Chapter Seven: To the Vail of the Creek

 

Chapter Seven: To the Vail of the Creek

"Hey, wait!” You exclaim. “I came here to read the long story of your many decades ago thru-hike on the functionally extinct 2,722 mile long Agua Fria Trail that I've never heard of, an epic but modest account of your youthful fears, your triumph over idiosyncratic, self-imposed challenges, and a tale of wilderness wonder grounded in the hard spirituality of the real world.”

Then you add firmly “I did not sign up for talking jackrabbits!”

Oh. Right. Yes.

The top of the Canticle Rim, despite how its name feels, was not exactly a cliff edge. Already the rocky plains of high dessert and scattered chaparral was breaking up and changing. A small creek, looking like a hopeful place for a camping spot, was beginning to work a steep way down into the West Pine Creek Canyon. Biologically the area was immediately growing richer as well, and I noticed more plants and a couple kinds of cactus I hadn't seen on my 60 miles of hiking so far, a barrel cactus and what might have been a saguaro, though the latter was so bedraggled and stunted that I wasn't sure that's really what it was. There too were the first small trees of my trip as the land broke in the distance down the canyon.

Don't worry. There were no talking rabbits at all.

Except for the one that said “I am the same rabbit you saw on the first day of your trip.”

I have passed and failed many tests in my life- tests of courage, or self respect, or perseverance, or of human kindness. The failures in these tests have always stuck with me far harder than the successes. So I think it is only fair to note here, on the test of talking animals, I passed.

I said to the rabbit “You didn't say anything to me that time.”

“You weren't ready.” Said the rabbit. “And you didn't have the meteorite.”

A great many things raced through my mind. Whatever else was happening my main feeling was that getting to talk to a rabbit was a rare opportunity. And, frankly, something of an honor.

I said carefully. “I have some questions. If you don't mind.”

“Do you have any carrots?” The rabbit asked.

“No.” I replied. “Sorry.”

The jackrabbit wrinkled his nose. “Get me some carrots and maybe we can have a little chat about them.”

“The carrots, or the questions.”

“I am equally interested in both.”

And with that, the rabbit ran off.

I took my pack off and sat down on it in the middle of the trail. I was there for a long time, a bit blank, a bit wonderstruck, but I wasn't, apparently, changed by the experience, and neither was the world. Furthermore, I worried about night because... night was dark. So I got up and found a place for my tent over by the tiny stream. I scouted the trail heading down into the canyon. And I got a ball of cholla cactus stuck to my boot that was a long, almost comical process to remove.

If it were funny I'd totally tell you about it. It was just really close to being funny.

As the sun set I ate a gorp in salami sandwich. It was not a successful dining experiment. I treated some water with iodine. I photographed the creek for my daily picture. I took out my meteorite and sat down looking at it. It was dark and plain and small, though maybe it was heavier than a regular rock that size would be.

“Do you have anything to say for yourself?” I asked the meteorite.

The meteorite didn't answer.

That would have been silly.

Rabbit season, duck season

 

And now let's take a quick break in our historical narrative to share a brief, true-life anecdote from my library:

We get our fair share of odd stuff showing up at our moderately large near urban library. Little of it is particularly useful, though occasionally it is... of interest. Yesterday the voluble, and slightly off kilter, and almost but not quite endearing man who runs our vending machines, brought in 30 loaves of bagged bread.

 He was incredibly excited about it.

"I brought in bread for everyone!" He exclaimed broadly, like a town crier, to the whole back area of the library. "It's really good bread for free. All the varieties of bread. Wholesome ingredients, all natural. Take a loaf of bread. I GOT FREE BREAD FOR EVERYONE!"

This bread is commercial off brand sandwich bread from a chain supermarket. The two varieties that are "all varieties" seem to be "tan" and "white". And as for "all natural", I'm not entirely sure how wholesome Potassium Iodite is. The best I can figure is it helps the thyroid not absorb radiation. I guess that's a good thing, though its presence suggests something more sinister at work behind the scenes.

Nevertheless, the gesture of free bread does seem generously meant. There's rather a lot of it piled up in the break room right now. It may have multiplied. But I've seen worse free food in there, that's for sure.

The branch manager came through. "You know about the sandwich bread situation?" I asked.

He nodded with a wry expression on his face.

