Comma Dot Comma

This is part four of a five-part series about our ill-fated backpacking trip.

Dusk had fallen in the narrow valley and I was unfolding our tent in the narrow flat space between two boulders to see if it would fit while Dr. G. went to dig out a murky puddle in the hopes that it would fill with clear water overnight.  It was our only possible water source, about a foot wide and a few inches deep, mostly muck.  The former Boy Scout in Dr. G. comes out in times like this, and he had a feeling about this water hole.  He was going to be resourceful about it, and give it every possible chance of providing for our needs.

I noticed a tiny burrow in the flat spot where the tent had to go, but it was covered with leaf litter. I stomped over it and nothing happened.  It seemed abandoned, and anyway, there was nowhere else to put the tent.  “Guess how far we traveled in the last three hours,” Dr. G. said, GPS in hand.  I had no idea.  “Two point six miles.”  Wow.  It was the slowest hiking speed I had attained in my adult life.  We were only a little over halfway to our original Day One destination!  Our tent only has three poles, and although I couldn’t remember what order they were supposed to go in, I got the tent put together and solidly planted on its tiny patch of dirt.  I saved the last, and hardest, pole loop for Dr. G because I am a wimp about things like that.  The tent fit in its little niche, but we would each have to climb over boulders to get in our separate entrances.   The nice thing was that we would have a clear view of the stars through the mesh roof.

Dr. G. dragged some rocks together into a fire pit and made a kindling teepee.  He had had no problem finding dry wood to use four our tiny fire, and he put a match to the base with confidence.  Whoosh!  The flames flared up three feet high, throwing off sparks.  We noted that the woods were actually a tinderbox, all dried out and primed from the earlier burn.  We stamped out sparks and waited for the flames to die back down.  They didn’t.  Dr. G pushed one of the rocks into the middle of the fire to scatter it.  Better safe than sorry, but we did get a few roasted marshmallows out of it before it smoked out.  Later we found out that the fire danger was so high they weren’t even allowing charcoal grills at developed campsites.  Oops.  No harm, no foul, right?

We ate tuna and processed cheese on pitas, hung the bag of food in a tree, and called it a night.  The moon was out, turning the woods silver-blue and casting gray shadows.  It was a still, shimmering night, with singing insects filling the woods with sound.  I wondered if any big animals would come by.  On our last backpacking trip something woke me as it crashed through the leaf litter.  I was sure it was a javelina destroying my backpack.  It had been difficult to fall back asleep.  This time, I promised myself, I would be calm and curious toward any nighttime visitors.

We usually go to sleep much later than nine or ten and we were cold and awake for a long time under our one blanket.  The other blanket was back in the car, having been deemed too heavy to carry and probably unnecessary.  I didn’t hear any large animals, but some tiny creature kept scratching around the tent.  I’d drift in and out of sleep and hear it again.  Finally Dr. G. said, “It’s probably whatever was in that burrow you put the tent over, trying to get out.”  We listened.  Yes, it did sound like it was coming from under the tent, surfacing to scratch at the tarp first on one side, then the other.  This was horrible!  I banged on the tent floor, trying to scare it into silence.  Dr. G fell back into sleep, but I lay there wide-eyed, listening intently for each tiny sound.  My mild claustrophobia prevented me from even having a blanket over my face; the fate of the tiny creature below me was a scenario I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  Trapped beneath a tarp, not knowing which way to dig to freedom!

What if it ran out of air?  But no, it had been going for several hours and seemed okay in that regard.  But what if it was using up all its energy trying to get out, and would starve to death instead?  Sometime in the cold hours of the middle of the night I woke Dr. G.  “We have to get up!  We can both get out of the tent, quickly lift it up, and let whatever is under there run for freedom!”

“Absolutely not,” said Dr. G.  “Out of the question.  I am not budging.  It is not worth it.”

“But what if it dies?”

“It won’t die.   It’s alive and well,” he said, and burrowed back under the covers.  It wasn’t a plan I could enact on my own, so I spent a little time resenting Dr. G’s still, sleeping form before I decided to pray for the little guy, asking God to guide it to freedom.  I slid under the blanket and down toward the southeast corner of the tent.  The spot that had seemed flat in daylight in fact tilted in two directions, causing Dr. G to spend most of the night pressed up against the bottom half of the tent wall and me to spend most of it drifting toward Dr.G.  Every now and again I’d claw my way back up to my side of the tent.

