Hikes
Monday, October 21st, 2024: Black Hills, Hikes, Nature, Plants, Southeast Arizona.
Until my knee gave out on me, I never had trouble finding big hikes that would produce interesting Dispatches! But now, I’m limited to canyon walks or traverses of level basins surrounded by spectacular peaks or rock formations – most of which are across the border in Arizona. This Sunday, I wanted to explore a beautiful area of buttes and bluffs that I’ve driven by many times. It’s all unprotected cattle country, but I’d seldom seen cattle there. Access was a big question – the map shows a few dirt roads crossing it, but I had no idea whether my low-clearance 2wd pickup would handle them.
The road I was hoping to use turned out to be long-abandoned and blocked by catastrophic washouts and rockslides, but a few miles past it I found a rocky ranch road that the truck could just barely handle.
The two-lane highway skirts the edge of the shallow basin, and the ranch road took me down to where a dead-end side track branched off. I drove that only a short distance lower into the basin – searching for the abandoned road had used up almost a half hour and I really wanted to get out and start walking.
After yesterday’s winter-like storm, today’s sky was crystal clear, the air was still, and the temperature at this elevation – around 4,000 feet – was forecast to be in the 70s all day. Much warmer than it should be for this time of year.
I set out for the nearest butte, across rolling desert terrain cut by shallow arroyos, featuring big honey mesquites alongside big catclaw acacias, with an understory of junipers, creosote bush, barrel cactus, prickly pear, ocotillo, palo verde, and various shrubs. A diverse paradise for lovers of desert vegetation. As with other areas I’ve explored nearby, the arroyos here often expose bedrock, and although the ground was already bone dry, yesterday’s storm had left hundreds of small tinajas – water pockets – in that bedrock.
The dry wash I was following turned away from the butte, so I climbed a shallow rise into the next watershed, and found a picturesque little box canyon at the foot of the butte. Crossing the head of that, I traversed the shoulders of the butte northward to get a view of the northern part of the basin. Big prickly pears surround the butte, creating an obstacle course that was sometimes almost impassable, but it was all so pretty I didn’t mind. My only regret was the lack of clouds – I’ve passed this area when cloud cover made it look more epic than it is – almost like Monument Valley in Utah.
Eventually I turned back. I needed a little more mileage, so when I reached the head of the box canyon I turned upstream. This proved to be a good choice – the arroyo led me over more spectacular bedrock formations and into the eastern part of the basin below more rugged rock bluffs. I saw a phainopepla and flushed a covey of quail and several ground squirrels.
I’d seen dry cowpies and cattle tracks that were probably a few weeks old, but thankfully no bulls! The basin was shallow enough that if there had been cattle here, I would’ve seen them from far away.
By the time I returned to the truck I’d gone less than two-and-a-half miles, and my knee seemed to be doing okay. I’d been careful to stop and stretch several times, walking slowly and mindfully on the gentle descents.
My next destination was the restaurant in the village I’d passed on my way here. It was packed with local ranch families, but thankfully they have one small table by the door, which just seemed to be waiting for me. I ordered enchiladas and turned to see if there was anyone I could talk to, but they were all immersed in Sunday gossip. These are rural Trump voters – but not the hillbilly types, unemployed and addicted to opioids, that the media seem to love. These hardworking country people were in their best Western wear for church, the men wearing different shades of cowboy hats.
Locals came and went, nodding and smiling at me as they passed. As I was finishing up, a stooped man walking with a cane, who couldn’t have been much older than me, turned on his way out and said “Have a wonderful day, young man!” I don’t hear that much anymore!
Unfortunately by the time I got home my knee was hurting more than at any time since the pain started, last May. At this point, I’ve spent nearly six months icing, elevating, compressing, resting, and doing recommended exercises and stretches. And now, with frequent travel back east, it’s impossible to maintain a rehab routine. Guess I’ll just have to be content with sightseeing instead of hiking, and look for other ways to reduce my stress.
Vista Home or Desperate Lookout?
Monday, October 28th, 2024: Hikes, Indigenous Cultures, San Francisco Mountains, Society, Southwest New Mexico.
I drove two-and-a-quarter hours to the most spectacular viewpoint in our region, and climbed a rocky slope to a prehistoric site. My knee was already hurting from a hike three days earlier, and today’s adventure would add insult to injury. But these are desperate times.