"I'd like permission to order some ducks."

Chapter Six: To Canticle Rim

 

Chapter Six: To Canticle Rim

The first full four days of my hiking were a misery of adjusting, to the trail, to discomfort, and to loneliness. But there was also a harder, steadier reality that I will keep in this account to a minimum from the desire to maintain a pleasant reading and writing environment for everyone. There is no story of a thru-hike that anyone will willingly read, or probably write, that is properly proportionate to the monotony of it all. Oh Bill Bryson will comment on it, as self-effacingly humorous as he can be before moving on, and probably that Wild lady had something to say about it all. Tolstoy bravely pushes pretty deep into it in his My Journeys Among the Urals, but it's a gloss for verisimilitude. And so it will be for me too. Nevertheless I must get it out in the open:

Nearly every day of my trip, on average, included half a dozen hours where some three or four parts of me hurt or ached or stung or throbbed enough so that I couldn't really think properly. All I could was uncontrollably sing to myself snatches of some old song stuck in my head, like “The Brady Bunch Theme”, over and over and over, no matter how I tried to stop.

Imagine recounting that state for half my book! But that's what it would take for this to be accurate.

No one really wants unselective accuracy. But here is my offering to its god. I may never cover the issue again, but you should know that's what I was up to as I hiked my way to The Canticle Rim.

But since I'm complaining I'd like to mention another thing.

All of nature is really pretty, especially if one approaches it respectfully, and with an open heart. Nevertheless all of my previous backpacking trips tended to pick out special places; redwood groves, famous canyons a mile deep, alpine meadows, and sand dunes. Thru-hikes regularly get to places like that, and the pain and struggle softens one up for them so that they feel extra special and earned when one gets there. But by the nature of their distance, long trails can also take a person through some monotonously samey looking scrub woods, for instance, and maybe do it in the rain, for three or four days at a time. Or taking a long trail can send one across a rocky plain of high desert, with a plant here or there to look at, a cloudless sky, and a turkey vulture in a lazy, wobbly circle overhead every few hours if a person was lucky. And that latter example is exactly where I was at the start of my trip. I was headed to The Canticle Rim across a wide plain of scrubland, protected from the privations of man not by the virtues of its magnificence, but rather by the scantiness of its offerings. From The Canticle Rim the trail was supposed to wind down to West Pine Creek, a deep canyon where things were going to get super pretty, or so my guidebook said. But I had about 60 miles to cover. And while I might climb out of my tent to an astonishing sky hurling meteorites at me, or I might stop walking to adjust a waistbelt, repair my foot, drink some weird tasting, warm, treated water, and suddenly feel a rush of love for the sheer, blank, pure, vast majesty of the bare and empty land, it was extremely easy to lose the thread of it on a minute to minute basis. Minute to minute to minute to minute to minute to minute.

Blue sky. Rocky dirt. Sage. A rutted path. A jackrabbit. A distant hill. Another step. A bit of prickly pear cactus.

Oh look! A turkey vulture!

And here's the story.

Of a lovely lady.

Knew that it was much more than a hunch.

Group must somehow make a family.

Maybe I should sit down and have some salami. I better check my blister. God it feels good to sit down! I call lunch. Maybe I should write in my journal. No, I'll wait until tonight. Maybe something will still happen.

What counts as something happening? Where's my gorp? Where's my copy of My Journeys Among the Urals? No. That's too boring to read for lunch. I'll read more of Pride and Prejudice.

That afternoon I made a good distance for the first time of the trip in my eagerness to get to the Canticle Rim. I was hoping to camp somewhere at its edge and so hike down into the West Pine Creek canyon tomorrow. Many times I imagined I was getting there, but it was just a subtle rise in the land that gave the appearance of a change and a drop. When I finally did make it to the edge it was unexpected. I couldn't have been more than a couple hundred yards away when I realized what I was seeing. There were even trees! I was nearly there.

And right in the middle of my trail, on the way ahead, like a sign, was another jackrabbit.

I eased my pace towards it, always interested in getting closer to a wild animal so long as it wasn't too...big. I kept expecting it to dart off, but it didn't. It simply regarded me seriously.

This rabbit was not wearing a waistcoat and he did not have a pocket watch, but nonetheless he clearly said “I am the same rabbit you saw on the first day of your trip.”

