Danger on the Divide

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Maggie Slepian | Longreads | August 15, 2024 | 5,530 words

My first overnight in the woods was more than 10 years ago. I remember lying awake, clutching my bear spray and satellite communicator, listening for the difference between this twig breaking and that twig breaking. My miles to camp had been wracked with imagined scenarios of charging grizzlies, lightning storms, and debilitating injuries. But when I woke up in the morning the biggest animal at camp was a squirrel, the sky was clear, and I made it back to my car without incident. The next time I was less scared. The time after that, even less.

Eventually, I went into the woods enough that I stopped being afraid.  

The Great Divide Mountain Bike Route was not my first long-distance backcountry tour. It wasn’t even my second or third. My concern for danger was minimal, reduced even further by the security of riding with my partner, Matt. Between his backcountry guiding and my thru-hikes, we had spent hundreds of nights in the woods. 

The “Divide” is a legendary bike route spanning nearly 2,700 miles on mostly dirt roads, crossing New Mexico, Colorado, Wyoming, and Montana before entering Canada. As far as extended tours go, it falls in the middle of difficulty and remoteness. It’s not easy, but most of the riding isn’t technical and you share much of the route with off-road vehicles, hopscotching between towns every few days. Prepare adequately and the risks will be nothing experienced backcountry travelers haven’t previously encountered. Manage water, watch out for rattlesnakes and bears, try not to fall off your bike.

A few friends had completed the route the year prior, both regularly riding 90 miles each day. They recounted their trips casually—one broken chain, a few grueling passes, some Achilles issues. On paper, the logistics were also easier than my thru-hikes; the only moderate concern was our compressed timeline. Matt had to be back for late-summer guide work, but if we averaged 70 miles per day, we’d have time for rest days and any mechanical issues.

We ruthlessly reduced our pack load, eliminating extra weight to make room for water and account for the oddly shaped bike bags on our ultralight setups. I removed my extra mid-layer, swapped our cookset for a smaller model, and we decided against the satellite communicator. The route was highly populated and the older inReach weighed a hefty eight ounces. It hit the no pile with a thunk.

We started in early June, heading north against the prevailing winds. The New Mexico sun scorched my back, dust settled on my bike frame. I was jittery and excited, overthinking every squeak and clank as my loaded bags settled against their brackets. I was hot and aching, but I knew what to expect. The exhaustion, soreness, and chafing of the first few hundred miles would soon settle into routine: wake up, pack bags, eat, bike, filter water, eat, bike, find camp, eat, sleep. 

Like most of my trail notes, my journal entry from the first day is short and clinical. No waxing poetic about the journey and little interiority, but I do remember being surprised by how hard it felt.

6/7—Took two hours to assemble gear, took off around 10:45. Fast pavement for 20 miles, then five miles of awful rutted gravel next to a highway. Then 15 miles of rolling dirt and I started feeling really sick and bonking. Nearly puked. Heat exhaustion. 50 miles. Camped in a cow pen.

Within a few hundred miles it became apparent that Matt was a much stronger cyclist, and he wasn’t taking as much heat damage. I rode alone for most of the day, usually a few miles behind him. I’d push my bike up steepest climbs, squinting for the silhouette of a person standing over a bicycle, desperate for a break but too embarrassed to ask.

Halfway through New Mexico, I was so lightheaded that I tipped over when I reached him at the top of a climb, slumping into the sand with my bike clattering on top of me. 

“I’m fine,” I mumbled, “just struggling with the heat.” Every part of my body was some barbaric combination of hot, chafed, aching, sunburned, or bruised. 

I tapped the GPS app and groaned. It had taken me all day to ride 50 miles.

“I really can’t keep going,” I said, my face hot. 

Matt nodded and lowered his bike. “OK, do you think you’ll be able to start riding more miles when we get out of New Mexico?” 

“Yeah, of course.” But I wasn’t sure. 