Yet again, we had clear skies and the afternoon high in town was forecast to be at least 80. I’d wanted to explore places at lower elevation but they were forecast to reach 90 – at the end of October! Today’s destination is over 7,000 feet and the temps should be mild.
The drive north used to be one of the loneliest roads in the U.S., but in the past year it’s become some sort of mysterious commuter artery. From where to where, I have no idea, but this morning, most of the southbound vehicles were giant RVs. Tomorrow was forecast to be the last day of our fall heat wave, and it’s as if all the snowbirds decided to head south at the same time.
Finally, I reached the turnoff for the backcountry road west, and left the crowd behind. The single-lane dirt road traverses a maze of ridges and canyons between 6,000 and 6,500 feet, forested with ponderosa pine and Gamble oak, up and down around hairpin turns. RVs, fifth-wheelers, and pickups with camper shells were sporadically tucked away under the pines, and I passed at least one group of camo-clad hunters setting up camp.
The final climb to the high saddle is world-class, emerging from the rolling basin to a south-facing slope with forever views. Parking at the top, I had a chat with a retired couple from the village an hour south. I said this is an undiscovered gem, and they replied “Not anymore!”
As they drove off, I set out on my short hike up to the bluffs. I expected it to be less than half a mile, but the slope gets increasingly steeper and the ground is covered with big sharp rocks. This cliff dwelling is actually marked on Google Maps, but the person who recorded it only viewed it from afar with binoculars. From the road, it looks inaccessible, perched in an alcove way up in a sheer cliff. But you never know until you try.
Picking my way through those rocks was even harder than I expected. But cattle had been all over this area, and I followed their tracks where I could, walking slowly and carefully to protect my knee. At several points I had to climb steep sheets of exposed bedrock, lined with loose rocks that were constantly rolling out from under me. I was ascending an outlying shoulder with a deepening ravine at my left, and I could see that when I reached the foot of the actual bluffs I would need to traverse left up the steep side of the ravine toward the cliff dwelling.
Finally I emerged on a ledge below the bluffs with a 180-degree view of the eastern, southern, and western landscape.
The ledge lies at 7,500 feet and the ravine at my left hosts tall ponderosas and a dense understory of shrubs and grasses hiding bigger and sharper rocks – basically a vegetated talus slope. I had to traverse this upward at the foot of the bluffs – more slow going – but found occasional segments of a narrow trail. I’d entertained fantasies of being the first modern human to explore this site, and still hadn’t seen any footprints.
Finally I emerged from the scrub at the foot of the cliff, with the crumbling wall of the prehistoric structure about twenty feet above me, behind an overhang. The cliff curved outward at right, where a partial, primitive rope ladder was suspended, a dozen feet above the ground. I walked closer and saw it was made from nylon rope.
Pushing my way through more brush around the crumbling foot of the bluff, I discovered there was no way up the cliff. The prehistoric structure is inaccessible until someone finds a way to extend or replace that rope ladder. But below the hanging ladder is a small alcove with a sandy floor covered with recent footprints, and at the back of the alcove I found a tin box full of notes from previous visitors, as recent as six days ago. So much for my romantic fantasy.
When I first explored cliff dwellings in Utah 35 years ago, they seemed so exotic, and their locations so beautiful, that I didn’t really question why they’d been built or what life might’ve been like for their residents. It took decades of hard lessons for me to realize these were last-ditch hideouts for desperate people living in constant fear of attack – the prehistoric equivalent of today’s doomsday preppers. They were likely only inhabited briefly during times of known threat.
The wall above me had been incredibly hard to build, and has tiny windows that would be perfect for shooting arrows through. Unless there’s a spring inside the alcove – highly unlikely – whoever was using the shelter would have to traverse down a mile and 900 vertical feet to the nearest seasonal stream for water, and carry their supplies back up that difficult slope. To me, this appeared to be a lookout, from which scouts could scan a vast area of strategic terrain on a route between fertile river valleys in the east and west.
Now came the hard part – the descent of that difficult slope on my already hurting knee. When I reached the ledge below the bluffs, I saw another man approaching, and we exchanged waves as I moved to the side to get a better panorama.
Farther down, descending one of those stone sheets lined with loose rock, I finally stumbled and had a “soft” fall that hurt nothing but my already injured knee. Served me right – I would just end up taking more pain pills and enduring a slower recovery.
