It was on fire when we got here

July 1

I awoke crisp and bright, the plan for an epic day ready-formed in my mind. Breakfast, breaking camp, and striding out into this new sunshine I'd been given was all that I could ask for. 

And so I rolled out the morning like a piece of pie dough, slowing to stare at the towering spires of rock and then speeding back up again. There are those days, my favorite days, when the miles are like a ball of yarn you've tossed down a slope. Your body ceases to be a cage and and becomes a sleek vehicle; your mind stops chewing the cud and reliving the past and just coolly observes the glory of the world.
Yes, these are glorious days. Days of enlightenment. Days during which you are so overly self-satisfied with how blissed-out you have become that you leave your water filter someplace and suddenly come to the grim realization that you're about to be out of water and there's nary another hiker in sight from whom you could borrow a filter or purification solution.
Huh.
Shit.
Well, I reasoned, better to drink some "live" water than no water at all. That's what I like to call untreated water when I drink it: "Live water." It's not a term I invented, but I do think it's a pretty clever rebranding of "non-potable water." Makes it seem like perhaps the bacteria and protozoa in there are new, beneficial probiotics.
Who knows, I thought to myself as I filled my Platypus with water from a little mountain stream. It's probably fine. It's not like there are that many things living up here on these alpine meadows that could shit in this water.
And on cue, a marmot stuck his insolent little head up and chirped at me. Screw you, buddy.

Thusly dispirited and brought back to the reality of my existence -- nasty, brutish, and potentially about to center around diarrhea -- I hiked down to Carson Pass.
I had great hopes for a yogi here. No, not a guided stretching instructor with vague spiritual aspirations, but an opportunity to "yogi," that is, charmingly panhandle for food and/or beer in the fashion of Yogi Bear scheming on a picnic basket. But there were few vehicles stopping as the dusk grew dim, and they were primarily big pickups and shiny BMWs -- not very good prospects. I shuffled on.

So I punched up over a notch in the ridge separating the highway from the wilderness beyond. There was a pleasant drop down into the canyon on other side. I couldn't see any sign of other campers, but I smelled smoke. There were people somewhere down there, and I intended to ask for the use of their filter.

I found camp at a stream crossing underneath a broad, sheltering pine. Just on the other side of the creek was the source of the smoke: Two boys, or perhaps they'd just crossed over into the territory of young men, were huddled next to the sad black remains of their fire. I recognized immediately that they had committed the cardinal sin of no-trace camping: They a had made a new fire ring.
Or rather, they had failed to make a new fire ring; they had just made a fire scar on the flat, grassy ground. But you know, it's bad form to scold people when you plan on begging them for the use of their water filter, so I simply said hello and prevailed upon their kindness. They regarded me with a little fear and shame, clearly cognizant of their crime.
But we both let it pass. I didn't want to chew them out, and they wouldn't have had mich to say in their own defense -- after all, it hadn't been on fire when they got there.