And with that the account of my 2,744 mile trip along the Agua Fria Trail took a curious turn.

Chapter Five: A Full Day's Hike

Chapter Five: A Full Day's Hike

The previous night, which was the first of my trip, I stayed up reading as late as I could. I was scared to blow out my candles and lie there in the dark, alone. I knew that there would be a point of instant reckoning, and I would think, in a quite terror and agony:

"What have I done?”

And

"How can I quit this trip and when?”

These thoughts did happen. They occurred to me several hundred times over the months to come. But when I first blew out my candles I was too busy for that. I had to climb out of my cozy sleeping bag and crawl out of my tent to pee.

And outside everything was perfect.

The small stream made a quiet noise. The scruff of plants held their breath. The jackrabbit didn't let me see him. The darkness was bright with a thousand stars. The cold of a high desert made the night easy to see and everything was immaculate and distant and pure. I was bitterly cold. I hugged myself, looking up. A brilliant shooting star came scudding across the sky. It was so bright I nearly had to look away. It turned green, peeling back the night and pulsing with intensity. It almost appeared to be headed for me.

It was headed for me!

The brightness of the falling star exhausted itself into a streaky trail of orange afterburn and a high, keening whistle. A meteorite the size of the top of my fourth toe slammed into the earth not 20 feet to my left.

“You missed.” I said.

It is said that in going to the wilderness one should take only pictures and leave only footprints. I kept to that pretty well on my long journey, but I did take one small meteorite with me as well. I had it in my pocket as I set out walking on my second day, and I have it on my desk next to where I am writing this very day.

The next day was clear and cool, but warming steadily. My pack hurt me almost everywhere, bruised as I was by yesterday, but not yet toughened. The walking was boring and felt meaningless in its strange monotony. I was headed into some stony hills that did not seem to be getting any closer no matter how much I walked. I walked so much that a blister began developing on my fourth toe. I threw my pack off almost angrily. I sat on a rock and removed my shoe. Yes, the toe looked rough, red and white. I put a donut of moleskin on it and packed it all back up in my sock and boot. I ate some handfuls of gorp, less excited than when I had it for breakfast. I liked the gorp but looked at it in a new light, wondering if it would become my enemy.

Things were going pretty well so far. Only 2,718 miles to go!

That night I made camp at a spring called The Pickle Fountain. Nothing I can find tells me why it had that name. Perhaps it was a reference to the greenness rimming the pool? I doubt I had gone ten miles that day and so I was already behind schedule. I told myself I would make up ground when I was in better shape. I'm not sure I ever got in much better shape, I just increased my capacity for pain.

It felt wonderful to have my pack off and to float about my camp. I fussed over the taking of my one close-up photo of the spring. I wrote in my journal about the meteorite. I looked at the meteorite a lot. I ate salami wrapped in seaweed. I read chapter after chapter of Pride and Prejudice, trying to get comfortable on the hard, rocky ground. I looked out at the empty land all around me. I thought uncomfortably: This is a lot of time!

Now I think everyone should have that much time. If they dare.

Chapter Four: The Departure

 

Chapter Four: The Departure

Driving at the break of dawn to the town of Durado with my friend, a sense of unreality was upon me. I was about to disappear from the world for nearly a year. Or perhaps I was going to disappear into the world. There is, perhaps, no real difference between things crafted by the hand of God and those hewn by the hand of man, for the source is all the same, being the matter of the universe. And yet we seem to be able to scent the merest atom of difference between the two. A single breath of the latter is enough to turn the greatest body of clear water a pale red.

But look at me wax eloquent. I was merely a person sitting in a car. My giant pack was in the trunk. I was going to walk the long way across a continent all on my own. And yet mainly I was just really nervous about how to catch the bus.

Will there be a ticket window?

Will I have someone to ask where my bus is? I hate asking people stuff.

What if they don't have a record of my mail purchased ticket?

What if there is no bus?

What if there is no bus!

What would I do if I was stuck in Durado?

If you find these concerns to be as uncomfortable and uninteresting as I do you may be excited to know this:

Even though this chapter is called “Departure”, and seems in line with all the talk of preparations for my journey, it is, in fact, the actual first day of my trip.

Yes I said goodbye to my kind friend. Yes I got my ticket. Yes I got on the bus. Yes the bus took me to the town of Pequeno Escalante.

