I woke up to see rain clouds rolling in, and packed up my tent as quickly as I could. I wanted to get moving before the rain hit, and I wanted to be out of this burn area as quickly as possible.

The hike along the south shore of St. Mary’s Lake was fairly uneventful, but cold and wet for the whole day. The rain picked up slowly throughout the day, eventually soaking under my rain jacket. Stopping for water felt like too much work, so I just trudged on for the morning, slightly thirsty and snacking on handfuls of trail mix.

When I picked up on a sickeningly-sweet scent of laundry detergent, I knew I was getting close to the road. Day-hikers were swarming around a waterfall taking selfies. Talk among the day-hikers was that a grizzly bear was nearby – it seemed like everyone saw it except for me, which left me feeling slightly disappointed.

Beargrass

Even though I’m being pretentious and disdainful about the day-hikers, the reality is that I was so grateful for their presence. My hike so far had been pretty lonely save for a few CDT hikers, and it felt nice to be around other humans at all.

With exactly these mixed feelings, I turned off of the day-hiker trail onto the trail toward Piegan Pass (by way of Reynolds Creek Campground, where I would be staying the night). It was a really mucky couple of miles. I ran into one of those intimidating ultralight CDT hikers with a tiny pack and no hiking poles, slamming down a huge bag of cheese curls while walking. He was pretty nice to me, though.

I got to the campground, thirsty and hungry from neglecting my physical needs for the morning. I had that feeling where everything is wet and it seems like it will never be dry again. As I was sprawled out on the ground slathering peanut butter on a wet tortilla, another hiker walked up to the campsite looking just as cold, wet, and dejected as I was.

The hiker’s name was Meredith, and she was hiking the CDT southbound. We started doing normal hiker small talk, and the Appalachian Trail came up. She asked me what year I had hiked the AT. I said 2016, and she said, “Oh, me too.” There was a 1-second pause, and I was hit by a wave of realization: We had actually met three years ago at a hiker hostel in Virginia! The amazement of meeting each other again seemed to lift both of our spirits and fight off the dreariness of the day. We talked excitedly for a while until the rain came back, then retreated to our tents for an afternoon nap, emerging for dinner a few hours later.