My confidence eroded by the day. My stomach felt constantly upset, my handlebar angle never felt right. I developed sciatic nerve pain and spent each day counting down the miles until I could crawl into the tent and go to sleep.

Matt was patient, but I knew if he was alone, he’d be riding faster and pushing more miles. I felt the familiar creep of inferiority and began to withdraw, not wanting to bring attention to how much I was struggling. 

It got worse as we crossed into Colorado, 700 miles into the route. The Colorado border was my mental landmark for when I should be feeling better, should be riding further. Instead, every day felt like a battle between myself, my bike, the sun, the rough roads, and performance anxiety.

My journal entries from the end of June all read similarly.

6/22—60 miles. Started at 6:30 and made it 55 miles to Tomichi Trading Post by 2 p.m. Finished with 13 miles slightly uphill into a headwind on the highway which sucked. Then five miles up Marshall Pass Road and camped in a stupid pullout. Butt nerve hurts, back hurts. Had a slightly better morale day thank god. Sick of feeling like I’m inadequate. 

Feeling ashamed about riding less than 75 miles per day might sound outrageous, but in the long-distance world, comparing mileage is the basis for most conversations. I do it too—it’s how I gauge the difficulty of a route and the other person’s skills. This far into the Divide, struggling to ride more than 60 miles per day put me in a category I did not want to be in.

We crossed Colorado like this, my limits putting pressure on our timeline and resulting in fewer rest days. By the time we reached the Wyoming border, we’d only taken one day off in Steamboat Springs, 1,200 miles in. 

I was so wrapped up in my own head at this point that I didn’t stop to look at Matt, or what his body had started to look like. 

We stopped in Rawlins for a final resupply before entering the Great Divide Basin, a section I’d been dreading since the beginning. Despite the austere beauty of the desert with its herds of wild horses, the Basin is something to be endured—120 miles with limited water and almost no relief from the sun. On the wrong days, you’ll face relentless headwinds. On the very wrong days, fierce storms in a treacherously open landscape.

Matt rode ahead as we entered the final straightaway. As he vanished into a shimmering mirage, a pickup truck appeared by the side of the road and three heavy-shouldered dogs launched from the  bed. They swarmed my bike, lunging at my calves as I yelled and swung a water bottle at their open jaws.

The man lit a cigarette, silently watching me cry and kick at his dogs. 

“Call them back! Please!” I yelled, my voice breaking. 

I caught one in the teeth and it tumbled into a cluster of cacti. I pedaled hard on trembling legs over the washboard as the man stood, still watching. It felt like an omen. 

I left my dinner untouched that night, nauseous from heat and stress. When I closed my eyes, I saw the glow of the man’s cigarette, felt the heat of the dogs’ breath on my legs. 

On our second day in the Basin, Matt rode next to me for nearly 30 miles.

“Are you OK?” I asked as we stopped at the only creek of the day, coaxing brackish water through our tired filter. “You never ride with me.”

“I don’t know,” he said, tightening the cap on his bottle. “I feel bloated. Stomach’s off. Maybe I ate too much last night.” 

I fell behind soon after, riding alone into a roaring headwind. 

I wish I could say his uncharacteristically slow pace raised alarm bells, but I was exhausted, not eating enough, shaken by the dogs. If I hadn’t felt so demoralized, if Matt was more vocal about how he was feeling, maybe we would have suspected something was wrong. There are a lot of ifs when you play back your own choices, but the way it happened is neither of us said anything.

He rode on. I caught up. He rode on, I caught up.

Whatever extra attention we might have paid to Matt’s worsening stomach was eclipsed that night by one of the most severe storm systems either of us had ever encountered. By mid-afternoon, black clouds gathered like a bruised curtain across the sky. Dust devils spun across the road, stinging my legs as I squinted over my handlebars, startled to see Matt riding back toward me. The storm’s shadow chased him across the sage as he yelled over the howling wind.

“Maggie! We have to set up the tent. Now.”