Late lunch in the tiny county seat to the north was so mediocre that despite my hunger, I couldn’t finish it. And the drive home on that previously lonely road was made stressful by an endless series of city people in Japanese sedans, tailgating me, imagining themselves race drivers on the tight, steep curves. Where did they come from, and where were they all going?
Thursday, January 23rd, 2025: Hikes, Mineral, Mogollon Mountains, Southwest New Mexico.
First hike since October. Knee still hurting, worse than ever. Hoping to get a shot in about a month. Meanwhile planning to hike through it, trying various hacks.
Back in my mountains after 7 weeks in purgatory, praise the lord. Missing my mom, this one’s for her. Emotionally numb, in denial. Lonely.
Headed north to revisit a spectacular canyon, 500 feet lower than home. Temps hovering around freezing, clear sky, a dusting of snow on north slopes above 8,000 feet. Unusual number of small hawks swooping along the road.
Creek lined with lovely, thick ice from recent temps in teens. Much more water than I expected, runoff from sun on snow and ice higher up. Fall color lingering on fallen sycamore leaves. Magical place.
Tricky creek crossings on icy rocks between frigid pools a foot deep. Trying out trekking poles in hopes they’ll help my knee – they help in creek crossings but are awkward on this rocky trail and useless and in the way in many places.
Much earlier than expected, after maybe a half mile, I reach a crossing I can’t do without getting my feet and legs soaked.
Heading back, I can tell my knee’s going to hurt bad tonight.
Monday, January 27th, 2025: Animals, Greasewoods, Hikes, Nature, Rocks, Southeast Arizona.
After my return from back east with increasingly crippling knee pain, my doctor had prescribed something that sounded familiar. Later, after looking it up, I realized it was an anti-inflammatory (NSAID) he’d ordered for my hip pain back in 2008, when I’d tried every NSAID on the market, and every one had caused stomach cramps so bad I had to reject them all, adding that entire class of medicines to my growing list of drug allergies.
But in desperation, I took a dose Saturday after breakfast, and then, immediately after taking it, discovered it’s taboo for patients allergic to the antibiotic sulfa. I’ve always been told I almost died of anaphylactic shock after being given sulfa at age 2.
To my considerable relief, I didn’t die. I didn’t develop stomach cramps, and three hours after taking the drug, my knee pain disappeared completely for the first time since early May 2024.
Okay, I thought. Let’s put it to the test. There’s a small mountain range over in Arizona that I’ve wanted to explore for five years. It lies directly across a lonely highway from the much bigger and much taller mountain range I’ve climbed dozens of times. It lies within the same national forest, but it’s neither federal wilderness nor wilderness study area, and as far as I could tell it’s all cattle range.
The map shows no hiking trails, but the mountains, rising from 4,600 to 6,900 feet in elevation, are traversed by a sparse network of dirt roads, only a few of which seemed to be maintained. Virtually no information about this little range is available online – hours from the nearest city, it seems to be ignored by hikers, mountain bikers, campers, and recreationists in general.
Recalling my history of conflicts with livestock, you might assume I would join the crowd and likewise ignore this unpopular rangeland. But the northern part of the range has one irresistible attraction: it looks very similar to my spiritual home, those sacred mountains in the Mojave Desert. It virtually screams “DROP ACID AND HIKE ME!”
So on Sunday morning, after taking a second dose of the new drug, I packed for an overnight trip across the state line, where for the first time since last August, I would try to hike more than a mile. My optimistic plan was to walk one of the abandoned roads from an interior basin up to a pass where I could survey the possibility of someday climbing to the crest. As usual in a situation like this, I really had no idea what to expect. I might run into an aggressive bull, or a locked gate with a No Trespassing sign, or a sandy road my truck couldn’t handle. My knee might betray me. In those eventualities, there were other less interesting options nearby.
It was another day without clouds, temperatures forecast to reach the 50s. Under full sun it would feel much warmer, if not for the steady west wind I found to be blowing all day. The ranch road in was very well-maintained, but my eyes were constantly drawn to the fantastic rock formations it twisted between, and I stopped every hundred yards or so for pictures. It was all even better than I’d expected – after cresting a low rise, you wind down into a hidden basin surrounded by low hills to the south and spectacular mountains, cliffs, and pinnacles in the west and north.
