Hi, I'm Willow Belden, and you're listening to Out There.

This is a podcast about the outdoors, from your windowow Belden, and you're listening to Out There. This is a podcast about the outdoors,

from your window box and garden, to the fields on the edge of town, to the forests, prairies, seashores,

and wilderness. On the show, we explore our relationship with nature, through stories, interviews,

essays, and even some fiction. We travel around the U.S. and the world with tales of love and heartbreak, passion and adversity,

desperation and triumph. A few months ago, we had an interview on the show where I talked about hiking the Colorado Trail.

The Colorado Trail is a 500-mile footpath, which goes from Denver to Durango,

through some of the wildest and highest places in the Rocky Mountains.

I hiked the trail in 2014, and it turned out to be one of the best things I've ever done for myself.

It changed the course of my

career and helped me process grief over my mother's death. In case you missed that story, you can go back

and hear it on episode nine. The episode is called Solace in Solitude. Today, we're going to hear

from another woman who set out on the trail. Her name is Aaron Jones, and like me, she was planning to do a through hike,

in other words, hike the entire trail in one season.

But her experience turned out to be very different.

Music On the first day, I hike near Denver.

The trail starts at Waterton Canyon. It's a blazingly hot day,

and at first the trail is not a trail at all. It's a wide dirt road that follows the South Platte River.

Large white pickup trucks pass me periodically, and when they do, I lean into the canyon side of the road.

Behind me, down the road, through the haze of heat, I notice another backpacker.

I stop in the shade for water and allow him to catch up to me.

I tell myself I'm allowing him, but he would have caught up anyway.

...