(This is part 3 in a five-part series)

Dr. G and I were back at the dry gulch, trying for round two. The sunlight was creeping higher up the faces of the cliffs, leaving the area where we were in dimness. We kept an eye out for snakes as we tested a few promising possible paths, but as we circled back again and again we found only dead ends. I noticed a big log across a narrow clearing, and beyond it, almost hidden under the low-growing branches of a juniper, a rock cairn. Here was the real trail! We booked it up the path and back into the sunlight. “Okay,” I announced. “Things can only get better from here on out. We forgot stuff at the car, lost water twice, got lost in the bushes, and stepped over a rattlesnake. That fulfills our adventure quota, wouldn’t you say?” Dr. G. didn’t agree. Nearly all of those events had been due to our own carelessness. In a way, he said, you could consider our experience lucky, since none of them turned out badly.

My original sensation of expansiveness and joy had faded. I noted the tiny ache forming in the arch of my right foot, the grimy feeling of dust stuck to sunscreen on my limbs, the tiredness and labored breathing brought on by the steep hill. We could still make it, though. I was sure of it. Obstacles overcome, objective in sight. We crossed an invisible boundary between desert and forest; the prickly pears were sparse now, and scattered among tree trunks. The trail descended as we headed towards Coon Creek along a steep ridge, taking off our hats so the cool breeze could evaporate the sweat from our scalps. Our footsteps were quieter now, muffled by pine needles except when one of us crunched a half-gnawed pine cone now and again. The air smelled like soft dirt and pine.

I heard a thud behind me and felt suddenly lighter. I whirled around to watch our bag of water tumble fifteen feet down the steep embankment and come to rest under a thorn bush, dribbling out its contents. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. Time was of the essence but I’d always been a cautious descender. I examined the options and chose a round-about route with some boulders and tree roots for footholds down the hill. Dr. G, meanwhile, had rushed towards me on the trail and plunged over the edge, half-scrambling, half-sliding, right into the thorn bush. He handed the water bladder up to me, which was now one third depleted. I fixed the hose and tighted the lid, but water was still splashing onto my hand. It must be dripping off of the outside of the bag, I decided. This time we tied it on with cords and carabineers. I heaved the pack up onto my back and took a few experimental steps. Splash, splash. Water was still dripping onto the back of my leg. Unbelievable—a leak! Well, perhaps not so unbelievable. The bag had just fallen fifteen feet into a thorn bush and maybe a little dribble wasn’t so bad. We transferred water into some other water bottles to bring the water line below the leak, and set off again.

We were very close to the creekbed now, and Dr. G was keeping a sharp eye out for running water. There were occasional damp spots here and there, but nothing actually moving. The moss was shriveled and dead in most places. The trail grew fainter and fainter, and we noticed signs of a big forest fire that had downed almost half of the trees sometime in the recent past. We weren’t hiking so much as clambering over, under, and around logs, playing “spot the cairn.” More scrapes. My hands were totally blackened by charcoal from the burned trees, as were the insides of my knees. We lost the trail two or three more times and had to rock hop up the dry creekbed until we saw it again. Of the two of us, I was better at spotting a marginally less overgrown path or a partly collapsed pile of rocks marking the way forward. Dr. G was better at rock hopping; he could look several feet ahead and move swiftly in long strides. I would to examine all the possibilities, put a foot down, test, and repeat. Even with all my caution I’d wobble or slip one time in twenty. It was slow going.

We passed a slimy, putrid puddle infested with bugs, living and dead. “That could work, in an emergency,” said Dr. G. It was now 7:30 and the sun was setting. We had only an hour or so of dusk to find a place to camp and set up. We were still on the side of the hill, and in addition to being steep it was more rock than dirt, with jagged boulders cropping up every few feet and smaller rocks spilling down into piles of shale, none of which was particularly conducive to camping. We passed a narrow flat spot between two boulders and noted it; our two-man tent just might squeeze in there. We walked a bit farther on until the trail disappeared again. Nothing better had turned up, and the tiny flat spot was within spitting distance of the grimy puddle. We decided to set up camp.

