Merciful springs

We went to the big REI “grand opening” the other day, which is to say we showed up a little after 10 a.m. on Sunday morning, the third day of the event.

If we had shown up earlier, like an hour earlier, we might have gotten a free Nalgene water bottle.

I saw a friend who had one.

“I don’t like Nalgene water bottles,” I said. “You ever try to walk and drink out of one? It’s like drinking out of a tea cup.”

Which is true.

But it wasn’t the water bottle he was after. It was what was inside, which was a $50 gift card.

“Jackpot!” he said.

I dunno. The store is nice enough. But I didn’t see anything I couldn’t buy at any of the other outdoor stores in the valley, to be quite honest.

Somehow I heard a rumor that the store itself had a climbing wall. It didn’t.

But back to water bottles. The best water bottle is the good old plastic one-liter soda bottle. A few years ago at a wilderness first aid talk I learned a cool trick to wrap the bottle in gaffers tape (or similar sticky tape). That way, you always have a piece of tape on hand without having to carry a whole roll.

Soda bottles are super cheap, of course, and they’re easy to drink out of while you’re moving. (Sorry Nalgene).

You also don’t get too worked up if you lose one or poke a hole in one. I know a lot of hikers like “hydration systems” but poke a hole in one and you get everything in your pack soaked in a hurry.

The boy and I have a simple hydration system. He’s supposed to remember the water bottles. If he doesn’t, we end up drinking out of the creek. I once drank out of a puddle in the Bob Marshall Wilderness.

It was a little bit of water sitting in a horse track. I filtered just enough water out of it to plug the filter, but boy, it might have been the best drink of my life, as it was one hot day and I still had a long way to go.

The thing about the Bob is the map will show plenty of blue lines that are supposed to be streams. At some point or another, like a rainy day, in say, June, they probably are.

But by a boiling hot day in late August, they’re dry washes.

One trip last summer was like that. All the blue lines were dry. The wind was blowing and it was 90 and my lips were sandpaper. One dry wash had one wet puddle. We sucked just enough water up with the filter to fill an empty soda bottle and didn’t spill a drop. It was great water.

But the best water is still the sort where you drop on your hands and knees on a hot day and suck it straight from the ground into your mouth as it bubbles out of the Earth.

I call these merciful springs, because more than once they’ve kept us going; as they always seem to be in the right place at just the right time. Feels like someone is looking after you and the water ... the water is unforgettable.

Chris Peterson is the editor of the Hungry Horse News.