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Mountain Girl Mystique

She had no idea how deeply I was in love with her that summer of 1986 in the high country of the Colorado Rockies.

By Jeff Osgood

Found in: | Outside | Hiking |

I was in love and all she could think of was making sure I stayed hydrated, didn't go hypothermic or fall off a cliff. Her name was Lynette and she had no idea how deeply I was in love with her that summer of 1986 in the high country of the Colorado Rockies.

My love was doomed from the start. Taboos stood in the way like insurmountable pitfalls on some sadistic drill sergeant's obstacle course. I was 16; she was in her late-twenties. I was a camper on a six-week backpacking trip with eleven other teens; she was one of the three adult leaders. I had an impromptu, summer camp girlfriend, Alex. Lynette was dating one of the other leaders, a svelte, blonde, surfer-looking guy with a pack full of unchecked aggression named Bhaskar. If anything should have told me that my love for Lynette was unreachable, it should have been that I was up against a guy capable of growing facial hair and whose name in Hindu meant the sun.

As the summer progressed and we spent more miles together on the roads and trails of southern Colorado, I came to redefine my draw to Lynette. Love whittled to a crushing infatuation then stripped itself down to a consuming curiosity. Something about this woman held me rapt for six weeks, usurping and dulling captivating scenery of mountains, waterfalls, and wild flower-choked valleys the likes of I'd only ever seen on postcards.

But, initially, it was love and would not be quelled. The logical warning signs failed to punch through the static in my adolescent brain and I fawned over Lynette any chance I had. I sat near her during meals or the long van rides from base camp to trailhead. I laughed at all her jokes, just to prolong her genuine smile. There was something alluring about Lynette that went way beyond the classic definitions of beauty and sex appeal. Lord knows, it doesn't take much to arouse a teen boy. A stiff breeze across the lap is often all that's needed to prick the sides of intent. But Lynette had something else.

Lynette was the archetypal Western outdoor girl. She had long, straw-colored hair that she usually wore in a fat single braid. Even braided, her hair was so lengthy it dangled to her waist. She was slim with long arms. Around the campfire, when she hugged her knees to her chest, her arms looked long enough to wrap around twice. Her legs were strong, a product of many an expedition with a hefty pack. They were covered with a golden dusting of fine hair. The fuzz was almost invisible, only materializing in certain slants of light like a watermark on a 20-dollar bill. Her skin was toasted an even brown by hours under the high country sun. Her face was wrinkled beyond her years. The same unfiltered sun that roasted her skin creased her brow and cut starbursts into the corners of her eyes and mouth. The lines punctuated her moods. When she laughed, her glee was underlined. When she frowned, her anger was engraved.

I found Lynette to be intriguing because she was so different from most women I'd seen back home in Ohio. Midwestern girls were well kempt and wrapped up in the softness of preppy fashions. The back home girls had big hair, impractical clothes, and closely guarded facades. Their sense of style and mannerisms came from their mothers. The matriarchs of the Midwest all had helmets for hair, permanents shelacqued in place with a daily coating of hairspray. They wore too much make-up, perfume, and jingled with cheap jewelry on their way to Sunday morning service.

In sharp contrast, Lynette was raw, savage, unconcerned with appearance. It made her attractive.

One day, during a water break on the trail, Lynette perched herself on a boulder and lay back to warm herself in the sun. She tucked her feet in close to her body with her knees pointing skyward, hands laced behind her head. I walked by on my way to find a spot to sit. Elevated by the rock, her body was reclined parallel with my eyes. I lifted my head from the trail and my view locked in where her legs came together under her red hiking shorts. Beneath her clothes, her legs lost their tan and were instead enveloped in a deep pink hue, bright sun through apple-red shorts. Nestled at the convergence of those powerful legs, was a nest of golden hair and no panties. It took considerable effort to tighten my slack jaw and continue walking away from the rock without tripping over my own feet.

Every boy in the group had a tremendous crush on Lynette at one time or another. To get an idea of who was tantalized at any given time, one needed only to look to see who was hiking with her that day or eagerly volunteering when she assigned tasks. The temporarily enthralled took her side in disagreements. They secretly hated and admired Bhaskar. Eventually, each boy receded from Lynette, maybe to flirt with one of the other girls in the group. Some boys circled back to revisit earlier feelings.

Whatever label was applicable: crush, infatuation, puppy love, lust, I had it bad. So when the chance came for me to be alone with Lynette for a whole day, I would have shot the family dog to get the job.

The saying goes that there are no atheists in a foxhole. I would extend that to say there are no atheists wading barefoot through snowmelt streams.

"Good God, that's cold!"

"Sweet, weeping Jesus!!"

"Mary, mother of God, I can't feel my toes!"