We dragged our bikes off the road, grabbing at the snapping tent fabric as the poles whipped and buckled. The storm exploded overhead and we spent most of the night sitting upright in the flimsy shelter, clutching pole sections to keep them from collapsing. Three furious storms blew through over the next 10 hours, lighting and thunder cracking simultaneously and the tent flattening against our backs as we braced against the walls.

Somehow, everything held together. In the morning, we slowly gathered our gear, run too ragged to talk. 

Matt mentioned his stomach hurting again, but he didn’t mention how bad. 

I mentioned needing a day off, but I didn’t mention how bad. 

The morning was calm. Fear of the storm faded by the mile as we pedaled toward the tiny outpost of Atlantic City, Wyoming. So far on the Divide I’d been chased by dogs, climbed a tree to get away from a territorial bull, and shattered my derailleur a week into the route. But each of these dangers were past-tense; none raised my overall fear barometer. In my time in the backcountry I’d experienced worse.

My journal entry for this night is sparse but upbeat. I was excited to get to town, take a shower, and shake off the bad vibes from the Basin.

7/5—67 miles. Out of the fucking Great Basin. Did the 19 miles to Atlantic City on fumes. We got lunch at the mercantile and they were so nice. From there the rest of the day was great. One of the best out here so far. We even had a tailwind, then paralleled the Wind River range!! Camped by Big Sandy River and 38 to Pinedale tomorrow. The Basin can suck it. 

The next morning, for the first time in over 1,500 miles, I rode ahead of Matt. I leaned my bike against a stop sign before the final turn and peered down the dirt road. I waited so long that I checked the GPS app a few times, making sure I hadn’t missed a turn.

“You sure you’re OK?” I asked when he finally pulled up, looking drawn and tired. 

“Yeah . . . I’m good. My stomach is pretty upset, but I’m good.”

I peered up, his shadow blocking the sun. 

“OK, if you say so.”

Matt rode close behind on the final stretch to Pinedale, joking about drafting off me. He fell asleep soon after we checked into the motel, waking up to shower as the evening shadows lengthened through a gap in the curtains. I had been reading on my phone, but as he toweled off in front of the mirror I sat up, staring.

Even if you’re with a romantic partner, bike touring and thru-hiking is not a sexy endeavor. You are mostly unshowered, covered in bug spray, sweaty, and exhausted. Matt and I slept in dingy base layers, pulling sweat-crusted riding clothes on in the morning and smearing greasy sunscreen over any exposed skin. This was the first time I’d really seen his body in the last few hundred miles, and what I saw stopped me in my tracks. 

Deep shadows hollowed the space beneath his shoulder blades, and the full outline of each rib was visible under his skin. His stomach was concave as he bent over to dry off his legs, which were so thin I didn’t know how they’d pedaled into town.

“Holy shit,” I said, stunned at his skeletal form. “You’ve lost so much weight.”

I scanned his body, trying to make sense of what I saw. His cheeks were gaunt, his red-rimmed eyes sat deep in their socket. How had I missed this?

“Matt, you look really bad.”

“Ha, thanks Mags,” he said weakly, lying back down. “I’m not hungry, but if you want food you should grab some.”

I hunched over the bedside table, eating a messy Italian sub and watching Matt out of the corner of my eye. He slept the rest of the evening and I read my book until I fell asleep.

I woke up with a start a few hours later, the sound of violent sickness coming from the bathroom. I’ll spare the details, but it took any guesswork out of leaving town the next day.

We took a full day off to let him recover. There was no other option, and I was relieved to be off my bike. I spent the day wandering around Pinedale, bringing takeout back for Matt, digging crusty food wrappers from every pocket of my bags. 

Even with a full 24 hours off, I still procrastinated leaving the next day. We had been wrung out by the Basin, and Matt looked like a skeleton held together with skin. I almost asked for a second day off, but instead I dawdled, tightening the bolts on my seatpost bag, poring over gas station snacks while Matt waited outside.

