Monday, November 28th, 2022
Friday, November 4th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
Coming Home
Three and a half years had passed since I’d last visited my place in the desert, the place I’ve long called my spiritual home. That’s the longest absence in the 32 years since my Los Angeles friend and I bought the place, but the time span of three and a half years doesn’t begin to convey the changes I, and our society, have gone through.
COVID being the most obvious one, of course, and the reason why I didn’t visit in early 2000. But then my house caught fire, I was only minutes from dying or losing it completely, I had to shuffle between emergency housing for over a year, and repairs still haven’t been completed. Shortly after the fire, I had a near-death experience during a routine dental procedure. And this year, I was hospitalized for three weeks with a mystery illness and again came close to dying.
Since 1989, I had visited our land at least once a year, except for the years 2001 and 2002. That was also one of the hardest times of my life. Traumatized by the end of a relationship, broke and in debt after the collapse of my dotcom business, I’d begun reevaluating my whole existence. What had long felt like a spiritual quest now seemed an idle fantasy, and those remote desert mountains seemed irrelevant to my future.
But in 2007 I renewed my connection with the place by organizing annual campouts with others who love it, including several new friends – a new community brought together by our desert land. These eventually led to a more formal, conservation-oriented meeting in 2019, engaging scientists with Native Americans. I’d almost finished organizing the second meeting when COVID hit in 2020.
Why do I even own this place, and why is it so important to me?
Originally, in the mid-1980s, after falling in love with the desert and learning that people had lived there prehistorically, I gradually found myself wanting to live out there, off the land, like those prehistoric people. My artist friends and I had been camping out there throughout the decade, “domesticating” it for ourselves and generally finding it comfortable and pleasant as well as beautiful and magical. And as I learned more about the natural resources available, it seemed actually doable.
I took a course in aboriginal survival skills, and in spring 2002, after an unusually wet winter, I moved to my land and tried to survive. I relied on local water sources and began harvesting wild foods, but as most would expect, it’s not easy to go straight from civilization to a desert wilderness. And I had a girlfriend back in the city. So the desert would remain a place to visit, not to inhabit.
From the beginning, my co-owner and I had been telling people we wanted to be “stewards” of our land. On sporadic visits, we worked hard cleaning up trash and trying to eradicate invasive plants that conservationists said were destroying native habitat. But we were both struggling with jobs and relationships in the city and never had enough time to be real stewards in the desert.
At that last meeting in 2019, each of us spoke about how we came to love the desert, and what it means to us, and we each had completely different stories. In the end, it’s like asking: Why do people fall in love with each other?
Despite our early impression of comfortable camping, the desert eventually lived up to its reputation as a harsh mistress. Numbing, immobilizing heat in mid-summer. Sudden plagues of unknown insect pests that can drive you out of camp. Days of relentless, scouring gale-force wind that makes even the simplest chore an ordeal. Winter nights that freeze your water jugs solid.
I mentioned the prehistoric denizens, and my own failure to make the desert home. Does anyone actually live out there now? Not in our wild mountains, but a few diehard desert rats remain on or near the highway – like our local rancher, who lives in a house with indoor plumbing and electricity like the rest of us, driving to the nearest town for supplies. And the survivors of the last native inhabitants live similarly modern lives on their reservation, a few hours’ drive away.
Conservationists bemoan the damage caused to natural habitats and populations by industrial society: water sources fouled by domestic livestock like cattle and burros, fatal respiratory diseases spread to native bighorn sheep, riparian habitat degraded by invasive tamarisk, soil crusts trampled by off-road vehicles, underground aquifers threatened by commercial water development. I’ve heard scientists say the desert – or even the entire planet – would be better off if humans were completely eliminated.
A Different Kind of Trip
In recent decades, as my focus broadened to the native tribes and their territory in the Southwest, I spent less and less time on our land and more time exploring other parts of that territory. Even though I allocated up to three weeks for these trips, driving hundreds of miles between states and mountain ranges stressed me out and left me with less time for camping and hiking.