And so it went, each camper seemingly touched the divine as he or she forded Squaw Creek as the day gave way to night. The group was a few hundred yards from what would be our camping spot in a clump of pines. We were headed for The Continental Divide in the Wiemenuche Wilderness. The plan was to make camp for the night and set out for Squaw Pass in the morning.

Bhaskar had ordered everyone to take off his or her hiking boots before crossing the swift creek. He'd had his fill of the whining that accompanied the chore of dragging a dozen adolescent flatlanders into the high country, and didn't want complaints about cold, waterlogged footwear in the morning to raise the din any higher than it needed to be.

Two girls were the last to cross and came together, holding hands. Ingrid, a plump girl from Wisconsin, led the way, reaching out her free hand for the closest person on the other side. Alex, an urbanized tomboy from New York City, dangled her boots by the laces. The swift water of Squaw Creek climbed up their legs, lapping at their shorts. The girls were not in step and each time Ingrid lunged forward, she pulled Alex along. They shouted orders to each other amidst shrieks of thrill and fear. In the middle of the creek, Ingrid gave Alex a big tug that sent her hurtling down, face-first with the weight of a full backpack pushing her from behind. Alex instinctively put her hand out to catch herself. Water splashed her face, she screamed, and Ingrid helped her right herself. But Alex came up empty handed. She had lost her boots. By the time this was communicated to the group and a few flashlights were dug out of packs, the hiking boots were gone.

While the campers struggled to pitch tents in the dark, the leaders tried to solve the problem of a shoeless hiker.

Dave, the final member of the leadership trio, said, "She doesn't have extra shoes in her pack. Ingrid's got an extra pair, but they're super tight, real blister makers."

"She's got sneakers back at base camp," Lynette added.

"We're going to have to go back and get them," concluded Baskhar,

scowling, angered by the situation.

Lynette volunteered to go.

"You can't go alone," Baskhar continued. "I'll go with you. Dave, you've hiked this trail before. You'll lead the group and we'll catch up with you at tomorrow night's camp."

"That's such a bad idea," Lynette countered. "Two of us are going to go for a pair of shoes and one is going to lead 12 kids up over a 12-000-foot pass?"

Dave agreed, "but you still can't go alone, Lynette. By the time you get back, it'll be late in the day and you'll have a lot of miles to hike to catch up with us."

"I'll go with her," I said.

They didn't even know I was listening. Bhaskar grimaced. Dave shrugged. Lynette made sure I knew what I was getting myself into.

"We'll have to get up before dawn and hike down to the van in the dark," she said stepping over to me. "Then, after we drive all the way to base camp and back, we'll have to hike what we hiked tonight plus whatever mileage the group covers while we're gone. We probably won't get to camp until nightfall."

Sounded like a promise of sore feet and exertion. More ground covered and elevation gained than I'd ever done before. But it was also a whole day of just me and Lynette, alone.

"It's cool," I said, trying not to smile. "I'll go with you."

Later the next day, at the same spot where we crossed Squaw Creek the evening before, Lynette and I trudged through the frigid water again. Alex's sneakers were jammed in the back of Lynette's pack. We were half-way across when she stopped and said, "You've got to be kidding me."

Twenty-five feet downstream, pinned against a rock by the current were Alex's hiking boots. In the dark of the two previous crossings, we had failed to spot them. Now, they stood out obnoxiously. I waded down and picked them up. Lynette sat on the opposite shore atop a boulder. I sat beside her and dropped the soggy boots in the gravel.

Lynette was pissed. "Before we go any farther, let's just get this out of our system. I can't believe we just wasted an entire day and her boots were right there. Shit!" She slung off her pack and stuffed the boots in with the sneakers.

I couldn't tell if she was mad because of the wasted time, she was worn out due to all the hiking, or if she was reprimanding herself for not looking for the boots in the creek in the first place. I couldn't pin down the exact source of her disappointment because I was having a great time.

All morning and into the afternoon, I had studied Lynette like a tantalizing riddle. Whether I was scrutinizing her strong shoulders and stalwart gait on the trail or sneaking sideways peeks at her during the van ride, I was giddily confounded with a blend of attraction and admiration. But when I tried to clearly understand this woman, all definitive images slipped my grasp like a watermelon seed pinched between thumb and forefinger.

Lynette stood and let out a huff as she shouldered her pack. "Let's go," she said, tracing the trail with her tight eyes.

The narrowness of the gulch below opened to a wide, sloped valley. As we pushed above timberline, the groundcover knit together in tight grasses and tiny round-leafed plants, sprinkled here and there with yellow buttercups. Half-buried boulders, crusted with orange and yellow-green lichen, rose out of the landscape like breaching whales. Above us were blazing white snowfields skirting down from troughs between craggy peaks, big Chief Peak looming highest of them all.

