For Mark Lauer, wherever I may find him.

My friend Tom Vanderbilt and I have exchanged notes recently about our various 50+ mile single-push efforts/debacles over the years (the sorts of experiences I should tattoo “It doesn’t have to be fun to be fun.” backward on my forehead to help explain to my senile future self as he stares, confused, at the bathroom mirror). To riprap an eroding memory, I’ve been rummaging through the archives of deleted social media accounts, in which, among the digital shoeboxes, I found this snapshot:

“In 2014, a friend and I crossed the Grand Canyon rim to rim to rim – 57 linear miles and 21,000 feet of elevation change – in just under 36 hours, including an overnight bivvy on the north rim. After crossing the Colorado, we were exposed to increasingly direct sunlight, with no place to hide, and no access to potable water for long stretches. Climbing 6,000 vertical feet up from the river, we slept under the stars in a residual snow pack, partially sheltered from 40-mph winds by ponderosas. The next morning, we dropped back down into a cloudless blue heat, retracing our steps through the vipergrass, red-flowering prickly pears, century plants, hemlocks, periwinkles, and all manner of other vegetation clinging to life down there amid the raw geology. We saw giant ravens and cliff swallows, pissing deer, a rare foxtail squirrel, a Gila monster perched on the edge of Bright Angel Creek, and hundreds of its diminutive cousins scurrying about everywhere else. We identified a couple of exotic psychoactive plants. We saw signs warning of bubonic plague. We heard rumors that thirst-crazed elk had figured out water fountains, and were attacking humans topside to get at them. I mistook a big piece of sandstone on Asinine Hill for a grinning, empty-socketed cranium; and then confused a terrace of mesquite shrubs for a long row of waxy yellow skulls staring down at us. Cognitive misfires, sure, but death was down there too, I think. We hid inside a cave at one point before deciding to hustle the hell off the canyon floor, where it felt like some giant, sadistic child was holding a magnifying glass over us to see if we’d catch fire. Whether because of heat stroke, caloric deficit, or just grosse fatigue, I was somnambulant climbing out. But I couldn’t resist a backward glance to snap this photograph. It’s the sort of view that would have turned Lot’s wife into a salt lick.”

Mark Lauer, wherever you are, let us procure a canoe and portage it across the whole of the Boundary Waters. Before it is too late.