We woke under dripping ceiling and side walls. It had rained early in the night but I think that was the end of it. At 3:30 I was searching for my coffee. I have Starbucks lattes in small packets. It’s powder. I pour it and cold water into my cup. It turns to a clumpy mixture and I stir and stir. The cup has dried clumps from Monday and Tuesday. It’s all quite horrible and wonderful at the same. You never wash anything on a desert trail.
Everything is soaked. The sun peaked over about 6:15 but did not hit our tent. We carried everything to the field and draped it on bushes and stubbly ground. The process is slowed by me searching for my sunglasses, which was in vane. This process took a couple of hours and we didnt hit the trail until after 9:00.
We headed down the trail past Parker Canyon Lake, large and scenic. The trail is wide without rocks. This will be an easy day, I dream. We’re traveling along a wide ridge and often we can view the landscape on both sides. Far below are long basins that stretch miles without towns or trees. These are not the cracked, grey deadly basins. They look like fields with yellow grass. In the background are silhouettes of mountains in all forms. It’s lovely. When we pass nearer the landscape, We’re amazed by how green the foliage is. At one point we saw a small barrow barrel shaped, multi-colored cactus. Terry used the app, Seek, to identify it as a Rainbow Hedgehog Cactus.
My easy day becomes hard. We ascend a hill with many switchbacks and steep climbs. And then the descent is littered with rock. And the pitch is shin splitting. We pick through hills all day. It’s brutal.
The weather, however, was perfect cool and bright with billowing clouds. It’s so peaceful. We were unprepared for such solitude. We had heard the trail was really popular. We’ve only seen four people in three days.
As we twisted and turned through a couple of creeks, some with water but mostly dry beds, we were up and down and around. The hiker we met on day one said that the last twenty miles before Patagonia was flat and easy. I thought for sure we had entered that zone. Until one of ups didn’t stop. And then it switched baked and then a long pull and it seem this pattern of torture would not end. I began cursing and blubbering until we reached the summit and then it was after five and the sun was behind the hill. We began searching for a campsite. Some of the most promising ones turned out to be ant hills. But we went on and found our best site so far. We got the tent up and settled for dinner in our tent by 7:00. How sweet it is to be dry. We don’t have dark skies, there is dim incident light at the edge of the sky from down below, but compared to living in the redwoods with stars only showing in holes in the canopy, it was great seeing whole constellations. The coyotes howling and foxes barking.
Mountain Peace 