“Are you sure you’re good to keep riding?” I asked, crumbling a bag of chips to fit in my frame bag.

“Come on Maggie,” he said, standing over his bike. “You just don’t want to get back on your bike.” 

The comment stung. I shut down.

If I’d felt more confident on the route, if he hadn’t made that comment, if we’d been communicating more, would I have pushed for another day off? If, if, if.

I snapped my helmet under my chin and pushed off from the curb. 

The first hour was rolling pavement with a light tailwind and clear skies, some of the easiest riding of the whole route. But after the pavement turned to dirt, each mile felt increasingly remote as we pedaled silently side by side over the worsening terrain, navigating ruts big enough to bottom out a truck. 

We reached the turnoff for Mosquito Lake after 50 miles, startled to see a camper through the bushes. We hadn’t seen another vehicle in hours, and I felt a little guilty disturbing the family who probably assumed they had the lake to themselves. We gave them a quick wave, then set up in a stand of trees out of sight. 

After dinner, Matt walked to the lake. I read in the tent, relaxing for the first time in days as I listened to the quiet hum of conversation. If he felt good enough to eat dinner and talk to the father of the other group, his stomach issues must have passed. I counted whatever blessings we had that he’d gotten sick on a night we happened to be in town. 

My final entry from the Divide, written with Matt reading in the tent next to me, is my most positive.

7/8—Took almost two full days off because Matt got sick. Did the 38 into Pinedale then got a hotel, then Matt got super sick so I got us another hotel across town. Nice to take a day off. He’s feeling a bit better so we did 50 miles to Mosquito Lake. Nice campsite, pretty ride today once we got onto the plateau. Wyoming is so pretty now that we’re out of the horrible Basin. 

I was jolted into half-consciousness around 11:30 p.m., understanding something was wrong before I was fully awake. As the dark confines of the tent gave way to variations in shape and texture, I realized Matt wasn’t asleep next to me, but sitting up, huddled against the tent wall.

“Matt?” I whispered, patting around to feel where he was. “Are you OK?”

“No, something’s wrong.” He grimaced, teething flashing white in the dark. 

He tumbled out of the tent and I heard him being sick in the bushes. Shit. He’s still sick. Shit shit shit. 

He crawled back in, mumbling that he felt better and I felt my muscles unclench. We might be OK. I closed my eyes and willed myself back to sleep.

Unknown minutes or hours later, I shot awake again as he sat up, hunching over in the twisted sleeping bag material. 

“Matt!” I whispered again, trying to suppress my panic. He didn’t respond, but let out a wet burp that filled the tent with a rancid stench. Rotten fruit, spoiled garbage, spilled juice fermenting in the bottom of a cooler. He burped again and the smell got stronger, a blaring alarm that something was very wrong in his body.

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“It hurts to burp,” he said hoarsely. “It feels fizzy.”

Fear and regret flooded every inch of my body. Leaving Pinedale had put us in a desperately bad, dangerous reality that we had plenty of chances to prevent. We were 50 miles from town in the middle of a national forest with no cell service, and Matt was sick enough that he wouldn’t be able to ride out. 

I had spent countless nights in the woods consciously and subconsciously adjusting my relationship to danger: preparing for it, tempering it, overthinking it, underthinking it, ignoring it. But no matter how desensitized we had become, the more time spent in the woods, the more of a numbers game you play with injury, weather, wildlife, exposure. Just because you don’t recognize the danger, it doesn’t mean it’s not there.

This danger wasn’t from anything we had considered or prepared for. It was in his body and we’d brought it out here. I didn’t know what was wrong with Matt, but my mind raced in a panicked, nonsensical zigzag through appendicitis, gastric hemorrhage, perforated ulcer. 

If Matt didn’t try to push through things. 

If I had been biking more miles. 

If we hadn’t left Pinedale. 

If we’d camped near a more populated road. 

