The Myopia of Scale

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121 The Myopia of Scale Matt Roberts We are in the narrow bottom of Palmer Canyon, deep in the backcountry of Wyoming’s Wind River Range, when she breaks down. We had pushed hard past the noisy group of young boys at Palmer Lake in hope of reaching the flat open meadow of New Fork Park. Now Jenn is crying, standing on a gravel bar between braids of river bed with no sign of a definable trail, both sobbing and yelling at me. “I fucking hate this!” she shouts. There is nothing I can do to make her feel better. We are both stuck in this canyon, surrounded by steep walls and tall grass, left with no choice but to hike on up and out, hoping to hook back up with a maintained trail. A trail that will not offer us surprises, lose us in the seams, or subject us to the myopia of scale. Later, I will blame the map. I am used to the more detailed 7.5-minute topographic quadrangles at 1:24,000 scale, as opposed to the larger 15-minute map (1:48,000) we were using in the Wind Rivers. I had a compass. I know how to use a map, how to decipher the cryptic language of lines and colors. Yet, I feel as if the map let us down, had not prepared us for what we might find along those trails, or the trails themselves . We bought the map, A Hiking Map & Guide: Northern Wind River Range, WY (new waterproof edition), at an outdoor store in Pinedale. A gold sticker on the cover excitedly announced “Only $7.95!” and the blurb at the bottom was from the editors of a well-established outdoor magazine: “Ultimate maps!” But despite all the trails being marked and the contours drawn, as well as the warnings and guidelines located in the accompanying text, something was overlooked by somebody somewhere . I would not consider me and Jenn novice backpackers, having spent a fair amount of time in the out-of-doors humping full packs The maps were published twenty years apart and drawn to different scales, and we’re in the seam, the area of overlap between the maps where six or seven trails intersect. —Rick Bass, “The Lost Grizzlies” 122 Ecotone: reimagining place across a wide variety of landscapes, but the map left us unprepared for what we encountered in the Wind Rivers. The Highline Trail winds up the narrowing valley, long stretches straight up a grade, the rocky trail surrounded by house-sized boulders resting at the base of huge fans of scree. All around, dense stands of fir beard the chutes all the way up to where they appear to be nothing more than hints of serrated color, a clump of grass, moss on a rock wall. Looking up-valley differs from down-valley. The entire thing opens behind us, the Green River curling through the meadow far below, nothing more than a blue line from this vantage point. “If you don’t stop,” Jenn says, “I’m going to throw a rock at you.” When I turn around, the narrow valley unzips to reveal how much altitude we’ve gained and also how red-faced and out-of-breath Jenn is. This is on Day One. I have to admit that I am scared, afraid that things are not going to go well, that this trip will be a failure. Now that she has threatened to throw a rock at me, my imagination takes over and I start to worry again. But I should have started worrying earlier, when the backcountry rangers told us about the grizzly haunting New Fork Park. Or earlier still, when the off-duty ranger tending bar at the microbrewery in Pinedale told us about the grizzly shot and killed for feeding on cattle on the other side of the river. After leaving the microbrewery, we spent the night on the banks of the river, dark fingers of Douglas Fir creeping around the meadow down to the road alongside the Green River, cows dipping their heads to drink on the far side. Driving in, we passed a lone sign rising...