It’s never made sense to me that high elevations are cooler, because all through school, my teachers told me heat rises. It seems like if that’s the case, it should be cooler at low elevations, but that’s not the case. And I’m OK with that. Because it means when it’s hot and miserable down in the purportedly civilized places, it’s just right out in the backcountry and unpopulated wild places high in the mountains.
It’s a double bonus, because if you can get out there where you can hike, camp, fish and relax, you can also get away from traffic, ringing phones, work and other annoyances. And you get all this and tolerable temperatures. It makes me wonder why people throughout the ages have congregated in large groups in the first place. But I’m not complaining,d because if they’d chosen those high-country paradises for where to live and work, we wouldn’t have them as places to get away to.
That high country is calling to me now. It’s about time to throw the pack, sleeping bag, tent and fishing gear in the truck and unplug from reality for a few days. The ground’s a lot less comfortable than my mattress at home, but the nighttime temperatures are much more conducive to a good night’s sleep than what I’m trying to sleep through at home. The clean air is much easier to breathe, even though there’s less of it than at lower elevations, and it smells much better with hints of Douglas fir and limber pine than the exhaust-tinged air in town.
And up there above 8,000 feet, cell phones don’t ring. Emails go unanswered. There’s nobody sticking their head in your door, telling you to do this or that. All that can wait until you get back to town.
If you ever do decide to return.
