Have I ever mentioned that I am perhaps a bit stubborn and a bit slow to change directions? There’s an axiom from the world of commodities and stocks: Your first loss is your best loss. Which is another way of saying “don’t throw good money after bad.” That came up while hiking in the rain with my upset dog this week.

Some readers may know that we’ve had an exceptionally wet summer in Northern Colorado this year. Almost every Thursday evening hike that my Mountain’s Edge Meetup Hiking Group has scheduled has been cancelled. For rain.

But this Thursday it looked like things were different. And I had been training my beloved CB to hike with his doggie backpack so that when we finally got a chance, I could show up with my dog and be cool. Like another hiking club member who always hikes in a tennis skirt and has this black Cockapoo. Plus, I reasoned, CB would love it! What dog doesn’t love the woods?

 

Trouble at the Trailhead

When I got to the trailhead, some of the friends were there. Others, no. And then, I noticed the sky had suddenly become gray. And a rumble was heard in the distance.

“That’s it! Thunder, forget it!” a couple of people said as they headed for their cars. They were Normal People and they didn’t hike in the rain. Only me and “Jack” seemed minded to go up the hill in the face of incipient rain. He was getting out his poncho, and I took out my raincoat. What’s a little rain? It was just a few drops. I put on CB’s backpack and we headed up the hill.

“I have never been on a hike that people bailed on, because of weather, that didn’t go great in the end,” said Jack, striding along with a walking stick, which seemed to highlight the skinny bareness of his legs emerging below the rain poncho. 

Doggie Rebellion

I walked behind. Jack was going fast and I was struggling to drag CB up the hill. CB was mad because he doesn’t like his backpack. And he also doesn’t like rain. This is why the post is called Hiking in the Rain with an Upset Dog. But I make him wear a backpack so I don’t have to carry doggie cleanup materials. I feel guilt if I don’t clean up after my dog. But the idea of carrying dog poop the entire hike is too much. Therefore he has to carry disposable poop bags, empty or full, in the dog backpack, a small price to pay, in my mind, for him to get the chance to get out in the great outdoors. But for first two hundred yards or so, CB tends to pull back on the leash, angry about the backpack.

So I was dragging him.

Jack forged ahead, as the rain increased.

“It seems to be getting worse,” I said.

“Maybe,”

“It should stop soon, though, right?”

We talked a little about the recent tax raised on homes in Fort Collins. Jack is of the opinion that this is highway robbery. CB got over the backpack sulk but the rain kept getting harder. We crossed the creek and scrambled up the other side, the steep part, where every footfall is a stone step.

We talked about Lars, who 15 minutes earlier, before he jumped in his truck and left the trailhead, had shown us a picture of his new girl friend. “Where’d you meet her?” I asked.

“Match.”

“So good on Lars who’s got a new girlfriend,” I said now, noticing that the water from the rain was getting worse, and was rolling into the collar of my raincoat and my arms were getting wet.

“Oh yeah, well, I give it two months, then that will be it and he’ll get another the same way.”

“You really think so?”

“This has been ongoing for a year,” Jack said knowingly. “A new one every two months.” The rain increased.

“We’ve got to find somewhere to wait this out,” I said. My hair was getting soaked. I tried to put the hood up on my rain jacket but it fell down. Jack just kept going.

Hiking in the Rain with my Upset Dog

“Here,” he said, “under this tree in the lee of this rock.” I’m sorry to say that the rock just didn’t stop much of the water. The rain began to really pour, like in New Orleans. CB, noting the situation, huddled up close to the tree we were under and began to whine.

Water was everywhere. I noticed that it was beginning to run in a rivulet down the trail. I had a vision of a flash flood coming down the canyon we had just hiked up. The news story: “Woman, 57, died in hiking accident with dog.” Subhead: “Dog’s backpack may have slowed them down, been final straw.”

As Jack, CB, and I stood in this ineffective shelter, I told a little bit about my year, how I was going back to school for the admin certificate, about the battle royale with my mother, all that stuff.

The Problem Today

It didn’t stop raining. CB, by the way, continued whining. The whining was now competing with the sound of the rain, which showed no sign of slowing down.

The Costs of Engagement

“I think my dog has just about had it.” 

Jack looked at me. I could not tell you what he was thinking. But I can tell you what I thought. I thought “Ah, sometimes we don’t want to think about things and figure them out, what went wrong and why. Sometimes we want to just keep going, and hope that magically, it will stop raining. But the thing is, the odds for things stopping are not all the same. It always stops raining, but maybe not very soon. Maybe not until tomorrow. Maybe not until you’ve been washed away by a flash flood.”

I Insist We Give Up

The rain pounded as hard as ever. “Look Jack we gotta go down,” I said. And CB whined the same message in Dog.

Jack was disappointed. He didn’t want to give up, even though by this time my feet were wet, sloshing in my wet wool socks, my arms were wet, and the rivulet of water running down the trail had doubled in size and was matched by a rivulet of water running down the back of my collar where I apparently hadn’t put my hood on correctly. CB was whining louder than ever. Both his backpack and mine were soaked.

“Well, I can’t actually argue,” Jack said. “Though I admit I don’t quite agree.”

“My raincoat hasn’t worked,” I said. “The water got in.”

“It got in through the collar,” he told me.

It only occurred to me the morning after the hike that, in struggling to take care of CB and keep up with the fast striding Jack, I’d had no chance to adjust my gear. Had I had that time, perhaps I wouldn’t gave gotten wet inside the coat, and might have been able to continue. Although CB had checked out by this time. The whining was constant, along with a plaintive stare.

It seems to me now that the three of us were like a dysfunctional family, focused on a goal that was receding in the distance, and none of us able to help the others … that happens sometimes, doesn’t it. Not all hikes end well. But that’s the adventure of hiking, the bad hike that makes you grateful for a good hike. 

All’s Well That Ends Well

Sometimes, and when you’re in that situation, you have two choices. Refuse to admit that things have gone south for good, and keep striding on, getting wetter and wetter, hiking in the rain with an upset dog, or admit it didn’t work and call the whole thing off.

We got back to the cars, the creek not having flooded — though it had risen several inches, doubling in size — and I turned on the heater. CB, freed of his backpack, sat in my lap. The REI windbreaker shell, which had been soaked, dried within ten minutes once exposed to the heater. We began driving back down the gravel road from the trailhead. By the time I’d driven the mile to the park gate, I was warning up, and I felt good, inside the car. There’s nothing quite like being warm after being cold for a while. I felt like it was a good hike after all, incomplete though it was, I was glad we tried, even if it failed.

Sometimes, you don’t have to get all the way to the top to feel like you’ve won. That may be hard to accept sometimes. Like my mother says, first loss, best loss. But you also have to reflect on your loss — and enjoy the recovery after you retreat. And plan for a better time next time.