(This is part 2 of a five-part series)

For the first half hour of our hike, Dr. G and I chatted and scanned the dry mud and shards of broken rock for interesting shapes and wild animal footprints. When I got home, I decided, I would learn how to read animal scat because there was a lot around and I couldn’t be sure what it was. Elk? Goat? Coyote? Javelina? We were happy to discover that the trail was in pretty good shape and well-marked with stone cairns. Most places, it was wide enough to walk two abreast. We congratulated ourselves on planning such an excellent adventure.

The trail dipped into a dry gulch shaded by live oak and picked up, much narrower, on the other side. Dr. G. went ahead, and within a few hundred yards we found ourselves on a shrubby hillside where the trail dissolved into faint animal trails headed several directions through the bushes. We pushed on, always choosing the strongest trail, keeping an eye out for cairns. There were three or kinds of bush on that hillside, and two of them had thorns and pricklies hidden among their glossy green leaves. I’d try to step over or around the branches only to have an offshoot cling and drag across a shin or forearm, leaving in its wake a red stinging welt and sometimes an embedded thorn or two. These were the first of 37 separate scrapes I would collect over the next few days. Yes, I counted. But that was much later.

Now, Dr. G. and I peered at each other over the tops of the bushes. The trail had totally evaporated. We had slowly moved farther and farther apart in our separate battles across the terrain and now had to speak quite loudly to decide what to do. We knew that we would eventually be at the bottom of the canyon; we could either bushwhack down now, in the hopes of stumbling across a trail on the way, or retrace our steps to the gulch and try again. If we couldn’t find anything, there was still plenty of light, and we could head back to the car or down a different path altogether.

“Retrace our steps” was an innacurate phrase. Every bush and path looked the same as all the others, and we just floundered along the path of least resistance, generally uphill and to the right. Dr. G broke through a big pile of thorny bushes and ended up behind me in a somewhat clear path. I was navigating a fallen log when I heard him say, “Move ahead, quickly!” in a voice that wasn’t exactly a shout but wasn’t not a shout, either. He is the least bossy person I know and almost never orders me to do anything. The last time I heard him use that tone was when he said “Pedestrian!” while I was driving the car. So when I heard his command on that trail, I figured I’d better obey, post-haste. I hurried over the log and a few paces down the trail.

“You just stepped over a rattlesnake!” said Dr. G.

“Where?”

“Right, there, that big yellow thing coiled in the path!”

“Where?”

“Right where you were just standing!” He backed up a few yards. I inched forward so I could see over the log. Sure enough, there it was, stacked in a tight, striped coil, its triangular head slowly weaving and scanning. I backed up again because it seemed like it might be coming my direction. Dr. G. narrated its actions at a safe distance on the other side of the log. “Now it’s stretching out a little. Its rattler seems stunted– there are only a few rows on it even though it’s such a big snake. Wow, this pattern is beautiful. It is moving very slowly. Why won’t it move?” We waited silently for the snake to make a decision as the breeze whispered through the bushes. After a few minutes of watching it sway, Dr. G. decided to take on the clump of thorny bushes again and give the snake a wide berth, since it was in no hurry to move on. There were more and more clear spaces and soon we were back on the trail.

“Weren’t you afraid?” Dr. G. asked. No, I wasn’t. It was hard to feel afraid after the fact, when I was safe and couldn’t even see the thing very well. He was the one who experienced a real sense of danger on my behalf, watching me blithely step over a coiled snake. I was put out, actually, that the snake didn’t act like a proper rattler, warning me to stay out of its path. What the heck was its problem? Was it a rebel snake, not interested in the common courtesies of the wild? I don’t have snake radar, for heaven’s sake. It was my closest encounter with a rattler ever, and I had almost missed it altogether. I assumed, incorrectly, that it would be my last for this trip. Surely I had used up all my rattlesnake bad luck.

(This is part one of a five part series of our attempted backpacking trip. )

“Are you excited?” Dr. G. asked, as we tromped in unison up a gentle incline. We crested the hill, and a red-gold wall of stone rose into view across the valley, its colors amplified by the slanting sun of late afternoon, its curves and hollows accentuated by shadows. My favorite time of day. To our right, the vista opened to rumpled blue hills as far as the eye could see.