I gave myself ten days for this trip, with no agenda other than simply to reaquaint myself with our land. It had been far too long.
Stuck in Flagstaff
It takes two days to reach the land, and Flagstaff is the midway point, where I typically stop for the night and shop for groceries and other supplies.
I’d spent a few hours on Saturday packing, and being out of practice, I’d forgotten how to protect my lower back when lifting the heavy water jugs, so I triggered my severe back pain and jinxed the trip before it even started. I knew it could only get worse since I would later need to lift the even heavier new ice chest in and out of the vehicle.
All my camping gear, except for sleeping bags, was new and untested, since my old gear had been destroyed in the fire. So another purpose of this trip was to test the new gear. (By the way, gas cans, carried in vehicle when empty, go on the roof when full. I use the small boxy cans because they’re easier on my back to lift and more stable on the roof.)
Late Sunday morning, after loading up, I started the engine, and felt it lurching and stumbling. There’d been no previous warning, so I shut it off and restarted. It seemed to be missing a cylinder, but it was driveable, and there was no way I was going to delay my trip another day to get it checked out locally. Maybe the problem would clear up as the engine warmed up.
Instead, the drive over the mountains to Flagstaff became a seven-hour ordeal. I faced a dramatic loss of power that required downshifting and revving to the redline to get up grades on the highway, and that was especially nerve-wracking on the interstate, under pressure from tractor-trailer rigs on a tight schedule and city drivers enraged to be caught behind me. And I was burning through fuel much faster, with gas prices that were already burdensome.
I made it to Flagstaff, but spent an hour Monday morning driving all over town trying to find a shop that would check my engine. The shop I finally found was downtown, but they couldn’t help me until afternoon.
Flagstaff is one of those Western boom towns that suffers from overdevelopment and hectic traffic. I’ve come to hate it, and strive to limit my time there to the bare minimum. But this time, I was stuck there for two days, most of which I had to spend wandering around town on foot, waiting for the shop to get started. My vehicle needed a tune-up, and parts had to be ordered overnight. And as a traveler from out of state, I was price-gouged by the shop.
I ended up walking loops around downtown, and out to the northwest along the Rio de Flag, a man-made drainage channel that features an artificial pond and riparian corridor. I spent hours one morning in the library reading from a surprisingly limited selection of magazines. None of my experiences made me want to return for more.
Finally, late Tuesday afternoon, I was able to do my shopping and hit the road, with only time enough to reach Kingman, a little over two hours west. By that time I needed to do laundry, in order to have enough clean clothes for a week of camping. So it was a third night in a motel – all in all, car trouble increased the cost of my already expensive trip by about 50%.
The whole time, I was suffering from back pain, wondering if and when it would immobilize me and require emergency treatment. And driving, hammering the accelerator to get up those grades, triggered my chronic hip pain. Was this simply destined to become another poorly-conceived trip from Hell?
My packing is always guided by a Gear List I started decades ago and have continuously updated, but I failed to update it before this trip, so there were some new developments, like a USB C adapter for my camera, that required a last-minute search in Flagstaff, and a few things I disregarded in my rush, like firewood, that turned out to be important once I reached the desert.
On the plus side, the forecast was for mild weather throughout my stay, with mostly clear skies and temperatures ranging from the high 40s to the low 70s. Unfortunately, this was the forecast for the nearest settlement on the highway, more than a thousand feet lower than I’d be camping, and I’d unconsciously stored it in my mind as the weather to prepare for – leading to some issues in the days ahead.
Friday, November 4th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
On Wednesday morning, only needing to buy gas – filling my cans at Arizona prices then topping up at California prices in the desert oasis – I finally headed west across the desert. The highway has been closed to through traffic for most of the past decade, due to bridges washed out in past flash floods, never to be repaired. We can drive around these washouts, but it’s been great to discourage visits from strangers.
The sand-and-gravel road past the ghost town was graded for a gas pipeline test several years ago, and remains fast to the test site, midway up the fan to the pass. But beyond there, a zillion minor ruts forced me below 20 mph average, and past the airstrip, my speed dropped to between 5 and 15 mph as usual.
