Doing crazy, together.
"Thanks for doing crazy with me," K said to me when we arrived at Our Tree, eight years and five days after we had spoken our vows to one another underneath it. This was our first time back since. Finding ourselves in this spot again was admittedly an emotional moment. So many memories.
By "crazy" she was referring to taking her up on her saying a few months ago she wanted to trail run the Enchantments for our anniversary. It wasn't a bad idea. So we spent the summer sort of training. By that I mean on-again-off-again training as is the reality with both of us working full-time and raising two small kids. Still, the idea wasn't crazy at all. It's what we do. Together.
So the other day, Scott and Carmen showed up to spend the rest of the week at our place, watching S and H for a day while K and I did our crazy thing. It was a day I'll never forget.
We woke up at four o'clock. Orion had just risen in the southeast. Made ourselves espressos and heated up some breakfast sandwiches for the forty-five minute drive to the Stuart Lake trailhead. We pulled in and got ourselves ready by headlamp with a smattering of other folks in the pre-dawn morning. Then we were off. Up.
Moving fast and light in the mountains is a new-ish feeling for us. Sure, we trail run around Wenatchee all the time. The foothills of the Cascades are literally right outside our door. We volunteered to pre-run the course of a half-marathon up around Mission Ridge earlier in the summer as part of our training. But running through the Enchantments, through real mountains up high in the alpine, is different. The feeling of lightness is different. It's incredible and just a little intoxicating.
Seven-hours-forty minutes, nineteen miles and something like thirteen thousand feet of elevation gain and loss later we hobbled into the Snow Creek parking lot. A solid day. We both collapsed on the back bumper of our little Mazda. A group of ladies walked past and one of them asked, "Did you just run the whole thing?" We must have looked pretty awful. Sheepishly and a little exhaustingly we admitted yes. "You're my heroes," she told us.
In between all those miles and all that elevation gain and loss we made ourselves more memories. It was a beautiful day. The larch were spectacular, just as they were for our wedding. There was granite and water and ice. Mountains. Thousands of people walk through the Enchantments every year, but it's our special place. Most of them walk right under and past a certain tree, right on the trail. But it's our tree.
This was our day.
We aren't sure when we'll be back. We of course will take the kids up there and spend a few nights, exploring this little corner of the world with them that means so much to us. For now, we'll always remember the day we got up really early to go run through the most incredible place of all.
