Note to self: never wear jeans when traveling in the back-country.

As annoying as those techy gear heads may be with their stickers, cliches and label flashing, “cotton kills” is not one to poo-poo. After spending a day in denim hiking in the Lochsa, on the Idaho-Montana border west of Lolo pass, in thick cedar-hemlock forest, through dense vegetation, off trail, in a steady snow-rain, up hills with no less than 50% grade, taking one step forward and regularly sliding a foot down, I began to sense a life lesson coming on. Starting and finishing the day with a swift water river crossing really helped pummel the message deep into my resistant, stubborn, denim-loving, techy-loathing, psyche.

I was wet. Dangerous wet. Hypothermic wet. At one point I mentioned to my equally miserable company (who were all smartly dressed in rain gear and were less wet), that if, say, for instance, on one of the hundreds of slides I made downhill I tweaked a limb, rendering me woods-bound and I had to sit and wait for them to get help, I would die. As long as we were moving, I was fine. As soon as we stopped, I went teeth-chatteringly, ice cream headache cold. Later in the day, movement wasn’t doing much for keeping me warm either. I was losing the battle.

I can’t express the amount of heart-singing joy that emanated from my soaked being when the car was in sight. There were some morals that walked out of the woods with me that day:

1) techys are right, cotton really does kill;
2) a first aid kit with an emergency blanket was in order; and
3) I am in love with seat heaters.

Kathryn is a Missoula-based writer, editor and recovering field biology underling-- i.e., she did all the dirty work in the worst conditions. Call her a tree-hugger and she'll kick you in the shins. When she is not writing, she's out on the trails running her dogs. Good luck trying to keep up with her.
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