“Yes, I’m excited,” I said. I felt I was expanding to fill every space my eye could see, a kind of joy that doesn’t come easily for me except outside, far from concrete and powerlines. It was an accomplishment just to be walking side by side on the wide gravel path late on Friday, after a late start, a long drive, and repacking our too-heavy backpacks at the trailhead, leaving behind one third of the food and a blanket. A quarter mile down the trail I had to run back to the car for a forgotten knee brace and some prescription medication. Before that,we had had to open and close a barbed wire gate just to get on the access road to the Oak Creek trailhead. There were good reasons for it to be gated; the narrow dirt road cut into the side of a ridge, and for much of the time I looked out the passenger side window of the car past the crumbling shoulder to a long drop into creosote and prickly pear. At a few points we drove down inclines so steep that we couldn’t see the bottom until the nose of the car crested the hill.

Yes, I thought, certainly the worst was behind us now. We would sweat and grow tired carrying our shelter, food, and water on our backs, but that was expected and even part of the satisfaction. Here at the start of the three-day, two-night journey, the terrain was dotted with twisted juniper trees just beginning to produce their hard, blue berries; sprawling prickly pears that grew their oval segments any which way; and cholla, blooming magenta at the ends of all its arms. Ahead, though, the valley was shadowed with dark green: pine, fir, and oak. We were headed for real, old-fashioned forest in the Sierra Ancha Wilderness, along the Coon Creek Trail. Just the sight of dark green tree tops massed on the flanks of the hills made me pick up my pace until I was breathing hard. Descriptions of the area included secluded, multi-story indian ruins hidden in box canyons like the one we were headed for. It was almost five and only a few hours of daylight remained to climb four miles through the forest to the ridgetop before making camp. It was going to be perfect.

The first inkling I had that our trip would not be perfect was a warm spray of liquid wetting my calves as I walked along. I yelped and scurried forward, filled with the wild conviction that some animal was peeing on me. This was a remote area and perhaps the animals didn’t know to be afraid of the likes of us. “Help!” I cried. Dr. G came over to inspect. The hose had detached from our giant 3-liter water bladder, a piece of equipment which we had not yet fully tested and were now relying on to keep the majority of our water safe throughout the trip. We would hike from spring to spring, but there was always the danger that creeks and water sources would be dry. I wiped some of our precious drinking water off of the backs of my legs—it gave me the heebie jeebies even though I knew it wasn’t pee– while Dr. G reaffixed the hose. A few minutes later, the whole bag broke loose and tumbled onto the ground, spilling another cup or two. Rats! Well, we still had enough to get us through the day and most of tomorrow. We positioned the water bag even more carefully and securely, quixotically sure that the problem was solved.

Dr. G and I are headed out to the Sierra Ancho wilderness for a backpacking trip, since I have four days off work and he sets his own schedule.  We are trying to take food that does not require any water for preparation.  Mamwich is is!  No, just kidding.  Heavy cans are not fun to carry.  Marshmallows it is!  I’m in charge of the food, and also the packing.  One of my claims to fame is the ability to roll textiles up really, really tiny.

I’m trying to make a survey that will show the effectiveness of a learning project.  People can choose from a set of sentences to describe their understanding before and after the project. The one that jumps out at me today is, “some detailed knowledge,  but gaps remain.” Story of my life, right there. Sometimes I pay the most attention to what I know and other times I like to be mindful of the gaps. Things are prone to shift categories, in both directions. You know what would be really good right now? A mint chocolate chip ice cream cone.

The Swedish Chef has been growing out his hair on the commune, but he has emerged to share his new recipe for Crushed Lifesavers. Unfortunately the hair makes it a little hard to aim his cutlery.

Hey, the Swedish Chef’s hair looks familiar. In fact, it looks exactly like my hair. Wait– it is my hair! What is my hair doing on his head? He must have sneaked in while I was napping and lopped off my ponytail! Oh, Swedish Chef, I can’t stay mad at you.