I was shocked to see how dry everything is – perhaps drier than I’ve ever seen before. The creosote bushes on the alluvial fan have dropped almost all their leaves, with remaining leaves brown and dead, except for a few shallow drainages where highly localized storms caused a little runoff this year. I think we all hoped this year’s wet monsoon would bring rain to these mountains, but that simply didn’t pan out.
Nevertheless, visitation has really dropped off. The rancher has stopped visiting our gulch, and the only recent tracks on our side road were from a single fat tire dirt bike.
Entering the mountains and dropping into the lower gulch, there was little recent erosion, lots of new growth, and no established vehicle tread, so as occasionally in the past, I had to find my way up the big wash as if I’d never been there before. Our improvised gate was still up – the dirt bike had simply gone around where anti-government vandals had cut our fence – and everything else around camp looked as it had three and a half years ago.
It was great to be home, but I was still under a cloud of stress from back pain, feeling like such an idiot for letting it happen. It would hang over me for the next couple of days, always threatening to paralyze me if I made the wrong move in this challenging terrain.
Stopping for lunch in the pass on the way in, I reached camp around 1 pm and immediately prepared for a hike up the gulch. I had no destination in mind and would decide enroute.
My first stop was at the hidden cache of our shade structure, which remained untouched and sheltered. That cheered me up, along with the health of the riparian vegetation.
Invasive tamarisk had regrown significantly in the mid-gulch, but native vegetation still looked good outside the one historical tamarisk patch. New growth and erosion meant that anything but bike travel up the gulch would now be quite destructive, so it was great to see no one had been here to try.
The day was almost perfectly calm in the wash, and when I reached the outlet of the old road up to the mine, which I hadn’t visited in decades, I decided to head up there. The lower part of the road remains in good repair, and as I climbed, I encountered some nice gusts that kept me from overheating. But the road gains 500′ in elevation, becomes quite steep, and crosses a drainage where it’s been eroded beyond driveability, sometime since the early 90s.
Exploring beyond the ledge where the stamp mill was located and the mules corralled, I discovered a well-built mule trail into a side canyon that I couldn’t remember. I followed it a few hundred feet higher in elevation until it was blocked by a giant cholla next to a cliff a dozen feet high. I vowed to return when I had more time, because this trail seemed like a practical route to the crest, not much farther above.
From there, I climbed over a low shoulder and dropped down to the “swimming pool”, a huge concrete water tank I’ve always fantasized about filling with drainage from inside the mine. And at that point, what had so far been an exhilarating hike turned somber.
A mature bighorn ram had fallen in the tank, which is 12-15′ deep, with no way up the nearly sheer walls. This tank is obviously a trap for wildlife, but the only way I could imagine an adult bighorn falling in, is if it was in flight, perhaps from a lion, bounding up the slope from below, and for some reason unfamiliar with this spot and its hazard.
The fall would surely have broken bones, and with luck, caused a concussion that might’ve made the death by dehydration/starvation a little easier.
It was hard to get that tragic image out of my mind on the way back to camp. Despite the breeze up above, the climb had made me sweaty and I was anxious for a shower – I’d filled my new solar shower before leaving camp. But now I remembered that the sun drops below the peak behind camp early, especially this time of year, resulting in an immediate temperature drop. It was getting windier, and I’d be shivering despite the warmth of the water.
Having failed to bring firewood or charcoal, I gathered dead catclaw on my way back to camp, and after arriving, showered quickly, then started preparations for dinner. That’s when I discovered I’d also forgotten newspaper, which I usually carry in my vehicle for tinder. Not a huge problem – this year’s dried-out annual vegetation is always available – but in a pinch I used blank pages from my notebook.
Living and sleeping indoors, it’s sadly easy to forget the night sky even exists. We’ve often complained about the encroachment of skylighting from distant cities, illuminating our horizon out here, but that first night was a revelation to me, after three years of no camping.