The ranch house lay just out of sight at the north end of the basin, but the road I wanted turned off south. The basin is dotted with huge spreading trees which I was surprised to identify as Emory oaks – we have much smaller ones around home – and in less than a quarter mile the road turned bad and I pulled off to park in a clearing near several of these majestic trees. At the edge of that lovely basin, in this landscape dominated by stone in endless organic forms, I was already in heaven and I hadn’t even started hiking.
The map shows a powerline following the road, and once there, I realized it’s actually the opposite – the road I planned to hike is the powerline utility road. It’s a minor powerline serving a ranch on the west side of the range, so since the powerline was laid, the road hasn’t been maintained, and coming from the east, I didn’t see any vehicle tracks until I approached the pass much later.
My knee seemed fine, and I didn’t anticipate any sustained grades to threaten it, but on every single decline, I practiced a duckwalk I’d found in a YouTube video by a physical therapist that was recommended to relieve knee pain. I did that all day, on what was probably a hundred or more short descents.
Cattle had used the road, but only rarely, and the most recent cowpies were a couple weeks old. I spotted a herd lounging a half mile north near a corral and water tank. Another hike I’d considered follows a dirt road that branches south, offering a possible route to the summit of the range. But when I reached that branch, I could see that the southern part of the range doesn’t feature those spectacular rock formations, so I kept going on my powerline road, forcing myself to move at a leisurely pace and take shorter steps than my body seemed to want to.
Up and down across side drainages, the road gradually took me higher above the basin, yielding better and better views. I found the fairly recent track of a single hiker who must’ve been about my size. I came upon modest ranch infrastructure, and mused enviously that this must be one of the prettiest ranches in all Arizona.
Eventually I could see the powerline heading up to the pass, the hills closed in at each side, and I began to wonder if my knee would really hold out that far. The past six months had been hell in so many ways. Taking care of my mother had distracted me some from the pain and the inability to hike, but my soul had been grieving, and I’d often wondered if I would ever be able to hike again. At times, my future seemed utterly hopeless.
In this basin dominated by oaks, I came upon the occasional juniper and was surprised to encounter small manzanitas. Back home, manzanita only seems to grow above 8,000 feet, but here – and in another range to the south – at similar latitudes, I’ve found it between 5,000 and 6,000 feet. Why the difference?
After more than two miles, my knee still seemed fine – another surprise, since for months, every time I’d walked a mile, I’d ended up in severe pain. The road became steeper and more deeply eroded as it climbed to the pass, but I kept moving carefully upward, admiring the steep, rocky slope on my right, behind which the northern crest was hidden, about a thousand feet higher.
That wind was howling down from the pass, and no matter how tightly I cinched my hat, it still blew off from time to time. But now I was sure I was going to make it, and since one of my favorite experiences is to crest a pass for the first time and see over into the next watershed, discovering completely new territory, I was really stoked. I’d been eyeballing possible routes to the crest on the east side, ever since beginning my hike, and now I would learn whether a better route exists on the west side, taking off from this road.
Wow! That wind was just blasting through! The west side of the pass descends at a much gentler grade, with the less interesting southern mountains on your left, but on your right, there’s more spectacular rock, and what appears to be a straightforward route upward to the crest.
It was no place to linger in this wind, but I began to believe I might return someday.
Of course, the trail back threatened to be much harder on my knee, since it was mostly downhill. But I kept carefully duckwalking down every incline, and it seemed to work. The low angle light from the western sun made everything in the landscape stand out now – my reward for the climb to the pass. And gradually, I realized I was experiencing a miracle – just as my mother has recently been able to stand up and walk after being confined to a wheelchair since September, I was now hiking miles without pain for the first time since early May.
I don’t buy the old myth, perpetuated by Western pundits from Aristotle to the new age self-help gurus of the 80s, that human life should be a quest for individual happiness. Happiness – a steady state of comfort and carefree living – has always been a meaningless concept to me. My curiosity drives me to take the kind of chances that result in moments of joy – like this day of pain-free hiking through a beautiful landscape – between long stretches of hard work and suffering. Giving up the extremes in favor of the safe and predictable seems like a poor trade-off.