Albertsons is the closest grocery store to my house and I have a love-hate relationship with it and with grocery shopping in general.  I love that feeling of being well-stocked that comes the first day or two after a trip to the store.   There’s nothing quite like opening the produce drawer in the fridge and seeing the not-yet-slimy bunch of cilantro hanging out with the summer squash and the mini carrots.  But actually acquiring the food is not so fun.  The grocery store feels like a magical labrynth that warps time and converts regular people into ghostly underworld versions of themselves.  Or anyway that’s what happens to me.
I’m the type of shopper who can get sucked into a time warp in the condiments aisle, wondering for minutes on end what the difference is between sauerkraut packaged in a can and sauerkraut packaged in a jar.  I wander back and forth multiple times between the regular cheese aisle and the specialty cheese kiosk, comparing prices on swiss.  I check the bags of frozen shrimp to see if they are deveined as well as shelled and then experience a moment of horror thinking about getting deveined myself.  Cooked shrimp are caucasian-colored and that curved back is like a tiny person back.  C’mon, it’s not that far fetched.

I’m fond of the Albertson’s because it is not too big, and thus cuts down on some of the trouble that bigger stores cause with their aisles of bottled water (so many shapes! So many  competing claims!) and seven kinds of tomato.  I also like it because the people who work there are friendly and usually refrain from calling me ma’am.    “Can I help you?” someone rushing by me in the sauerkraut aisle will ask,  kindly noticing my space cadet look.  One of the bag boys has a good voice and sings broadway tunes as he bags your groceries.

But wanting to help is not the same as actually being helpful, and the smallness of the store is also its problem. I’ve come to the realization that if I can’t find an item on my own, I’m probably out of luck. Here is a list of questions with which I have flummoxed the Albertson’s staff in recent months:

• Where is the fish sauce?
• What type of fish would be a good substitute for red snapper?
• Where is the falafel mix?

For the fish sauce question we actually rounded up a group of clerks, some of whom produced Old Bay and tartar sauce, and others of whom stood with me reading labels in the soy sauce aisle.  No luck. I must not have been the only one to ask, though, because I noticed last week that they carry it now.   Tonight, asking about falafel got two blank stares and one suggestion to check by the bisquick.  Maybe I’l try to think of a new hard question each week, instead of waiting for them to arise along by accident.  Yes, that sounds fun.  I will have to branch out a bit in my cooking and the staff at Albertsons will get steady practice in learning their inventory.  Iron sharpens iron.

“Why can’t you have a really cool blog like that one, with totally addictive flash games?”  — Dr. G.

Maybe because I’m not a mysterious, creative, Japanese person who can invent games like  Cat With Bow Golf?

I’m learning to think of a Sonoran summer as a Mid-Atlantic winter. It’s the season when activities become scarce and more confined, health dangers loom, and the cost of living goes up.  Giving water to anyone who asks is a compulsory act inscribed in the Arizona law books.  Charity campaigns are ratcheting up; energy costs can more than double in the summer, putting many of those who were living on the edge right over it.  There are food bank boxes and clothing drives everywhere, as well as public service encouragements to carry water in our cars for the homeless. It all has the flavor of mid-October in DC or Baltimore, when churches sign up to provide emergency shelter and the salvation army asks for socks,gloves, hats, and blankets. As in Octobers past, I’m reminded this May that natural changes that mean mere inconvenience for me mean extreme hardship for many others. It’s hard, though, because their difficulty is far off and hidden from my ordinary paths much more than it was my poorer days.  I remember once in Benin coming in from a storm drenched, delayed and frustrated, only to see that one of the bamboo and sheet metal houses on my street had blown completely down,its former occupants now lined  up in the shelter of a concrete wall.  Talk about in your face. And some hypothetical person’s hypothetical eletric bill is supposed to move me how?  It’s just not the same as sitting down with a neighbor while her kids are running around in her crappy apartment which is identical to your crappy apartment and actually going through the bills together. I recognize the loss of immediacy and personal urgency for others that comes with my moderate financial success.  Maybe I need to make some changes.  And yet, I am so reluctant to go back to those poorer times voluntarily.  I like that everything in my apartment works and that the lights and roads in the neighborhood are reliable and that it’s not too loud and I don’t have to wade through a giant miasma of stress, fatigue, and worry on my way from the parking lot to the front door. Yet that very miasma is what I need to recognize more.