The moon was nowhere to be seen, but Jupiter was rising in the east, and without the moon, it easily dominated the sky. My familiar constellations were back, and I took my binoculars to bed, taking care not to trigger more back pain as I wriggled into my warm-weather bag. My new sleeping pad was, frankly, even more comfortable than the old one. I would almost say it’s more comfortable than my mattress at home.
Saturday, November 5th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
In this transitional season, I’d brought both my warm-weather sleeping bag and my super-insulated down bag, but with the (slightly incorrect) weather forecast in mind, planned to use only the warm-weather bag – a very cheap synthetic bag which is probably only good to the mid-40s.
On that first night I started out with only t-shirt and skivvies inside the bag, but had to pull on thermal bottoms sometime before dawn. Still, it was a deep, full night’s sleep.
But wind had come up before dawn, and when the sun reached my bed and I finally crawled out, it was blowing hard. First order of business was to boil water for coffee, but in the gale-force wind across camp I had to box my stove in to retain the heat, and it still took over a half hour to get it to boil.
The wind was so strong I had to lean into it to cross the campsite, and my back pain returned so that I was forced to walk bent over at the waist, anyway. Then I discovered the wind had blown the solar shower off the hood of the vehicle, and after only one shower, it had burst a seam landing on the rocky ground. I’d lost over a half gallon of precious water. I tried duct-taping it, but it still leaked. I filled it anyway and laid it in the sun upside down so it wouldn’t leak while I was out hiking.
I mentioned the other day that I had no agenda for this trip, but that wasn’t strictly true. I’d brought all the artifacts I’ve collected in past decades, up on the plateau at the “puberty site” below the statue, with the intent of repatriating them. Today I planned to hike up there, return the potsherds and tool flakes, and spend the night – my first backpack in 7 years.
For the past few years, I’d been hiking with about 25 pounds in my Swiss Army surplus rucksack, but for backpacking I would carry at least 10 pounds more, and when I pulled it over my shoulders, that extra weight felt like it would destroy me. I realize that serious mountaineers carry up to 65 pounds, which is simply inconceivable.
The day’s plan seemed crazy from the get-go, and it was only my typical bullheadedness that got me started. My back felt like it was being sliced in half at the waist, and I knew that one wrong move carrying that heavy pack would paralyze me. The pack felt so heavy that I didn’t think I could make it to the base of the plateau, let alone climb that perilous 500′ slope beside the dry waterfall. And the wind – one of our typical desert winds that blows steadily in one direction at 30-50 knots, in this case out of the northeast, and can last for up to 3 days. Assuming it didn’t blow me off the mountain or into a cactus or yucca, how could I possibly sleep up there, where it would be even worse?
Feeling about 100 years old, trudging up the dry, loose sand of the big wash, I forgot to stretch – something I’ve learned to do near the start of any serious hike, to reduce pain and protect my joints. Hiking near home, I’d forgotten how most desert hikes involve long, arduous walks in sand. On the plus side, the long, winding wash that drains the plateau is beautiful, with spectacular rock formations in the bends. And the bright yellow rabbitbrush added some color to this otherwise fairly drab season.
Now for the part I’d been dreading: the 500′ vertical climb to the plateau.
I’ve done this climb at least a dozen times since the early 90s – both solo and with friends, including a couple who haven’t been in very good shape. The last time I’d been up there was in April 2016, by myself. I’ve always considered it a dangerous climb – very steep, requiring many short bouldering moves and traverses of loose rock at the angle of repose, including sizable boulders that appear stable but tip or slide when you put weight on them. And plenty of yucca blades or cactus spines to impale yourself on if you make a single mistake.
But today, despite all that past experience, it truly terrified me. I felt there was a serious chance I’d be injured or even die trying to reach that plateau. I knew I had to try, but I was scared to death.
With a little reflection, I realized the several traumas and close calls in the past few years had undermined my confidence. On the surface, I was in really good shape, doing hikes up to 20 miles in a day, at 2 or 3 times the altitude and with far more elevation gain than I would face here. But those hikes were mostly on trails. I was out of practice for hiking in the desert.
