Sometimes, we worry about really stupid stuff.
Or at least I do.
So every once in a while, it’s nice to step out for some perspective.
For me, that’s always meant getting back to nature. I love spending time outdoors, and the more remote the location, the better. To really chill out, I need to be where cellphones do not work.
So on Monday morning, I woke up at about 3:30 am under a Palo Verde tree. My throat was so dry I couldn’t swallow.
My feet were raw and swollen. Every muscle in my body ached, as if I had been beaten with something blunt and heavy. I had less than a gallon of water. And I was still 10 miles away from my car.
This was not at all how I had planned the trip. Starting out, my friend and I had four and half gallons of water, and enough food for at least two full days.
We had more time, more preparation, and more supplies than we could possibly need. At least, it seemed that way for the first couple hours.
But by Sunday night, the Superstition Mountains had smacked us down hard. We were halfway out of water and flirting with serious dehydration. 3 natural springs in a row came up dry. And then we got really, really lost.
Which might be the only part that wasn’t my own fault. Apparently, lost is what you get for relying on Falcon Guides’ “Hiking Arizona’s Superstition and Mazatzal Country” by Bruce Grubbs.
The first time this book tried to kill me, it just mixed up our trail with one going the opposite direction. The second time, it sent us on an hour-long detour up a thoroughly impassible canyon, setting up two of the trip’s three rattlesnake close-encounters.
Not that things went so smoothly once we found the right path. Nobody in their right mind hikes those canyons between April and September, so following some of the trails feels like enduring the death by a thousand cuts. There are no nice plants in the desert.
To get out, we drank almost two gallons of water filled with live insects and dead tadpoles. We hiked long into the night to make up for bad directions. We drank cold beef soup for hydration. We pulled cactus spines out of our blisters.
And as we stumbled down the road back to our vehicle on Monday, there wasn’t one inch on my body that still felt good. My sunburn was crisscrossed with bloody scratches, my feet were shredded, my shoulders ached, and I was thirsty.
So all in all, it was the best weekend I have had in a long time.
Sure, I wish we had brought some more water. I definitely wish we had brought a better guidebook. And I wish Phoenix wasn’t bright enough to kill the stars 30 miles into the mountains.
But sometimes, even misery beats out monotony. And this week, my normal life feels pretty easy.
Reach John at john.a.gaylord@asu.edu
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