I put my heavy pack on at the side of the bus. I exited the small station and walked two miles through a desultory town that felt as if it should have tumbleweeds blowing through it, but didn't. There were instead wide, empty streets full of parked cars that would look fascinatingly ancient to me now but were just cars back then. There weren't many people about and the asphalt looked plentiful and faded. I passed a burrito place that looked tasty, but I made many good excuses to not have to go in and talk to people there to get one.

I have plenty of gorp.

I need to get to the trail.

I should save my money.

Where will I put my pack?

I have to make camp by nightfall.

Actually, they were mostly good reasons. As it was I arrived at the trail-head at nearly 5:00. Almost dusk! There was a small parking lot with three cars. There was a sign:

Agua Fria Trail. Mile O.

It was all a little unceremonious since I'd already been walking for awhile, but here I was.

“Chapter one: Preparations” had become:

Day One.

I put one foot in front of the other. I had read over and over that's how you did it. The ground was hard packed dirt of an old road eroded down enough to be impossible for cars but still good for walking. It was flat and dry. Stony hills ringed the distance. In four miles there was supposed to be a stream I could camp at.

Four miles ended up being vastly farther than I ever dreamed it could be. But that sort of thing never went away through over 2,000 miles. Oh I learned what a mile was, but I never really believed they were as long as they really are.

I have all my journals from my hike on the Agua Fria Trail. And they are my close companion as I sit down to recount this trip 35 years later. But I made no mention in my journal of the jackrabbit I saw a mile or two into the trail. Nevertheless I remember that alone of that day on my own, vividly. I remember its loping ears, its long legs folded up along its sides, and the large-eyed way it looked at me.

I never wondered what it thought of me.

It was nearly dark when I made it to the creek and quickly took my first picture. I set up my tent as fast as I could, climbed in and set things up how I like. Refinements would come in the days and months to follow. I chewed salami, ate gorp, wrote a brief first entry in my journal that didn't mention rabbits, and I began reading:

It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.

Chapter Three: Packing

 

Chapter Three: Packing

With both you, the reader (hi!), and I, the author, eager to get out on the Agua Fria Trail to see what we might find there, it is tempting to omit the detailed telling of the packing for the trip. And as I am in sympathy with us, both the reader and the author, I will do my best to gloss over the surface of these copious details. But I cannot entirely discard them because elements of what we pack for this journey have too much to say about the structure of the trip itself, and of the nature of our recounting it.

Mindful of weight I omitted many luxuries from my pack and possibly some necessities, like the aforementioned stove and fuel. However, since I was scared of the dark, I indulged in the number of candles, matches, and flashlight batteries. I also packed too many socks, which oddly enough turned out to be not enough socks. I had two paperback books to start with for my entertainment and for my desperate escapism. I had a small, good camera and enough film for two pictures a day, a number I committed to taking and kept to. For reasons unclear to myself even now I resolved to take a picture of a water source every day, the results of which you will find at the conclusion of each chapter here. I had a blank journal, which I also committed to writing in every single day of my trip. Without this journal, and the fact that I kept to my plan, this account would be impossible, devolving into sheer fabrication and nonsense. Although, I have to admit, there's a fair chance this account will devolve into sheer fabrication and nonsense anyway.

It may have already happened.

My resupply boxes were along these lines as well. They consisted mainly of my dense, shelf stable food, gorp, salami, and seaweed, but regularly included a new paperback book, a roll of film, a four-pack of batteries, and a few candles. Less often there would be another blank journal, a replacement shirt or pair of socks, and water purification tablets. This was a time before the common availability of water filters, and though my long route was among the wetter thru-routes in the world, I would need to purify most drinking water with iodine tablets.

There were dozens of items in my pack that I am not mentioning or covering in any way here. Surely at some points in the narration of this journey most of these items will make sudden appearances from seemingly out of nowhere. But believe me, I will have carried each one of these items, large and small, over countless miles on my back.

I just see no reason why you should have to carry them now too.

And so in the end, as promised in the title of this chapter, I was packed. My forest green, Kelty backpack was far heavier and more tightly crammed than I would have liked, and yet, it was also missing an enormous number of things it felt truly unwise to leave behind. There is something nearly proverbial about that. And furthermore my bedroom at my parent's house had 15 carefully packed, stamped, and addressed resupply packages mostly ready for shipping, set to be carried by me in their turn as well.

