​Today’s Miles: 22.5
Total Miles: 767.3

A few miles short of Røysvatn – August 3, 2016

A giant ice sheet caps a cluster of mountains, brilliant white against the black stone. Rain spills down in the lake below. The grey sheets draw patterns across the water’s blue surface.

The trail drops to a thin finger of land that reaches across the lake, but comes a hundred feet short of the far shore. Two boats wait, one on each side, their oars wet, a pool of rainwater slowly filling their hulls. I row across with the rain still falling, drag the other boat back to leave on the far side, then row across again. The rain sloshes back and forth with each stroke.

I walk up a valley as the rain runs down the next one over. The grey sheet shimmers in the sunlight. I watch it like a deer watches a distant wolf, waiting, never quite looking away, hoping it will just move on, but not trusting it to simply pass.

I climb up to a narrow lake as the clouds turn pink and the rain catches on a string of mountains in the distance. It swallows then whol and they disappear in a grey mist. I set my tent and wait for the rain to arrive then drift to sleep with the sound of water hitting fabric.

The rain, always the rain, sometimes on me, sometimes drifting through the distance, but never gone. The mountains change, the lakes change, the valleys change, but the rain is constant, always somewhere, always stalking, always waiting to catch me.