands of acres , killing all the trees. It was hard to believe how much and how fast the forest is changing from green to brown, and the dead trees are still standing which is the best fuel for wild fires... oh yes, let me say this again wildfires.
  We are suffering some catastrophic results from all the fires around the country. Colorado is truly taking it's share to the fullest I must say. For few days we were high above 10,000 feet elevation getting all the smoke from one of the wildfires around Pagosa Springs, our visibility of the San Juan's got lost in the midst of all the smoke blowing our way by the high velocity of the wind. Breathing became more difficult with the high elevation combined with the heavy smoke ,  and we both hiked without much to say.
  We kept hiking ironically straight towards the fire as the CDT took us west instead of north for couple of days thought the San Juans.  All we could do was keep going and paying attention to everything around us.
One of those days it was certainly very difficult for us, my partner JP lost herself to fear. We sat down to eat lunch looking at the smoke around us after 12 miles into our day and she tells me she is not hungry.  Well hungry is one of the things a thru- hiker is constantly, I worried instantly after that statement. I ate,  packed up and said we had to go and she was still sitting on the ground by a little running spring on the side of the mountain. I could see she was not doing well. She finally got up and I moved towards her embracing her with a comforting hug ans she finally says, " This fire is scaring the crap out of me...my stomach feels very nauseous..." 
   I had no words at the moment to comfort her because I knew they were very realistic. I finally replied " I need you, please focus, we are in this together, we can do it..."
 We hiked the rest of the day step by step a couple feet from one another, camped by a beautiful river, woke up the next day with superb beautiful blue skies and had one of the most amazing days on the trail.  The smoke was low as was the wind and the terrain was open with beautiful views of the San Juan's. We kept hiking and being grateful to be thru-hiking the CDT and to have one another.
 -Brazil Nut