I had $750 in operating capital left, secreted about me and my pack, and it increased $200 when my Dad kindly augmented the fund on my departure date as a small token of support I did not know I had.

My friend's car pulled up to the front of our house.

My stomach hurt.

Next: The Departure, and I really mean it this time!

Chapter Two: The Plan

Chapter Two: The Plan

The logistics of a 2,754 mile solo thru hike are not simple. And when these logistics met up with me as the protagonist, a person who has already, 35 years later, flirted with giving up on the project of retelling this story because I find formatting the whole thing the way I want on my computer to be too irritating, my adventurous project was in early trouble.

Fortunately there were several advantages I started with:

1. I had a good condition copy of “The Complete Guide to the Agua Fria Thru-Hike” by Memory Herschel. It included all the maps I would need, a list of Post Offices for mail-drops of resupply, and an offbeat, entertaining “Can do” tone.

2. Having gardened in my parents backyard over the past three years I had recently dabbled in growing three marijuana plants. Two of these produced massive amounts of buds (the females). These plants also made me so incredibly anxious because of how illegal they were that I would never do it again. However, this one time, I was hardly going to throw out such a bounty- bags of carefully dried, cleaned, and weighed buds. I had a casual, more social friend, Bob (don't memorize his name as he will not reappear in this story), who was an avid marijuana user (surely there is some kind of slang for that). He was delighted to sell my product to his friends and acquaintances for a hearty cut of the money, product, or both. I had thus amassed just over $1,800 in cash, the first real money I had ever contrived on my own, admitting within that rubric that the world is a village and none of us can truly rise to such magnificent entrepreneurial heights without others.

3. I had, through previous trips, a use of family gifts, and some cashed in U.S. Treasury Bonds resulting from a Bar Mitzvah, acquired an acceptable kit of backpacking gear. I had a backpack, a roomy tent to hide from bears in, and a good quality sleeping bag, among other, smaller, possibly useful items.

4. I was ignorant as to the suffering I would experience as a result of this adventure, just as it should be. This, as it is in every endeavor in life, should be considered an asset.

I am as eager to get out on the trail as you are. We will be seeing extraordinary things! So let me guide you through an abridged version of my preparations. Keep in mind that this glib account was, in the living of it, stressful, forced me to interact with far more people than I wanted to, encompassed several terrified changes of heart, endured multiple periods of intense procrastination, and lasted a full four months.

I resolved to resupply as little as possible, being far more frightened of going into towns than of being in the wilderness. To help with this my food was designed to be dense, simple, and require no cooking, thus omitting the need for fuel or stoves. I would eat gorp, a rich mix of nuts, dried fruit, and chocolate, Genoa Italian salami, and seaweed. My parents, who deeply wished I would go to College instead, agreed to mail prepared boxes of pre-addressed, stamped resupply on a roughly three week schedule. A friend, not Bob who I told you would not reappear in this account, was able to commit to giving me a ride half of the way to my trailhead on April 3, 1986. There I would meet a bus that would take me the rest of the way, to the small town of Pequeno Escalante.

And those are the basics.

We are more or less ready to depart. Though I guess there will be some packing first.

Tomorrow: The Departure, or, I mean, packing.

Chapter One: I am scared

The Agua Fria Trail

Hiking 2733 Miles Looking for Water

 Chapter One: I am scared

When I was 22 years old, after a youth of anxious leisure that I was never invited to and never rewarded for, I decided I had better get out of my parents' house, even though I was terrified to do so. 

I had been living there for more than two decades, mainly getting incrementally larger and hairier, though I had probably topped out on that account with being not particularly large at all (though positively enormous compared to my starting point!), and only a modest amount hairier than the average. None of my life dreams were coming true at this point, though I had made a few short, uneven, but concerted stabs in their directions. This steady failure I responded to by watching television as often as possible. 

But the truth is that I did not feel welcome where I was, in my parent's home. 

Also, it was the 1980s, and so the television was much worse than it is now. Have you tried to watch Cheers lately?

Right, why would you?

Which left me with a conundrum: What was I to do instead?