If I did make it, how would I get back down alive? That scared me even more – downclimbing is always more dangerous.
I’d long forgotten the best route, so I just went slowly and stopped frequently. At that rate, after almost an hour, I finally made it up past the giant thumb rock, safely, to the little saddle where you drop over into the dry waterfall itself, and that accomplishment restored some of my confidence.
The next, and most spectacular, stretch involves using some simple bouldering moves to get past the smooth and sometimes slick exposed granite faces of the dry waterfall. I love this part because it’s all rock.
The plateau, which I’ve always considered the heart of the entire mountain range, is a rugged, rolling basin partly enclosed by steep boulder slopes at its eastern head and southern rim, and traversed by a winding streambed that drains from east to west. This area hosts most of the pinyon pine in the range, from the rim down to the wash itself.
It’s obviously favored ram habitat. Shortly beyond the rim I came upon the third ram skeleton I’ve found up here, and after that, some more recent lion scat.
This is one of the wettest parts of the mountains – there’s a sheep drinker with two large water tanks at the head of the plateau, and I’ve found water in the stream more often than not. But underscoring what a dry year this has been, the only evidence I found of water was a patch of damp sand below a discontinuity in the rock, midway up the streambed.
Near the head of the canyon there’s a raised bench or ledge a hundred feet above the south bank of the streambed, marked by a dramatic boulder pile. On that ledge is the most important prehistoric site I’ve found on the west side of the mountains – a truly magical place, the western counterpart of the sacred site on the east side. My sometime friend, the Mojave Preserve archaeologist, said it was most certainly used in girls’ puberty ceremonies. It consists of a large overhanging boulder, with a smaller boulder forming a sort of table under the overhang, and “cupules”, little bowls, ground into the stone tabletop, which he said were used to mix face paint.
The ground for a large area around shows evidence of ancient campfires and is littered with potsherds and the occasional stone tool flake. But in general, it’s a modest site, and raises a whole string of questions. There were no villages or permanent camps in these mountains – the nearest would’ve been on the river, almost 50 miles east, requiring very long treks between water sources. And the historical tribes familiar for these ceremonies were based almost twice as far away, to the west. It’s hard to imagine a small group of teenage girls, accompanied only by one or more older women, carrying pottery jars and other gear many days across the desert and up that dangerous climb, to perform a ritual in this extremely remote, often dry place.
The steady, gale-force wind was still scouring my campsite on the ledge. No chance of a fire tonight – I even scouted between the many big boulders for a calmer location, but the wind was penetrating everywhere.
But with that heavy pack off my shoulders, my energy returned. I did a short hike up the slope toward the statue – I’d been that way a few times, but couldn’t remember my previous route. Not that it matters much – every route involves climbing over, under, or around huge boulders all the way up.
I made it about halfway and realized I didn’t have enough time to go farther. But everything up there – the elegant pines, the house-sized, white granite boulders, the view across the open desert – is beautiful. And in the brief dusk after sunset, I climbed back down to the streambed and made it most of the way up to the sheep drinker at its head, maintained by the Bighorn Society.
With no fire, I had a cold dinner – the same nuts and jerky I’d had for lunch. I’d only brought four liters of water for the overnight, and in this cooler weather, with the wind, had saved two of those for the next day’s return hike.
One problem with backpacking solo is that there’s nothing to do after sunset, especially if you can’t build a fire. There you are, between 6 and 7 pm, with nothing to do but go to bed early! I had a lot of time for reflection, and decided it was time to relax my standards and adopt some modern, lightweight gear – replacing my heavy old canvas and leather pack with something ergonomic, and my cheap sleeping bag with something more efficient.
So I went to bed at about 7 pm, with my feet to the wind so it couldn’t blow sand into my bag. As before, I stripped down before getting in, and was warm at first. But with the wind roaring like a freight train, that didn’t last.