If I had demanded we stay in town.

It’s hard to compare the implication of illness at home compared to the backcountry. At home, you can tap symptoms into a search bar, call 911, drive to the hospital if necessary. When you are as far from help as we were, every element of danger is multiplied. It wasn’t a branch breaking outside the tent or a bike wreck or even that storm in the Basin, but something more insidious I’d never even considered.

I shone my headlamp at the wrinkled map, confirming we were as far as I feared from any hitchhiking opportunity. If I had to, I could leave Matt and retrace our route toward town until I ran into someone with a truck. Otherwise we had one other option: the family around the side of the lake. We might be able to hitch a ride out with them. 

I asked the same questions every half hour, not expecting anything different and not getting it.

“Is it all around in your stomach?”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Mostly lower down.” 

“Is it your appendix?”

“I don’t think so.”

“Do you think it’s food poisoning?” 

“I don’t know.”

I stopped obsessing over our choice to leave town, and started focusing on how we could get out—a maddening choose-your-own adventure without the final pages. The family was our best option, and I started rehearsing what I’d say when they woke up.

Around 4 a.m. I started listening for signs of life from their campsite, outlining my plan to Matt, who nodded with glassy eyes. As the tent walls got incrementally lighter, I stepped through the wet grass, looking for movement by their camper. Nothing.

I played games with myself over the next two hours. In one hour it will be fully light. In two hours, you’ll know what’s happening. By tonight we’ll both be out of here. 

I rehearsed my lines again. Even in this stage of panic I was desperately resistant to ask for help.

Good morning, I’m sorry to bother you, but my partner got really sick last night. We were wondering if there was a chance you might be able to give us a ride to a main road so we can hitchhike into town? In my head I was calm and collected, stating the situation, politely requesting a ride. 

I left the tent three more times, wobbly from the prolonged stress, sleeplessness, and uncertainty. 

Finally, as dawn grayed the air and mist rose off the lake, the father of the group stood at the truck, digging for something under the topper. 

I stumbled through into the clearing, babbling an incoherent mess of apology, explanation, and request. I’m sorry for being a bother, my partner, the one you were talking to last night, he’s really sick, he’s been sick the past few days and we thought it was over but it came back, we don’t know what was wrong with him, we can’t get him out on our own, I’m really scared and stressed, can you please help us? Can we have a ride out? 

Aside from me biking for help, this family was our way out. I had no idea what was happening to Matt. I didn’t want to be in charge. I just wanted it to be over. Everything hinged on what he said. 

The man, whose name I would learn later was Mike, glanced around, maybe for a way out, maybe for someone to tell him I was a sunrise hallucination with wild eyes and wool socks stuffed into Crocs. 

“Please,” I said again, “is there any way you can help us?”

“I . . . no. I can’t get you out of here,” he said. I exhaled a sob and sank onto a wet stump. 

“We have no room in the truck. We have a dog, my family. Our whole truck and camper is full.”

“Please,” I repeated, desperation overtaking my horror at begging for help, “Can you just take Matt and leave me here?” 

He looked back at his truck. I held my breath. 

“You know what I can do,” he said, more to himself than me, “I have an inReach, I can message my mom and see if she can contact the Forest Service near Pinedale to send a truck.” 

“Ohmygodthankyou,” I blurted, smoothing my flyaway hair with a shaking hand.

“OK, that’ll work. Wait here.” Mike went to his truck, pulling out an inReach that looked just like the one we had left behind. 

Whenever I’d needed a ride out of the backcountry before, I’d just gotten to a road crossing and hitchhiked. I’d never considered calling for help—even in those hours of dread and anxiety, not once had I thought of the satellite communicator sitting at home. Mike startled me out of my self-flagellating thoughts, holding his phone and inReach as the devices relayed messages back and forth.

“She’s in touch with Pinedale, they’re going to tell me what to do.” 

I sagged with relief. “Oh my god OK, thank you, thank you so much.” 