Most "things to do" involved other people. There were sensible and insensible things to do; school, jobs, hanging out, drug abuse, ambition, and hobbies. But I found that when I interacted with other people one of two things happened during the time I was doing it. I was either charming and loquacious, or I was profoundly awkward, self-conscious, and uncomfortable. Sometimes, often, I was both. But one thing always happened in the aftermath of my interactions; I was full of regret, self-loathing, and discomfort. 

I evaluated myself relentlessly in the eyes of others and never came out well.

I should tell you now, in case you are either worried about it or hopeful about it: 

This epic account is not some deep, psychological self-examination. It is merely a simple telling of a long journey by foot, in the fashion of, say, "Go Dog Go", "Walden", or "Finnegan's Wake".

On the other hand, it is full of lies, so who knows?

You, for instance, may think you are getting away from yourself for a bit as you read here the account of the adventure of another person. But look at this: We've barely begun the first chapter and you have already found yourself right in the middle of things! This whole paragraph is all about you! This is no accident.

I'm just saying: 

Everything is suspicious.

In these first 22 years of my life, I had been backpacking many times. This endeavor worked with the negligible amount of money I had, (there is little to buy in the wild), and, more importantly, the wilderness never found me weird, even when I hid for days in my tent because I was scared of bears. I always got the sense that the wilderness even sort of liked me. 

In the eyes of the wilderness, I was...

Fine.

Everywhere else I seemed, to myself, to be amazing or horrible. 

There was something of relief about fine.

Even if there were also bears.

In short, I decided I was going to hike all 2,722 miles of The Agua Fria Trail.

I would like to say that The Agua Fria Trail is a famous wilderness trail and then tell you scads of interesting things about it like I'm Bill Bryson, or, better yet, Edward Abbey. But all I have for you is this:

The Agua Fria Trail is a kind of sister trail to other more famous hiking trails, like the Pacific Crest Trail or the Appalachian Trail. The main difference is that The Agua Fria Trail never really caught on, or stayed protected. So it was around for a few years in the eighties, and then it simply faded away, developed over, cut off, or made into smaller stretches of protected parks. But at the time of my adventure, it was briefly flourishing. It was relatively nearby. But perhaps most importantly, in a pre-Internet time, someone had written a guide to it, with a full, mostly legible compendium of maps to the trail located in the appendix. And furthermore, my older brother had left behind a copy of this very book on a family bookshelf. 

And so it was good enough for me.

I would go hike 2,735 miles by myself! That would show them! 

And, best of all, they would never know it was showing them.

Next:

The Plan

Because Monday, silence, 8

 

Because Monday, silence, 7

 

Because Monday, silence, 6

 

Because Monday, silence, 5

 

Because Monday, silence, 4

 

Because Monday, silence, 3

 

Because Monday, silence, 2

 

Because Monday, silence, 1

 

At the Japanese Temple, a question

 

I'm not really at the Japanese Temple. 

If I were at the Japanese Temple I might look over and see this.

"Wait." I could say. "That looks like..."

"No." I would respond to myself. "It can't be. They're fictional!"

But then why not, if I'm not really there anyway?

Untitled ice number 21

 

My friend, who may or may not ever much read my blog these days, wanted to see the waterfall I showed him on my phone as it turned to ice. But like a flower growing and blooming it happens too slowly in nearly every case for the naked eye to see.

I would have to set up a time lapse camera for that, which, I agree, might be very interesting footage. Though, oddly, I wasn't able to find any of it on the Internet.

Leaving the art exhibit

 

It's cold in the church, and getting too dark to look at the large metal printed photographs of water strung all along the two apse aisles. Actually, you can still see them okay, but there's a lot of debris on the ground you don't want to stumble on, and you're starting to think about the long walk home through the woods.

 You hear wolves, you think. Can those really be wolves?

You don't know how you feel about that. Like, hearing wolves in the woods in the bright daytime? Pretty good. In the woods at dusk, okay. But in an abandoned church in the middle of the lost woods as the wind begins to pick up? A bit unsteady.

You sort your way towards the door, but a last water picture on the wall to your left catches your eye in the growing gloom:

Further along the aisle

 

You head down the apse looking at photos of water, printed on giant panels of metal, and hung between marble columns. There are a bunch of tree branches scattered on the cracked floor under your feet. You step around the debris.

Is that a dead raccoon? 

Ew!

Fourth from the end of the row is this picture: