The Rocks, My Teachers
Monday, January 17th, 2022: Hikes, Mogollon Mountains, Sapillo, Southwest New Mexico.
After last Sunday’s tantalizing views over a hidden canyon, this Sunday’s hike was the second choice in my short list of nearby, lower-elevation winter hikes. From a trailhead only a few miles east of the previous hike, the topo map showed this one climbing north from the valley of the same creek, at a little over 6,000′, to a large branching plateau near 8,000′. According to the map, the trail spent several miles up there meandering across the plateau, then dropped down its north slope into the canyon of another creek. I didn’t expect it to be a spectacular hike – the most I hoped for was some new views, decent mileage and accumulated elevation gain, and maybe an interesting canyon at the far end.
That was a big maybe, because it would be almost 9 miles from end to end, and I would only be able to hike the entire distance if the trail turned out to be in good condition, on a surface that allowed me to maintain my preferred rapid pace. As usual I was being optimistic – in the back of my mind was my previous experience that all uplands in the heart of the wilderness were covered with the dreaded volcanic cobbles.
The day was forecast to be partly cloudy with typical midwinter temperatures at 6,000′ – high twenties in the morning to mid-fifties in the afternoon. But the sky was almost completely clear as I left home. Google Maps claimed the direct route through the mountains is 15 minutes shorter than the roundabout route at lower elevation, so that’s the way I went. Google Maps failed miserably – the direct route was actually 15 minutes longer than the roundabout route, which I used to return in the evening. But it gave me a fine panoramic view over the southern edge of the wilderness.
Despite a total lack of wind, it felt pretty damn cold at the trailhead, which faced a low wall of crenelated cliffs across a meadow lined with frosted chamisa – the floodplain of the upper creek, which was dry in this stretch. By the time the trail led me back into a narrow tributary valley and the wilderness boundary, I’d had to dig a wool scarf out of my pack and wrap it around my face.
But I quickly warmed up, and began shedding outerwear, on the climb to the plateau. The first part of the climb, along the rim of an interior basin to my right, revealed occasional views of sheer cliffs of soft, partly compacted volcanic tuff. But it also revealed the dreaded volcanic cobbles, as bad as I’d encountered anywhere. And the trail, while not really steep, proceeded at a grade that could only be described as relentless, straight up an outlying ridge of the plateau, through open pinyon-juniper-oak forest that allowed only frustratingly partial views of the surrounding landscape. The forest cover meant that I could never see more than 100′ ahead of me, and always hoped I would reach the top of the plateau after another 100′ of climbing, only to face yet another 100′ of climbing.
After about 3 miles of climbing, I reached the top of the plateau, and the first of a series of reasons why this trail even existed – an abandoned corral, followed by an abandoned stock pond. The trail had been accompanied by an abandoned barbed wire fence for the past couple of miles, and I was to see that fence for the rest of the hike. Not my favorite wilderness experience.
From there, the trail proceeded across the gently rolling plateau, in and out of small stands of tall ponderosa pine and through long patches of snow up to 10″ deep, the ground lined with the difficult volcanic cobbles everywhere except for small patches of mud.
I was looking for the junction with a shorter trail that came in from the west. That junction would be 5.3 miles in from my trailhead, leaving less than 4 miles to the far end at the distant creek. But it was such slow walking that I was pretty sure I wouldn’t make it to the end. It seemed to take forever just to reach the junction.
What awaited me at the junction was not encouraging. Nobody else had hiked this trail since our snowfall 3 weeks ago, but shortly before reaching the junction I found boot tracks in the snow, and at the junction itself somebody had built a campfire in the trail literally at the foot of the trail sign. Like the on-trail campfire I’d found a few months ago, this one had trash on top of the coals – a sardine can, a melted plastic wrapper, and some crumpled foil.
I remember back in the Dotcom Boom when my idealistic young colleagues proclaimed “information wants to be free!” This is the result of that. People who haven’t been brought up in backpacking culture watch YouTube videos and learn about places and trails on social media, and anyone can buy the gear at Walmart or REI. But information without ethics is inevitably abusive and destructive. Freedom erodes accountability and hence responsibility, and the technologies which my colleagues hoped would liberate people instead became addictive and exploitative, leading to genocide and other societal abuses while turning a tiny minority of white men into billionaires.
Continuing past the junction, I passed the second abandoned corral and stock pond. Until a few decades ago when a citizens’ lawsuit finally forced the Forest Service to end ranching in the wilderness, this had been a rancher’s trail – and visually, it still was.