Lynette set quite a pace. The long day, the disappointing discovery of the boots, and the altitude silenced her. She bent into the climb. Her stoic determination exhibited the prodigious difference between her and just about every other woman I had known up to that point. My mother, in a similar situation, would have thrown up her hands and locked herself in the bathroom, weeping at the first sign of adversity. Lynette seemed to stoke it all into a hidden furnace that churned the machinery working her steady, strong strides.

Who was I trailing that day? Unknown to me then, I was following a chimera of many women: part western homesteading matriarch, part self-reliant frontierswoman. I was in the shadow of a hybrid Willa Cather and Calamity Jane, Jeremiah Johnson brimming with estrogen. I was walking in the boot prints of the force that got people in power to finally pen the 19^th Amendment and script Title Nine. But in that very moment, as an impressionable 16-year old boy, unschooled in history and culture, I was curiously chasing after a mysterious and burgeoning respect.

The mothers, the sisters, and the girls next door had both fed and fed off of the holdover images of the 1950's lady - kept, proper, servile, and lacking anything resembling a hard edge. And this was, intentionally or not, fostering the age-old sense of male entitlement. I had arrived in the west expecting the girls to be bringing up the rear on the trail, complaining the loudest about heavy packs and musty tents, and scraping dishes clean while the boys stoked the fire.

But here was this mountain gal, the fly in the ointment, the monkey wrench in the machine. Lynette bucked all the roles for the girls and women of that day and age. Torch your tutu, make a bonfire of your Barbies, and put on some damn hiking boots - all the better to kick life in the balls.

With just her being, Lynette reset the whole game board for me. After that summer, I would go forth with my eyes trained for other traits. I wasn't so na�ve and looped from the altitude to think I'd find some strong-legged, naturally beautiful lass stomping the streets of my provincial Ohio town with a fifty-pound pack. But I did find shards of the mountain girl mystique.

I started to see the bloody-shinned young ladies playing in our town's first all-girl scholastic soccer team. I took notice of the gals who wore their hair straight and long, un-tinted, un-gelled; they walked down the halls of school with their heads up and shoulders back, never needing an insecure glance at what all the other girls were wearing. These young women all had taproots of self-confidence, resourcefulness, and a bit of grit. And it made them positively glow. I longed to be near them, like I yearned to be near Lynette, so I could feel a little of those radiating traits and maybe foster them in myself.

That day on the trail, rushing to catch up with the rest of the group, I was on the heels of the type of woman I would track from that day on.

By the time Lynette and I reached the rest of the group, they were a half-mile shy of passing through the saddle of Squaw Pass and crossing the Continental Divide. They were stalled because one of the campers had run out of gas. Rachel, a tiny blonde girl, had bonked. She was hyperventilating, overheated, breaking out in hives, and starting to talk to herself when she could get enough air in her lungs to expel words. No one was really sure what was wrong with her, but we all knew she was not going to cross the Divide.

As soon as Lynette and I moved into the group, Rachel lunged for Lynette and wrapped her arms around her waist. To the others, Rachel looked like a little girl hiding from the boogeyman in her mother's lap, or seeking haven in the safe, seasoned arms of her grandmother. I saw it differently. Rachel was latching onto Lynette because she was the most solid thing on the mountain, and consciously or unconsciously, Rachel was trying to absorb some of that strength, confidence, and vitality I'd been basking in all day.

The leaders agreed that Rachel, for safety reasons, should return to base camp. With Rachel still padlocked to her waist, Lynette concluded that she should be the one to take her. She'd escort Rachel down, ferry her to base camp, drive around to the other side of Squaw Pass , and hike up to meet the rest of the group as they descended from the Divide. It was a plan, but again, Lynette would need someone to go along, better to have two healthy hikers when . . .

"I'll go with her," I said in a snap.

Bhaskar glowered at me. Dave shrugged. The rest of the boys kicked the toes of their hiking boots in the dirt of the trail, cursing their hesitation.

Lynette smiled. And although the sky had begun to purple and the tips of the high peaks were the only things around catching the orange-red rays of the waning day, I felt like a noonday sun was shining full on me.

I've seen Lynette a thousand times in hundreds of other women since that summer 22 years ago. I've glimpsed her every time I'm on a hike, her suntanned face sweeping past me going the other direction. I catch a blur of her wheeling through the paths and streets of town on a dirt-crusted mountain bike. I sense her in the way my wife naturally carries herself with absolutely no timidity and laughs, loudly with her whole being. And from time to time, I catch a hint of the spirit of Lynette in my own daughter, who at the fledgling age of four has flashes of sass and would rather swing from tree limbs than play inside with stuffed animals. My daughter bounds when we're out on walks, her brown braid, streaked with sun-tinted strands, whipping across her back, long enough to reach her waist.

Thursday, March 25, 2010
at 4:17:38 PM

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Elizabeth says:

Great story. I loved it!