“Forest Service is sending a truck,” I said in a breathless rush, crawling back into the cramped tent. “I don’t know exactly how it works, but they have things moving.” 

Matt sighed and mumbled something from the pile of his sleeping bag. I zipped the tent shut and lay back down to wait.

And wait. And wait. And wait.

Mike came over to our site three times with updates over the next few hours. It wasn’t Pinedale, but Jackson Hole. It wasn’t the Forest Service, but search and rescue. It wasn’t a truck, but an off-road vehicle more suited to the rugged terrain. He was kind and accommodating, deflecting my apologies at ruining their plans to leave the lake that day. 

The sun rose directly over the tent as the hours dragged by. I rolled Matt out, moved the tent into the shade, then rolled him back into it. I stared at my book without reading and checked my watch every five minutes. 

At one point, Matt blinked awake and rolled over. 

“I don’t think they’re coming,” he groaned. I feared the same thing but reassured him, straining to hear the sound of an engine over the whine of mosquitoes outside the tent. 

At 11:30 a.m., nearly six hours after I’d begged Mike for help and 12 hours after Matt had woken up sick, we heard the rumble of a motor growing steadily louder. I ran out of the trees to meet the hulking search-and-rescue UTV as it slowed to a stop 50 yards from our tent.

The 40-member Teton County Search and Rescue team is skilled in all sorts of rescue—everything from horseback riding to snowmobiling to caving to swiftwater. In 2023 alone, they recorded over 5,000 hours of active rescues. Of the country-spanning length of the Divide, I couldn’t think of a better county to have needed rescue in. 

Andrew and Ed, the volunteers who responded to our call, surveyed the scene and split up immediately. Andrew took Matt’s vitals while Ed spoke to Mike and myself, gathering information they hadn’t gotten through the third-party inReach.

I stuffed our gear into bike bags on rapid-fire autopilot as Ed loaded our bikes onto the back of the UTV. Andrew helped Matt into the back seat once everything was loaded and I sank with relief next to him. We were getting out of there.

Matt curled up on the seat during the 90 bone-jarring minutes as Ed and Andrew navigated every rut and bump we’d biked the day before. From there, we switched to the SAR truck they’d left at a more accessible parking area, and rode for nearly two more hours before being deposited at the Jackson Hole emergency room. The attending doctor ran blood tests and a CAT scan before giving Matt two bags of fluids and discharging us with a vague “gastrointestinal virus” diagnosis—a throwaway assessment neither of us believed was the full story. The rotten fruit smell had been from his body going into ketosis—a sign his body had run so far out of fat stores it had begun burning muscle tissue.

I booked an astronomically expensive hotel room and we coordinated a ride home for the next day with a friend. It was such a juxtaposition from where we’d been the night before—both mentally and physically—that I couldn’t believe it was true. We’d started the Divide right above the Mexico border, and 30 days later were evacuated to a town just a few hours from home. 

I walked in a daze around downtown Jackson, proud of how I’d handled the situation but replaying it over and over, trying to convince myself that I wouldn’t be getting back on my bike the next day. I had imagined conversations in my head, defending our choice to leave the inReach, why we left Pinedale, how we hadn’t been communicating. Everything I’d have to explain to my backcountry-savvy friends when we got back.

I could revisit each choice that led us to Mosquito Lake, but I could also omit details. When we retell events, we can choose how we present our own decisions, and I could spin the narrative without actively falsifying. It’s tempting to say there were no signs of anything wrong as we left Pinedale, that I hadn’t been worried. One sentence removes another questionable choice. 

To the casual outsider, Matt’s sickness looked like a scary event that happened to experienced people, but I worried about how it would reflect on us within the outdoor community. Matt and I are both outdoor industry professionals with thousands of trail miles under our belts. Our familiarity with the backcountry had muted our fears of dangers both real and perceived, and until he became sick, neither of us had felt prolonged fear along the route. It was just another month of sleeping in a tent. 

