In many ways, it’s been a difficult year. It is so very easy to get used to stepping across your threshold into fresh air, stunning views and entertaining animals. My little wash behind the house is so tame compared to rutting bull elk or encroaching grizzlies. Once in a while a bobcat quicksteps across my back patio or a snake slithers through the cactus along my back wall. But I really do miss the feeling of literally gorging on wilderness.
One of the ways I have kept myself from packing a bag and heading north is hiking, camping and their combination-backpacking. I have been backpacking since my early twenties with just a few years off here and there to accommodate motherhood or injury or illness. But backpacking has been my particular escape this year as I mourn the loss of what feels to me like my real ‘home’.
As I get older, backpacking becomes more difficult. A sprain is likely to take months instead of weeks to heal. The weight feels heavier than it did 40 years ago, the pack belt more likely to chafe. But the need for the wilderness only seems to grow stronger-perhaps fueled by many adult years living in the city, with just the one 5-month break and a few months living in a farmhouse in New Zealand.
For an outdoor girl like me, my hikes, campouts and backpacks have been my salvation and my playtime. I belong to a group of likeminded folk, eager to get out in the woods or the desert. Our members are greatly varied in age, political viewpoint, professions and skills but we pretty much all agree we must “take only memories; leave only footprints”. A good group indeed.
I actually am what we call an ‘organizer’ for the group which gives me the right to post activities I would like instead of waiting for someone else to put something together. A few weekends ago, I herded eight other backpackers down from the summit of Mount Lemmon at 9000 foot elevation (where we parked), down the Samaniego Ridge trail to Shovel Springs at 7500 feet and on down to Walnut Springs at 7300 feet. The first day we hiked nearly ten miles altogether, although we were able to stash our packs about 4 miles down the trail in a delightfully shady glen near the trail near the junction to Shovel Spring.
The Samaniego Trail suffered greatly from the 2003 Aspen fire and in the intervening years the underbrush returned in force due to the loss of forest canopy, increased sunlight and greatly reduced foot traffic. It took years for the trail to be cleared and even now, 12 years later, the trail can be a bit brushy past the junction to Shovel Springs. On the trail to Walnut Spring and back, we were happy to find fairly well-marked trail even though creeping or downed vegetation slowed our speed in some spots. I have loved this kind of trail-finding since my rather rough and tumble childhood – scrapes and scratches and bruises have always evidenced what for me has been a really good time.
By the time you reach your sixties, though, that kind of evidence takes longer to heal. Skin becomes less elastic and thinner. Bones become more easily and more permanently bruised, leaving deeply dark spots that are reminders well beyond the fall on the rock. Hiking poles become a must and the Cadillac kind, with springs to cushion a misstep, become a necessity rather than a luxury.
Unless I am seriously hurt (which is very rare), the night on the ground sleeping only with my sleeping pad and bag under the stars (we call that ‘cowboy camping’) makes everything – the brushy trail, the scratches, the pine needles stuck in my underwear – worth it. Nothing can compare to a canopy of stars and the melody of the wind through the treetops as a lullaby.
But where the going down is easy and the down means an elevation loss of 2500 feet, the return almost always proves more challenging for an almost 60-year-old with asthma and bad knees. I am always the tortoise and not the hare on these hikes but our group defaults to allowing for the slowest rather than the speediest. Hence, my group has quite a few backpackers that are even older than me. It’s nice to not be the last one up but when you are the organizer, it’s your job to make sure that the last one makes it to the parking lot – a wonderful excuse to sit and rest, watching the sun dapple the trail while you wait for your few remaining packers to catch up.
I believe I will be backpacking as long as my bones can stand the weight (I have made great strides at ‘light packing’ lately) and my body can take the stress. For me, the journey IS the destination. Mother Nature abounds all around in the woods and the desert if I just open my eyes to the beauty and my ears to the symphony of wild places. It is Mother Nature’s way of saying Happy Birthday to me every time I arrive in her embrace.
No comments:
Post a Comment