My lower legs were now aching – anti-inflammatories do nothing for lactic acid. Charting my route later, at home, I would find I’d hiked over seven miles with an elevation gain of 1,000 feet. I can’t really describe how ecstatic I was by the time I reached the truck. In all those seven miles the only litter I’d seen was a single smashed beverage can. Without that, it would’ve been too perfect.
Driving out between the rock formations, I passed a late-model utility vehicle parked below some boulders and pinnacles, and realized this area is even more spectacular than the most famous bouldering destination in California, yet the online silence suggests it’s either undiscovered or ignored. Let’s hope it stays that way.
I’d reserved a room in my new favorite motel south of the range. And after a burrito and a peaceful night reminiscing about my hike, I emerged before dawn to find thousands of sandhill cranes flying directly overhead, moving north from the small lakes that dot the valley to the south. The parade lasted for at least 90 minutes – another miracle to top off yesterday’s.
Monday, February 3rd, 2025: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Horseshoe, Southeast Arizona.
This Sunday was forecast to be unseasonably warm, reaching 70 degrees at home. Still looking to test my newly medicated knee on a mid-distance hike with elevation gain between 1,000 and 2,000 feet, I had my heart set on a trail west of here to a little 7,500′ peak that had been recommended for its views. But I’m trying to get pictures of rocks for my mother, and when I dug up some pics from that hike online, I could see it was all forest and no rocks.
So despite the warm weather I resigned myself to hiking lower elevation areas along the Arizona border, where rocks abound. I wanted to avoid livestock if possible, and the maps showed a trail through a wilderness study area, up an exposed, rocky canyon that had intrigued me, from a distance, for years.
But when I reached the turnoff to the access road, I found it closed, with a locked gate, guarding a small settlement of what appeared to be scruffy retirees and desert rats. I guess remoteness explains why they get away with closing access to a trail on public land.
Of course I always expect things like this when exploring new areas. My backup plan was to check out a canyon on the east side of the sky island mountain range, popular with birders, that I’d hiked so many times before. Most of my hikes had focused on the high central area, accessed via the northeast basin. One of those previous hikes had reached and traversed the head of this eastern canyon, which was enough to make me curious about the trail up the canyon below, accessed via a forest road entering the east side of the range
It’s a long canyon. My mapping platform shows the access road ending 5-1/2 miles in, with the trail continuing 6-1/2 miles to the saddle I’d reached before. But the old Forest Service map shows the access road continuing another 4 miles to the wilderness boundary, where the trail proper begins. Who to believe?
The most complete and up-to-date trail guide for this range says the access road was destroyed in the catastrophic floods after the 2011 mega-wildfire and is “not passable by vehicle for a number of miles”, and the trail up the canyon to the saddle I’d reached from the other side has “not been maintained for a very long time and conditions are poor to nonexistent”. I assumed today would be a repeat of my explorations in a similarly described canyon northwest of here, where the road had been apocalyptically washed out for miles and I had a very difficult scramble to even reach the trail – something my knee definitely wasn’t ready for today.
But I was in the vicinity and it would only take a half hour to check this out, after which I could drive to the interior basin to re-do an easy but forested trail there.
What I found was a rough ranch road that led to a corral and water tank at the mouth of the canyon. After closing the gate behind me, I was only able to drive a few hundred yards before hitting the sandy crossing of a big wash where my 2wd truck would surely bog down, so I parked in a clearing, loaded up, and starting hiking the road. At 1,400 feet lower than home, it was already warm enough that I had to unbutton my shirt.
This turned out to be a very wide canyon between rocky ridges, with a broad floodplain. The floodplain was lined partly with grasses and annuals, and partly with open oak woodland that became dense as it extended occasionally up gently slanting cuts through the rocky ridge on the south side.
A few hundred yards beyond the wash crossing, I found two pickups parked beside the road, one with a Wyoming plate. Not knowing what to expect, I have to admit it was a little reassuring to know other hikers were up ahead – instead of, for example, gun nuts on ATVs.
The road was dusty, and walking it under full sunlight quickly became a trudge – not the hike I’d wanted for today. But this was a pretty canyon I felt like I needed to explore, and as usual I wasn’t paying enough attention to distances on the map. I was hoping I would reach the end of the road in an hour or so and still be able to enjoy some roadless hiking in a wild canyon beyond.
