Contemplations of a Rambler..!

M trail(M standing for Montana or MSU) is a popular and one of the most used hiking trail around Bozeman. Even after being here for a year and being a regular hiker I hadn’t hiked to the M. One and the only reason is that I thought just like my friend Ram that the trail was too gay.

These days I love to run and I haven’t hiked in a while, so I used to run for around 3miles every evening. But when my cherished hiking partner Devil mentioned about hiking to M, I kinda said yes, and we were on our way after cancelling the RUN, also it was a prep for the big hike to Sacagawea peak we had planned for the next week.

So, there were three paths to the M. Strenuous, semi strenuos, and easy. Our decision was unanimous and quick to take the strenuous one. Since I wanted to run, I told her that I will run up the hill and will wait for her at the M. But the strenuos path was really strenuous, I ran for may be less than 200yards, I was done, the calf muscles couldn’t take it anymore and the hip was also hurting a bit. Even though the air was getting thinner with elevation I hiked the rest of the trail at a fast pace.

Towards the end of the trail, there was a fork, left one leading to the base of the M, and right one all the way to the Baldy summit with intermittent paths to left leading to the M. I didn’t know all this then. But out of instinct, I took the left( as I always used to do when I was a teenager playing wolf-3d or quake and when I am supposed to take a left or right)

So, I reached the base of M, exhausted more because of the run and I was sipping the Gatorade( the only thing I had, other than my clothes) So I sat in the bench waiting for her. After may be ten or twenty mintues, she was still missing. So rather than sitting there like a jerk, I thought I will go and look for her. So I left my Gatorade bottle and my T-shirt on the bench( as a mark) thinking that if she had taken the path on the right and if she reaches the M while I was climbing down on the path on left. Climbing down the strenuous path is not at all recommended and especially at the pace I was climbing down. I reached the junction after lot of slips and sliding, and I assumed that she had taken the path on right. I started to climb at a faster pace and kept sneaking through the small pine tress in those intermittent left paths just to check whether she was there anywhere near the M. I was getting a bit worried.

I was tired more than worrying and I kept on climbing on that path, at one point, I heard her shouting my name “SANTHOSH” I heard it exactly from the direction of M(cos of the wind direction or something), So, I started to go towards the M in the next left. I saw somebody on another path and he figured out that I was looking for somebody. He told that he saw her almost 300 yards from where I was up the hill. I ran back to the main Baldy trail and started climbing again, and I saw two other guys,  one almost immediately in the path, he told that she is still climbing up. I increased my pace only to pausein order to catch my breath. Then finally an old man, who told that she is pretty close. At that point she could hear my howls and she was climbing down. It was very revealing to see her, she was also worried just like me, but definitely less tired.

We figured out the confusion, and that she had gone on top of the M and she had shouted my name from there and that she hadn’t seen my T-shirt and the Gatorade bottle. I wanted to shout at her and take out on her, and why she hadn’t just gone to the M, she had wonderful justifications and logical reasons for the actions she took. Which won’t make sense to me, since it wasn’t my logic. But I was able to overlook the confusion and accepted her actions. At that point I was proud that I had matured a bit by refraining from shouting or being angry and just by asking “why did you take the path on the right?”

We walked back to the base of the M to view the best sunset I’ve ever seen, and we hiked back through the semi-strenuous one wondering If this puny Bridger mountains could bring out the character in me, how much can Himalyas bring out. Even though there is NO direct relation between the size of the mountains and the amount of wisdom it can provide, I just couldn’t imagining that thought.

No wonder all the sages and saints back in India went to the mountains for solace or salvation or wisdom or peace or serenity or for whatever they were searching for..!

-A hiker.

Why did you take the path on the right? Chronicles of a Hiker-I