Back home, as I predicted, there were questions. Anyone without a lot of outdoor experience was curious about Matt’s sickness, which did end up being a good story. After not recovering at home, he went back to the doctor and tested positive for both giardia and campylobacter, on top of ketosis and the viral GI infection the ER doctors had picked up. He had been very, very sick—enough for its own sound bite without needing supporting details. 

But my backpacking and camping friends wanted more. Why didn’t we have our own inReach? Why did we leave Pinedale after he’d been so sick? Why hadn’t we taken more rest days? 

The lingering shame and rattling experience resulted in avoidance tactics: I’d acknowledge our choices and then immediately brush it off. 

“The route was populated; the inReach was bulky; we didn’t think we’d need it.”

“He said he was fine; I was embarrassed about being a weak biker; I didn’t want to set us back further.” 

Recovering after the trip felt hard enough, I didn’t want to publicly analyze our choices as well. 

Months later, after Matt had regained nearly 30 pounds, we finally had more direct conversations about the 1,600 miles leading up to Mosquito Lake and the final day of our trip.

“Why didn’t you want to stay another day in Pinedale? You were so sick, didn’t it seem serious?” 

“It’s the frog in the pot of boiling water,” he said. “I didn’t know how far I’d fallen. When you’re already depleted, you don’t really notice when the scale tips. You’re kind of already on the edge of falling apart.”

Out of everyone I spoke with after, Ed from the SAR corps was somehow the most actively involved and the most understanding. 

“You’d been out there for hundreds of days in the backcountry and never had a real problem,” he said. “Eventually something happened. That might not have had anything to do with judgment, but it’s a smaller margin of error when you’re in the backcountry.”

Ed’s contemplative kindness was a burden lifted. I could learn from this while releasing some of the shame and guilt I felt at our decisions. 

Matt and I have camped multiple times since that night and biked hundreds more miles together without incident. I have few concerns about another long-distance trip, though I can tell you I’ll always make room for the inReach and Matt assured me he’ll be more vocal about how he’s feeling. I’ve promised to be more upfront about my own needs, and we’ve talked about this enough that I’m confident our communication has gotten better. But is any of it enough to eliminate the risks?

There is no way to enter the woods without any element of danger. A 2,700-mile bike ride has so many potential hazards and built-in discomfort that most people will never attempt it. But if you accumulate enough experience, the Divide doesn’t just seem attainable, it seems pretty reasonable. Not only were the existing dangers not enough to stop us, they were so far outside my realm of reality I didn’t consider anything past wrecking my bike, running into a bear, or missing a water source. In the end, it hadn’t been any of those things. 

I thought about the road leaving town, turning from pavement to dirt, mile after mile winding deeper into the woods. If I really thought about danger, that the road might bring me somewhere I couldn’t get out of, would I still go? Do I think anything can prevent this from happening? Why do I believe I can do it again and again? 

At some point I will enter another stretch of forest that looks like the one leading to Mosquito Lake, or somewhere else that feels similar to that night. Maybe it will be back on the Divide, continuing north on the sections we didn’t finish. It will be one of the thousands of times I have left the pavement for the forest. 

There will be no snapping branches, no storm clouds, no fear of fall or injury. But maybe I’ll lie awake anyway, my relationship to danger altered just enough to keep me up. I rarely worry about weather or animals outside my tent anymore, but perhaps I’ll feel a twinge in my gut, real or imagined. Maybe, I’ll think, I should be scared.

Maggie Slepian is a full-time writer based in Montana. Her work focuses on the intersection of the outdoors, culture, and mental health, and has appeared in Outside, Lonely Planet, the Strategist, HuffPo, and elsewhere. If she’s not in the backcountry, she’s probably hanging out with her cat.

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Editor: Krista Stevens
Copyeditor: Cheri Lucas Rowlands
Fact checker: Julie Schwietert Collazo