I had my eye out for cattle and soon spotted a bull resting under an oak on the opposite slope. And a quarter mile later where the road wound through oak forest, I came upon another bull, standing just off the road. He was watching me but didn’t seem concerned, so I continued past. Maybe this canyon sees enough recreational use that the bulls are more accustomed to strangers than in the more remote areas I usually target.
The road crossed the wash again, near groves of big oaks that featured really pretty campsites. So far, the road had been easily passable by high-clearance 4wd vehicles, and I was thinking this would be a great place to camp – just outside of bear habitat, but with access to the higher mountains.
I went through another gate and back across the wash, and soon met the other hikers – a party of six, three couples roughly my age, all birders with field glasses hanging on their chests. They were engaged in conversation and barely acknowledged me as we passed.
I saw some bluebirds crossing from oak to oak, and spooked a whitetail doe that ran up the south slope.
A little ways farther up the road I came to a huge water tank about 50 feet in diameter with a solar pump. There had been plastic pipe running beside the road all the way, feeding occasional small water troughs, and it continued past here. This was by far the biggest ranch operation I’d seen in this range – my earlier thought of camping was fading fast.
The canyon narrowed, the road began making tighter turns, and I came to a right-angle bend, the forested intersection with a side canyon on the right, where a rocky side road branched off. I continued on the main road and found that the birders had turned back here. But I continued upcanyon for more than a mile, to another crossing where the road climbed a steep bank and the rancher had built a long drystone retaining wall hoping to control erosion. Here, a side road climbed steeply left into oak forest where I could see a freestanding fireplace and chimney and hiked up to investigate.
The map showed this to be the start of a trail up a small peak, but all I could find were meandering cattle trails. There was no cabin foundation around the fireplace, but the chimney showed a fringe of rusted flashing from a metal roof. Hard to say what happened here.
Back on the main road, after another quarter mile I heard mooing and spotted a herd of cattle ahead in an oak grove south of the road. I could see a corral ahead, and standing in front of it facing me down, another bull. A bull’s first duty is to protect his cows, so I turned back in disgust.
I knew I hadn’t gone more than three miles yet, so the best thing I could do now would be to go back and explore that road up the side canyon.
After returning a mile-and-a-half around the big bend, I found the side road was only rocky for a short distance, then became another dirt road up a floodplain. I could see the side canyon opened out and became relatively vast. But while stopping to pee, I heard a dog bark, and looking back, saw a mountain biker stopping under oaks at the entrance to the side road. His dog ran up to meet me, and the biker passed me shortly after, again roughly my age. I realized to my chagrin that, rather than a wild canyon devastated by catastrophic floods and abandoned by hikers, this was actually a combination working ranch and recreation park for retirees.
But in less than a half mile the road disappeared under a debris flow of white rocks from the historic floods. I couldn’t find where the biker had gone, but I continued working my way upstream across the rocks, until I got really frustrated by the oaks in the canyon bottom blocking my view of the landscape. So I carefully climbed the east slope to a high bench with an expansive view. And the first thing I saw was another herd of cattle, facing me from the corresponding bench across a deep ravine. This was clearly their habitat, not mine.
But it was a really pretty canyon, like a vast inner world hidden from the outside of the range.
I hadn’t gotten much elevation today, but I’d walked almost nine miles, and my knee was complaining despite the meds. During the past week I’d tried alternating oral Celebrex and Voltaren gel. The Voltaren failed to ease my pain, and its complicated application is completely incompatible with hiking or camping.
Environmentalists and conservationists have long accepted that responsible ranching is better for habitat and wildlife than urban sprawl. I don’t know how responsible the ranchers are where I hike, but I’m learning that hiking in this rangeland is complicated. I’ve hiked in remote, forested rangeland where cattle graze where they please and seldom if ever see a human, and that’s where I’ve found the most pristine habitat and encountered the most aggressive bulls. I’ve hiked in remote, heavily overgrazed grass-and-scrubland where the livestock likewise rarely see a human and are inclined to be defensive. And I’ve hiked in places like today’s canyon, where ranching and recreation peacefully coexist, but which are much less interesting to me.
Normally when I make the minimum hour-and-a-half drive to this range, I hike until evening, enjoy dinner at the cafe, and spend the night in the motel. But today’s walk returned me to the truck a little after 4pm, so I just drove home and saved some money. I will soon spend it on an overnight bag anyway, since my old one is decomposing into toxic microplastics.
