(a cloudy story for you)
The man who stalked me on the Hayduke is a meteorologist for the Belgian army. He asked how I understood what I understood about clouds and I told him I read the Cloudspotter’s Guide a couple times. I also look at clouds. I try to make sense of them. I also have a weird sense of barometry through pressure I feel in my ears, believe it or not. My ears ring and hurt me a lot, but the upshot is I’m very very good at predicting rain.
This was the fateful day I decided to sorta hike with him for a couple miles and give him a chance. To be friendly. Our last day, given the next we were going in different directions. It wasn’t a coincidence I was giving him a chance knowing we would soon be split by deep canyons.
We were in upper Buckskin Gulch and these dark clouds were amassing overhead and he was making a run for that deep gulch, concerned about the coming rain. WTF? OK. He pointed at the “freiga” (he was Flemish, must have been Frigga, like virga) and warned me. I told him it would not rain, but there would be good pictures! It didn’t rain. Those thunderheads dissolved and it was a dry night. I never saw him again after the next morning. I made the mistake of giving him a hug goodbye, and a quick kiss on the cheek. I sorta felt bad for him cuz he seemed lonely and clingy. I wished him the best. I truly believed I wouldn’t see him again, since we were taking very different routes the next day.
Nope. Even as I hiked alone through the Grand Canyon, I couldn’t really escape. He messaged me with his Garmin, and left notes:
Below are some of his photos of me, in reverse chronological order:
Heading for Buckskin.
This was a really cold day in Bryce where it sleeted. We bumped into one another in the bristlecones. I tried to ditch him by hiking fast then hiding in the woods off to the side of the trail. It almost worked but then he saw me. He thought I was peeing and was very embarrassed and hiked away. It snowed 6″ that night, which was perfect because it made full walls for my tarp. I wish I didn’t have to spend time worrying about where he was, and if I’d bump into him. I really just wanted to feel like I was in the woods alone.
I didn’t see him again until the next morning. I had dropped my phone, back-tracked to fetch it, and he was standing in the trail holding it. I didn’t like that. He couldn’t have helped it, but it still seemed creepy. I thanked him and hiked on very fast, finding some expeditious game tracks that got me way ahead, and again hid behind a huge ponderosa to stay dry in a big storm and hopefully let him pass, but he again found me. That evening I did the whole “hiding in the woods” thing for a while hoping to elude him. I couldn’t figure out where he was, ahead or behind! I camped in the most obvious spot, under the highway, so I could get to town first thing in the morning. He said he looked everywhere for where I might have camped. While I was out shopping he found the motel I was staying at and booked the room right next to mine.
On purpose.
Without asking me, or any contact with me. Luckily that evening and next morning we had the company of a rad local BLM employee, so I wasn’t “alone” with him. I helped him hitch back to the trail, and that’s where our Buckskin day started.
Below is the creepiest shot of them all, for me. He was above me on the Escalante where it meets Coyote Gulch, snapping pictures. Here I am, alone, so far from everyone, snacking and dealing with my demons (I dropped my phone and was in near-tears about going upstream in the knee-thigh-deep quicksand to find it), and this guy is quietly taking pictures from above.
I mean, taking photos of people in the wilderness is actually great because it helps a composition, but my overall feeling was creeped out because of his overall clingy-ness. It was nuanced. Part of the nuance was that I was out to solo hike, not pick up a hiking partner. I really wanted to be alone, and when I wanted company, I wanted to choose.
Later in Coyote Gulch I was dilly-dallying, knowing someone was ahead because I saw Innov8 tracks in Stevens Cyn. I took off my shoes and was working my way down when I bumped into him. Just standing there watching me. I finally had to meet this person I did not want to meet. I was nice to him, chatted idly and disinterestedly about backpacking gear, but every pore in my body was oozing “fuck off,” and he could not read those signals. This is typical. The minute you are nice to a guy, he thinks you “like” him. Sure, I liked him, but not sexually! Maybe it’s different in Belgium. But he can’t read the Utah weather, either.
In the end, I couldn’t see being friends with someone whose job it is to predict when the weather is best to drop bombs. Plus he revealed a pretty dark story about himself during our one picnic and meaningful conversation (of three conversations). Oh — and the “stalking” felt icky, too! I had to push him off a little more brusquely than I might have liked. It felt like *I* was dropping a bomb. Last I heard was the story about how he got trapped in a death-defying thunderstorm on top of Humphreys Peak. How does that happen to a meteorologist?!
(end of story)
I was lucky on both my Utah hikes to have lots of wild clouds to help set the mood and improve the visuals. (This picture is mine.) Since moving here I have started to notice the blue skies more and more. It just makes the clouds that much more special.
