June 20
Mileage 30
870.5 miles hikes

I can’t fall asleep for all the wild emotions- fears, vulnerabilities, insecurities… like a bad high, like when I would try and smoke pot when I was a teenager. Every possible thought going to some dark place. The way all things might possibly go awry, or how they probably already are. I forget for a moment that we make our own destinies out of sheer willpower. I finally drift off, have anxious dreams and when I wake, I’ve gotten my period. So that’s it then. I feel empty inside, and everything seems new. We do make our own destinies. We do!

I love being a bleeder. Connecting to the moon and all that shit. Feeling for a few days each month as though the world is about to end and then being reborn.

The only problem is, we’re five days from town and I didn’t bring any menstrual products.

Fuck. Fuck fuck.

The stretch from East Glacier to Helena is long- 250 miles. We’ve broken it up by sending ourselves resupply boxes at a remote ranch halfway called Benchmark Ranch- they have nothing there, apparently, not even any electricity. They leave your box out for you on the porch. I sent myself no menstrual products because I forgot to keep track of when I would get it. Well, hell.

Three miles into the morning I pass a trail crew campsite, and a few members are lingering in camp. I yogi four tampons off of these kind souls. (To yogi is to ask people on the trail for things.) Four tampons- how far will that get me? Not far.

We climb up to Spotted Bear Pass, which is just a trail junction in the woods (mostly we have been hiking in the woods since leaving East Glacier) and then we walk for a long time in an alpine meadow along the Great Wall, which is a granite cliff that towers above us. The muddy trail is full of fresh-looking grizzly and mountain lion tracks. We take lots of breaks, Track Meat, Spark and I. I’m woozy and I’m having cramps. All I have left to eat until Benchmark is chips and too-salty pumpkin seeds. Life!

The last few miles into camp I’m dead-tired. The sky is clear and the mosquitoes aren’t too bad so we lay our sleeping pads on the ground- I can’t remember the last time we got to cowboy camp! I rinse my aching, rash and scrape-covered legs in the stream and stretch a bit. Good job legs! It’s ten miles in the morning to Benchmark Ranch. I think I put gluten-free chocolate chip cookies in my resupply box. Oh my god!

Photos on instagram