About an hour later, I added my thermal top – essentially a sweater. And an hour after that, with the wind still raging, my legs got too cold and I pulled on my thermal bottoms.
Still another hour later, my legs got cold again. That wind just sucks away whatever heat your body can generate – I’ve even gotten cold inside my down bag, which is good to well below zero. So I crawled out into the frigid night and pulled on my heavy canvas hiking pants, and got back into the bag.
That still wasn’t enough. After another hour, I donned my thermal cap, and an hour later than that, still awake, I got up again to struggle into my storm shell jacket, pulling the hood completely over my head before getting back in the bag. I can’t remember wearing a jacket to bed before, but may well have sometime in the dim past!
Soon it was midnight, I’d been lying awake for five hours, the wind was still raging, and my feet were cold. The only piece of clothing I had left was a spare pair of wool socks, which I managed to fish out of my pack and pull on over my heavy hiking socks, without leaving my bag.
But only a half hour later, I was cold again, with another six hours of increasingly colder night ahead of me. How could I survive? I’d been in this position before, and once, far too cold to lie still, had spent an entire night pacing back and forth, wrapped in a heavy coat, to keep my heat up.
So I tried the only remaining trick – I got up once again in the dark, and folded my plastic tarp over the sleeping bag, so that the open side was downwind. I had no way of holding it closed, but I had a couple of bungee cords that I used to anchor the side and corner of the tarp to my pack.
Amazingly, this finally worked, and I fell asleep almost immediately after.
Sunday, November 6th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
After that long struggle to get warm in the driving wind and plummeting temperatures, when I did fall asleep, I slept like a log. I woke at 6 am, feeling totally refreshed, as the southeastern sky was beginning to glow above the ramparts of rock surrounding my camp.
But the wind was still roaring unabated through the pinyon, juniper, and tall granite boulders, and even without wind chill, I realized the temperature had to be somewhere in the 30s now. There was no way I was going to crawl out of my tarp cocoon until sunlight reached my campsite.
That was another little detail I’d forgotten in my absence from this place. We feel protected camping next to a rock outcrop or under a high peak, but here, I was essentially down in a hole – at the western foot of a high ridge, where, still without the ability to build a fire in this wind, I ended up lying in shade for another three hours, until the sun finally topped the ridge and began to warm me.
While lying in wait, I remembered seeing a falling star before falling asleep last night – the second I’d seen so far out here. And I began pondering my plan for the day.
During my last visit to this area, a friend and I had hiked to a canyon just south of here, just over the crest that loomed above me now. Our goal had been to relocate a prehistoric olla – a ceramic storage jar – that he and other friends discovered under a juniper near the head of that canyon.
Our hike had been cut short by rain, so I still didn’t know exactly where that jar was, but it tantalized me as another part of the puzzle of our ancient cultural resources. Assuming I could make it safely down the dry waterfall, my hike back to base camp should only take a couple of hours, so if I could find a way from here over to the head of that southern canyon, and if I could make my limited water last, I should have plenty of time for a side trip before heading home.
After breakfasting on granola and an orange – no coffee today – I had less than two liters of water to get me back to base. Which depending on the side trip, could take all day. With the wind, it was still chilly, so I might be okay.
I believed the head of the side canyon was due south of me. I couldn’t see the actual crest, or a saddle which might be my point of access, because of intervening spurs of the mountain, but I could see a drainage that might be my way up. Much of it was boulder-choked, but I could also see some patches of bare, shrub-dotted ground that might provide an easier route. It would be an experiment.
As usual, the terrain proved much more complicated above than it looked from below. But after an hour of scouting routes, climbing over ledges, detouring around giant boulders, and crossing gullies, I found myself exactly where I’d hoped to be – on a ridge that formed the saddle directly at the head of the southern canyon. And there were junipers dotted all around, any of which could hide that olla.
What a place, and what a perspective! The wind was fading to a pleasant breeze, a majestic pyramidal peak rose a couple hundred feet above the head of the canyon, and I had views into the Lost World – the huge southeastern basin – as well as over Blockhead, the granite monolith on the south wall of our own interior basin, which we stare at from camp.