It’d taken me so long to reach the junction, there was no way I was going to reach trail’s end at the next creek. But I had about 45 minutes left before I had to turn back, so I continued on the main trail. That was when I began to encounter more work by the rogue trailworkers. Whoever is doing this recent trail “maintenance” seems to be in love with their chainsaw. They’re clear-cutting a corridor between 10 and 15 feet wide, and leaving unsightly slash piles along the trail.
Maybe I’m encountering stuff like this because I’m hiking trails that are really better suited to equestrians. They don’t actually have to walk on the volcanic cobbles – they spend the entire day sitting on their horses’ backs, while the animals have to deal with the rocky ground, and with four feet, they probably find it easier than humans.
But the Forest Service doesn’t designate trails for hikers vs. equestrians – all trails are supposed to be mixed-use. And all upland trails in the Gila have this kind of surface – maybe that’s why horse-packing outfits are so popular here.
Lined with hacked-off limbs and sawed-off young trees, the trail continued out a northern branch of the plateau for another mile, before the path of destruction ended. I found myself in a patch of deep snow on the north rim of the plateau, with a view north over the main part of the wilderness, a view I’d never had before. Parts of it were even more rugged than I’d expected.
From there, the tread became almost invisible as I worked my way down a series of short switchbacks through dense pinyon-juniper-oak forest into the canyon of the unfamiliar creek. I soon ran out of time and had to turn back.
Now I had more than 7 miles of that terrible rocky surface to cross on the way back. I’d intentionally given myself enough time so I didn’t feel rushed, but since I’d sworn to approach those volcanic cobbles with a positive attitude, I decided to make a concerted effort to tackle them on their own terms – to figure out a way to walk that incredibly challenging ground with grace.
There was only one way to do it. I had to banish all urgency, and give the task all the time it required. But even more importantly, I had to clear my mind, stop thinking, and focus all my attention, not on the trail ahead, but on the ground directly in front of my feet – the length of my shortest stride, which on ground like this is 2 feet or less. At each step, I had to pinpoint and decide on exactly where to put each foot, before even lifting that foot off the ground.
I thought I’d done that before, but I learned that I actually hadn’t. Goal-oriented, highly motivated, brimming with energy, I’d always been scanning 6 to 10 feet ahead for major obstacles, assuming I could ignore lesser obstacles. That way of walking worked on every other kind of surface, but not on these volcanic rocks. Hence I’d always been twisting my ankles or stumbling on this kind of surface, cursing all the way.
Why had it been so hard for me to focus and concentrate? I recalled losing my sunglasses last week – and only a few days ago, buying a new furnace filter, setting it on the roof of my car while I unlocked the door, driving away and only realizing a half hour later, at home, that the new filter was lying along the roadside somewhere, miles away, battered and broken. This kind of thing has happened to me over and over again during the past few years, and why? Because trauma and frustration have left me in a perpetual state of distraction – always worried about problems I have to solve, always anxious about what will go wrong next – never present, never fully aware of my surroundings. Always distracted and literally absent-minded.
Gurus speak of mindfulness, but what I needed was a state of mindlessness. It was only when faced with these rocks that required me to stop thinking and focus on the ground before my feet, that I was able to banish that distraction and enter a state of mindless grace. And after a while, it began working. I found I no longer resented these rocks. I found I enjoyed the challenge. I felt I was getting good at it, I was mastering the rocks – and since that was a form of thinking, a form of distraction, that’s when I began to stumble again.
I had now learned my second lesson: humility and submission. We don’t master nature – she will always be our master. Wisdom comes when we submit to nature.
These rocks, that for years I believed to be my enemies, had become my teachers.
Of course, this kind of extreme focus and concentration has to be put in context like everything else. While doing it, you lose all consciousness of your broader surroundings. Gurus speak of becoming more present, but when taken to an extreme like this, you’re actually oblivious to your surroundings. You can’t see vegetation or wildlife, and you have no idea where you are in the landscape. To see anything except the ground at your feet, you have to come to a full stop. I wondered how the Apaches could hunt in this kind of habitat. You’d have to pick your vantage points, and the routes between them, and stop frequently along the way. There’d be no running to chase down a deer, like in that expensive, award-winning Hollywood production Last of the Mohicans.
Hiking became quite literally a form of meditation. Walking with more grace and more peacefulness the farther I went, I finally reached the southern end of the plateau and began descending, just as the sun was lowering to the long ridge north of town. It lit up the soft cliffs surrounding the interior basin, and there was just enough last light to briefly gild the rim of the side valley before I emerged into the chamisa.
I hoped I would remember the day’s lessons.
