I was not alone.
I left important details out my previous message, and a minor detail about yesterday's message. I was not alone on the trip to the Capitol Hill Farmer's Market or the hikes in the wilderness. I was with "J".
"J" was in a life-threatening car accident in December, before I knew her. She's always been an outdoors enthusiast, and Lake 22 is one of her favorite Seattle-area hikes. Yesterday was her first serious wilderness hike since the accident; she has been through a lot of rehabilitation to regain her strength since her hospital stay.
Before the accident, she probably could have blown past me on a hike, but yesterday she had to remind me to take it easy. Where the trail was difficult, particularly the rocky stretches through the mountain meadows, I held her hand to steady her, because she has an ankle that's still healing. (Sometimes she steadied me too.) She has some other injuries that are still healing too, and until they're fully healed she's at greater risk of re-injury if she were to fall.
But the hiking means a lot to her, and part of the motivation for the hike was so she could prove to herself how much progress she has made in the healing process.
She was the one who noticed the suspicious-looking guys at the Granite Falls parking area and warned me to wait until they left. She guided me to the falls. She showed me the way toward Lake 22 and described the trail-head location well enough that I spotted it while she was distracted. She told me to not read the interpretive signs at the beginning of the Lake 22 hike, to challenge me to guess what was special about the trees (that they were old growth).
On the way up the Lake 22 trail, one of the groups of people that we greeted as they passed on their way down the trail was a party of two or three twenty-something guys. One of them greeted "J" saying, "Hi sweet thing", in a tone that was clearly complimentary. She didn't hear the exact words, but felt quite flattered when I repeated them to her.
When we got to the lake, we both took scenic pictures, and took a few pictures of each other. The self-portrait video was the only picture that we got that included both of us, since I forgot how to use the self-timer on the camera to get stills together. But we made a composite image of us by taking one of each of us with the camera on a pocket tripod. I'll share pictures when I get a chance.
As with an earlier message where I wrote a lot about "J", this is friend-locked for now.
Update (late July): "J" doesn't mind making this public now.