I ended up exploring the entire crest at the head of the canyon, peering under every juniper, but never saw the olla. I did find several great campsites – ridgetops in this range often feature level areas protected by boulders or low rock walls – and a few stone tool flakes. But my water was too limited to explore downward into the canyon.
So I found my way back down to the plateau campsite and packed up for the return to base. I had only about two-thirds of a liter of water left and would eventually start to dehydrate, but it shouldn’t be too bad.
I still wasn’t looking forward to the climb down to the bajada. But when I reached the rim, it didn’t look so scary this time. I took it very slow and careful, but still had a few near-falls – as usual, lucky to recover balance before getting in trouble. And before I knew it, I was back in the big wash.
On the way home, I tried to compare hiking here with the hikes I do back home in less arid country. It’s much more dangerous here. It’s not as hard on the feet, but with the slopes of loose rock and gravel, it can be hard on the ankles. And of course there are the long slogs through deep sand.
I’d finished my water halfway there and was just beginning to get a little dehydration headache when I finally dropped from the bajada into the wash below camp.
Back at base camp, I found a big tarantula nonchalantly strolling past my vehicle – it looked identical to the one I’d passed two days earlier farther up the gulch. My back was still hurting, as was my heel – probably a delayed reaction from the back down the sciatic nerve – so I took a pain pill. I was filthy and overdue for a shower, so I made further attempts to stop the leaking seam – I had a binder clip I use for bags of chips, and rolled up the taped seam, finishing with the clip, which slowed the leak to a slow drip.
All clean, the next chore was dinner. I’d used most of my catclaw the night before the backpack, grilling a whole chicken leg. That produced leftovers, which I would combine and reheat on the stove, but I still needed a campfire. I scrambled to the boulder above camp where friends had a stash of firewood, but the pieces were just too big for a one-person fire. I was taught the leave-no-trace school of fire-building – never use anything bigger around than your thumb. My catclaw fires use branches a little thicker than that, but I’m most happy with small-diameter firewood, and catclaw makes wonderful coals for grilling.
After sundown, as I was working, I was swarmed by clouds of insects that looked superficially like mosquitos, but didn’t buzz – and they bounced up and down like mayflies. The wind had vanished and the air was perfectly still.
I was pleased with my new gear. The folding chair had looked drab, even ugly, at home, but here the colors fit in perfectly, which had been my plan. People buy high-tech gear that looks great in the city, but it can make a campsite look like an REI showroom.
I was surprised and a little concerned about my water situation. I was running through 5 gallons – a third of my supply – in less than two days at camp. Yes, I’d lost a little in the shower leak, but I couldn’t account for the rest. In the old days, Katie and I had never brought more than 5 gallons for the two of us, for a 3 or 4 day stay. But then we hadn’t been hiking like I do now.
After dinner I mused about my fears and lack of confidence on the backpack. It was clearly all in my head, and my habit of pushing myself won out in the end.
Our campsite is elevated on a ledge above the wash, with a 180 degree view across the gulch and interior basin, ringed at the horizon by jagged ridges. Under the star-strewn sky, scanning that dark jagged profile, I was again reminded of how this landscape, which looks so bleak and monotonous to the novice, is for us filled with hidden magic – countless special places we’ve explored and shared, hidden to view until you’re upon them. Just gazing across this landscape triggers memories that span decades, flooding my head and heart. I thought about the desert journals lost in my house fire – all those details that might never return to mind.
In bed, I was soon joined by mosquitos, and got up to assemble the sleep screen I’d found on eBay to replace my burned original. Thankfully, it still allowed me to see the stars clearly: the early constellations of Cygnus, Cassiopeia, and Pegasus, and when I woke hours later to pee, Auriga and Orion. I saw three meteorites, including one that left a long trail.
Sunday, November 6th, 2022: 2022 Trips, Mojave Desert, Regions, Road Trips.
As at home, Saturday was to be my day of rest.
