Conceding his long battle with lymphoma in 2001, punk rock superstar Joey Ramone requested U2’s “In a Little While” to be played as he slipped away. No doubt Joey heard a life-after-death-affirming message in Bono’s beautiful song. I’m sure lyrics such as “In a little while, I’ll be there. In a little while, this hurt will hurt no more. I’ll be home,” spoke to a man ready to give up a long, difficult fight.

In truth, the song is actually about a man suffering through a hangover.

As Bono’s words pulsed through my headphones I struggled to put one foot in front of the other up an incredible incline that never seemed to end and I began to prefer Joey’s interpretation. I wanted to lie down, slowly drift away to Bono crooning “slow down my beating heart.”

But I didn’t. At the top of the ridge stood a boulder just off the path that curiously resembled a chair. I sat.

My hike was designed more of a training jaunt in preparation for a Cloud Peak run later this summer. I wanted to find out my limitations – which is a fancy way of saying that I wanted to make sure that I won’t embarrass myself in front of the exceptionally patient man I convinced to guide me.

I chose a trail listed in my Falcon Guide as “moderately strenuous” because it listed the majority of the Cloud Peak run as only “moderate.”

Now, one thing I’ve learned about the folks who write the Falcon Guides is that they either grossly under-estimate the trails they rate, or they grossly overestimate my abilities. But no matter, I blindly tug along every time.

I occasionally had to convince myself to keep moving all the while understanding that the further I went, the longer my return trip would be. I also had to convince myself that the cold, wet snout I felt creeping up my shorts didn’t belong to a bear that snuck up on me while I listened to my music a little too loudly.

“Slow down my beating heart.”

It was only a dog -- a friendly dog that belonged to a friendly couple from Sheridan that had come up behind me while I sang along quite loudly and somewhat effeminately to Allison Krause. I asked their name and the woman started by saying, “It’s an unusual German name.”

Unusual enough for me to forget by the time I found a keyboard.

She invited me to hike with them because seeing a solo hiker always made her nervous. Her husband gave me the “crazy” sign behind her back. It’s a form of communication all us husbands are familiar with – the finger points to the head and makes a circular motion while the mouth lip-synchs “yap, yap, yap.”

But I understood where the woman hiker with the unusual German name was coming from. She must have seen me ford the stream earlier. I would be concerned for me.

The ford: I ran into a trio of teenage boys at the bank of the snow-melt fueled stream and asked if I needed to cross in order to stay on the trail. They confirmed. I turned back.

But then a sudden rush of bravado took over and I attacked that stream as the three teens tried to hold back the laughter. Granted, the water wasn’t rushing as much as I would like to crow, but my nerves were unsettled nonetheless.  I may not be familiar with my physical limitations when it comes to stamina and steep climbs, but I am familiar with my own limitations when it comes to balance – you certainly wouldn’t find me on a high wire (at least not for very long).  And, of course, I slipped at one point, knocking the plastic water bottle out of my pack and sending it down the stream.

As I sat on the other side I made a mental note to purchase a trekking pole before my trip to Cloud Peak. Then I thought about my increased carbon footprint. A plastic water bottle – floating down the Middle Fork of Tensleep Creek, coming down the mountain and across the plains, eventually finding the ocean and spending the next kajillion years of its life in one of the five massive ocean garbage dumps -- my contribution to the job security of Greenpeace.

The environmentalist in me felt horrible. The rest of me was grateful that the only other ones to be the wiser were the three teenagers who valiantly tried to save it unsuccessfully. And, of course, anyone who might run across the water bottle and notices the big black Sharpie marking on the bottom that reads, “Vines.”

But then my grief was overcome with pride. The water bottle may have fallen victim, but dang-it-all, I made it.

Take that, Bono.

Then a sanctimonious Irish brogue crept into my head.

“Now, how are you going to get back, numbskull?”