Thanksgiving Eve

It was just another work related reconnaissance field trip. Three administrative staff in a well-equipped Jeep picked up a designated Park photographer and headed off into the dust. After a circuitous and scenic route past Wiregrass Canyon and Warm Creek Bay and a bumpy crawl over some slick rock we arrived at our destination: Alstrom Point. From the point we could look toward Gunsight Butte, Tower Butte, Castle Rock, or overlook the Crossing of the Fathers.

Silently we fanned out in all directions, each seeking our own favorite perspective and meditative silence.

30 minutes later I made a panoramic scan of the edges of the perimeter of the peninsula. There we sat in the vastness and lengthening shadows, four Parcheesi players, little round knobs for heads, Hersey kiss-shaped bodies perched on ledges 200 yards away, spread out across the landscape of Alstrom Point, waiting for sunset photos and the magic light.

Twilight advanced bringing us all closer to the common shelter of the Jeep. We talked some, traded tidbits of information, listened to the click of a dark sky camera, toured the night-sky via a phone ap, enjoyed each and every constellation, satellite and planet we could identify. Down layers kept us comfortably warm until time to efficiently fold and stow all the gear.

There are places of great beauty in this world. Sometimes it is too hot, or too cold, or too difficult to get there. Other times, serendipity smiles on you and a magic carpet rings your doorbell.

This year I am not at Needles Canyonlands near Creeksgiving. I am not near Colorado National Monument with many options for a morning hike. I am not near a beach in the Northwest for a misty morning walk. In fact, I am not near anything or anyone with whom I usually spend this fourth Thursday in November. No one is coming to visit me. Yet, I had an incredible Thanksgiving Eve.

Wishing you the blessing of beauty for all your holidays!

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Wherein my daypack retires but I continue working

I am unpacking my daypack today for the last time. It has become an old wineskin, unable to hold the wine of new adventure without bursting. The seams are frayed. The entire shell is pocked with evidence of tight squeezes and adventurous crawls.

A compact and stuffable travel model, it was designed to be carried in a suitcase, pulled out and quickly packed for spontaneous day hikes; it was never intended for backcountry trips or overnighters-but it served.

There came a time in my hiking life when I knew I needed to graduate from a simple drawstring pack to something with shoulder strap padding. Hikes were getting longer, the climate more strenuous. A water bottle sling fit the bill for morning walks around the neighborhood but not for six-mile hikes down Monument Canyon.

And so, I splurged. In October of 2013, smack dab in the middle of a government shutdown, I used my employee discount and invested in a Chico Travel Pack. Red, of course, to match my adventurous Subaru. Soon I added a 2 liter water reservoir. An emergency rain poncho. Three or four bandanas. A small first aid kit. Then, a change of socks. And still more recently; a pop can stove, matches, a box of soup.

The daypack became my poster child for “Oh the Places You Will Go.” Here are some of the places it has been:

  • ALL the trails and more at Colorado National Monument
  • Crag Crest and snowshoe trails on The Grand Mesa
  • ALL the (non-permit required) marked trails in the Needles District of Canyonlands National Park – those under 11 miles
  • The Ouray Perimeter Trail – again and again
  • Most trails in the south rim of Black Canyon of the Gunnison
  • ALL the marked trails of Natural Bridges National Monument
  • Two trails in Zion and two trails in Bryce
  • And this week -as one last hurrah- the South Kaibab and Bright Angel trails in Grand Canyon

So today, with great ceremony, I unpack the frayed and worn and torn body glove of my past outdoor adventures, snap a photo, and retire the side.

My red Chico travel pack daypack must be replaced immediately with a nearly identical new model. Spontaneity happens. Opportunity knocks. I need to be packed and ready. Yet, neither my red Chico travel pack or its successor is built for overnight backpacking, so I will invest in some additional expensive outdoor gear, something properly framed and fitted to my body type and build. I am in need of more straps for jackets and bedrolls – and I need a brain. Hiking in the great outdoors is habit forming – and it is a very healthy habit, this habit of putting one foot in front of the other.

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Descending below the rim

Five points of contact
Me: (scrambling down from a rock perch after the mules have passed) Most useful thing I ever learned from a ranger; don’t be afraid to use three points of contact if you need to – or even five (vigorously brushing dust from my behind).
She: Are you sure that’s not six points of contact?
Me: Naw. Five. They are joined at the hip.

What can I write about a once-in-a-lifetime trip into the Grand Canyon? – That I want it to go on forever? That I want it to be more than once? That I am so stiff I can hardly walk? That a river beach is a wonderful thing for the feet after seven miles on a rigorous trail that goes down, down, down, always down?

I have found to really experience a place – to feel I know it and have really seen it – I need to go on my own two legs. And so I did. Heeding the good instruction of those who have gone before, we descended via the rigorous South Kaibab Trail.
“It is rated difficult on all the hiking sites,” she said, “but there IS a trail.” Speaking from the perspective of a wilderness guide, a trail mitigates the difficulty measurably.
“I don’t want to take another step down, ever,” says I, after six miles and the onset of wobbly knees. Wobbly knees? Shaky legs? This feeling that my legs will uncontrollably buckle under me at any minute? Over sixty years of use and suddenly I can no longer trust the calves and quads to do my bidding?

“I’m down,” I said quietly and philosophically as my body involuntarily seated itself in the dust with a soft “whump” after an encounter with a pebble of miniscule size. She came back for me and we jolted on downward. I hiked the South Kaibab. Check one off on the list. I remain convinced it is a trail every hiker should experience once in a lifetime. And only once. When I return, I will take Bright Angel both down and up – despite its additional two mile length.

But oh, the views. Will I ever forget first view of the Colorado River rippling emerald green in the canyon a few thousand feet below? Will I ever forget setting my sites on a sandy beach way below and saying, “There. When we get there we will take off our boots and soak our weary feet in the Colorado River.”

Nor will I ever forget the many fast hikers who passed me on the trail, and those slower whom I passed, convening for dinner after dark and hearing, “Of the roughly 5,000,000 people who visit the Grand Canyon each year, only one percent descend below the rim – and a lessor percent make it here to Phantom Ranch, congratulations!”

I will long remember the sheer luxury of clean feet in the shower house at night and sleeping on an adequate bunk with Egyptian cotton hotel bedding. How else could I rise before dawn on day two and head back up to the rim?

My knowledgeable and experienced friend was right. You want more than one night’s sleep and turn around time at Phantom Ranch. You want a few more days to explore other nearby trails and vistas. You want to be able truly to relax and feel the luxury of a location visited by Presidents (at least one) and other anonymous folks wealthy enough to travel in by mule and have their duffels transported by the same. And that will come, in time, with more financial success and more accrued vacation time.

But, for now, we enjoy it on a weekend. We haul our own duffels. We travel on our own two feet. We open our souls to the beauty and our bodies to the workout and the goal. I feel it in every muscle. I know the location of every bone in my body, whether I can name it or not. And was it worth it? Yes. Yes it was.

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