The wind was only a memory. And as I finished breakfast, sitting with my back to the sun, facing the dramatic peak north of camp and watching the occasional bird swoop from boulder to boulder, I was suddenly struck by the silence. At home alone, I’m always listening to music – usually streaming radio from some distant city. It keeps me company. But now, after that relentless wind on the plateau, the silence was welcome.
As occasionally happens, after taking a pain pill the night before, my back pain had vanished by morning. I’d started doing all the right things – stretching, walking a lot, lifting mindfully and using lumbar support – and it troubled me no more on this trip, which after a week under the threat of paralysis was a huge relief.
In the shade of the big boulder at the north end of camp, there’s a little alcove that at this time of year provides shade for one person, so I sat there reading for a couple of hours. I was so still and quiet that a covey of Gambel’s quail came within a couple yards of me, foraging for about a half hour, without ever noticing I was there.
Again, I scanned this landscape of precious memories – the ridges, slopes, canyons, bajada, washes. When I got up to pass from shade to sunlight, I felt the extremes of temperature – it felt like going instantly from the 60s to the 80s – something we’re not used to when living indoors – the power of the sun!
Despite the cool weather, I was frequently pestered by flies, in all sizes. I decided to revisit my old stash above camp – miscellaneous materials for the over-ambitious projects we had three decades ago: a 100 gallon galvanized water tank, some PVC pipe for a well lining, a wheelbarrow, a roll of barbed wire. It was eerie, like stumbling upon the work of a stranger – is that the bail I built, to clean rocks out of the well? Those projects will never materialize now – those materials will likely never be needed by those who come after.
This whole place goes on without me. Despite my early ambitions, I haven’t really made a difference. I’m so little a part of it, virtually insignificant, and that’s probably a good thing.
Back at camp, I discovered sunburn from the past two days of hiking. I’d forgotten to apply sunscreen – a hat protects me at home, but here, the pale, reflective rock, gravel, and sand that cover most of the ground bounce the sunlight up from below.
After lunch I moved to a sitting spot on the now-shaded east side of the boulder. In the past, in really hot weather, I’d always hiked up to the shade house in the side canyon with all the mining ruins. But now, this boulder shaded me enough that I didn’t need to leave camp.
By mid-afternoon the whole camp was in shade of the peak above, and the temperature quickly dropped. I hadn’t been planning to shower, but I had to gather more firewood, and that got me all sweaty again.
It felt like that windy, cold Thursday night on the Plateau had been my test, my trial, and this calm day had been my reward.
The meat I’d bought in Flagstaff last Tuesday had been sitting in my cooler for four days and nights, so I planned to grill it all tonight and keep the surplus for the following nights. I still wasn’t sure how long I could or would stay.
It took a while for the meat to cook – previous campers (maybe even myself) had set the rocks in the fireplace a little too high, and I had to remove some to get my new grill closer to the coals.
As the moon, Jupiter, the stars and Milky Way came out, I was reminded of my lifelong history with the night sky. The reflector telescope I had as a small child, the refractor I got a few years later. That led me to all the science stuff I had growing up, mostly from my dad: the telescopes, a microscope and collection of mounted slides, the Visible Man and Woman models, rocket models.
Life has led me away from science, and all that’s left is the images, the memories they evoke, seeing these things like the night sky as my life draws toward its close, like old friends.
My Dad wanted to do what I’m doing now – he was on that path. One of the inevitable tragedies of my selfish life is that I can’t pass on that desire, that momentum to the next generation.
Part of me wants to believe that only the time I spend here in the desert is real – but that’s not completely true – it’s only a fantasy I’ve believed in deeply.
Moving around camp, I began using my new headlamp out here for the first time – an innovation I finally picked up from other desert friends. At home, it allows me to hike longer, because I can return in the dark. Here, I was figuring out how and when to use it, versus my trusty oil lantern. The problem was I kept forgetting I had the headlamp on!
When the firewood ran out, I went to bed, the screen keeping me safe from buzzing mosquitos, and I saw another falling star before dropping off to sleep.
