Morning comes with bird song and a damp tent and quilt again. I unzip the door to slip out for my morning constitutional and I see I set right next to a Charlie Brown Christmas tree. It’s about how I’m feeling – burning out.
It’s not cold and I pack quickly under gray skies. I’d like to go as far as I can today so I don’t arrive in Flagstaff in the dark. Funny, in all my hikes, I’ve never used my headlamp. I love using all the light of the day and prefer not to hike in the dark unless it’s a special occasion, like Mount Taranaki in New Zealand to watch the sunrise on New Year’s morning.
I start in forest. Snow drifts and mud slow me down, but I need to ease into things. A sign describes the rough life of a logger at the turn of the century. What kept them on the job? Food! They worked such long hours, they burned about 9,000 calories per day.
I know I’m burning calories walking all day. My pants are loose and so is my hip belt.
It looks like Minnesota or Wisconsin in this forest as I dip down into a ravine to cross a rushing stream. I lose the trail for a moment after crossing a deep drift, but find it soon enough. There’s still lots of mud, but nothing like that soul-sucking awfulness of a few days ago. Here, I’m just wet and muddy but move pretty well.
I cross many dirt forest roads, but never see a soul. I wouldn’t mind a beer or a masseuse. It’s so quiet in here, except for the wind rushing through the pine trees, and I’m absolutely alone. That is one of the peculiarities of this trail, how empty it is. Mostly it’s because we’re all headed in the same direction and just a few miles can mean you never see anyone else.
It’s also early in the season for everyone else and that’s emphasized when I come to a campground not yet open. Snow drifts against picnic tables and water runs straight through camp. I walk up a ravine and see some homes that also stand empty, though someone has been here recently to cut up fallen trees, the aroma like Christmas.
It’s lovely in this forest, but I have no views except a vague shape of a large meadow where a lake should be through thick trees. Two mountain jays scrap and cackle, flying from branch to branch in a blur of azure.
Another sign appears telling me about the lumber railroad that came through here. Built in the mid ‘20s by Flagstaff Lumber, it became difficult to maintain the high cost of fuel for a a seven-mile grade. All that remains now is a rock berm and ties scattered about. I swear I hear the ghosts of those hungry lumberjacks.
The forest goes on and on, but I walk well and keep shortening the distance to Flagstaff. A small window through pines opens and I think I see a snow-covered peak – or clouds. It’s almost out of s fairytale.
I’ve walked ten miles and need a break. Ahead I see a sitting log, and someone sitting on it. It’s Waldo! I’m really surprised assuming he’d be way ahead now. He tells me he would have needed to hike until 9 last night to stay on track but needed to stop early. He stepped on what he calls aloe though I believe was yucca, and something is still in his heel. Every step hurts.
I sit down to snack and chat. Waldo is a lovely young man living now in British Columbia. He’s not a fell runner, but did walk the very difficult Pacific Northwest Trail with a much bigger pack. He’s trained himself to carry (and need) very little, and I have to ask if he tolerates cold well. Yes, in fact he enjoys cold showers!
Still, he makes good choices and was in the Mazatzals when the storm hit and managed to stay dry under a tarp he sets with a stick. I tell him I carry a bit more for my 57-year-old self and he thinks I’m joking about my age. Gotta love this kid, especially since he is loving the walking and never wears headphones.
We get up to walk on and he mentions he has a YouTube shoe about ‘the bare necessities.’ I will tune in and maybe make some modifications to my kit. I watch Waldo disappear ahead and feel charged up. Food and sitting help, but so does human interaction and with someone so comfortable in his skin and in these surroundings.
I move slower but well and begin to touch on that delicious feeling I have when walking. This trail has felt like such hard work and many long hours of monotony before being rewarded with views. I try hard to see all the little things around me and to enjoy the simplicity of being outdoors with the wind and birdsong, but it has been a challenge.
As I mull this over, it slowly dawns on me that the trail is changing dramatically. It’s drying up and my 100 feet of joy is just about all joy. And yet, I also just assumed I’d have creeks running all around me today and now there is no sign of snow.
I hear cars – many purposely without mufflers – and realize I’ll soon cross busy Lake Mary Road. A trail angel might have left water, but what’s this? A bridge over Walnut Creek which is now a flooded lake. I’m saved!
It’s time for lunch anyway so I filter a liter while sitting against my pack against a tree and eat a small feast of cheese, fish, dried fruit and a bar. It’s another five miles+ to water and I think I should be all right with a liter.
I cross the road and I swear a pickup speeds up. The trail heads up through oak forest placing me above Upper Lake Mary, but views are not on today’s agenda. Instead, I’m back on a flat mesa of dry blond grass and sparse trees walking along a dusty, rock-strewn forest road. There’s nothing to say but that this is a long, uninspired walk.
Still, the wind is blowing and all the mud is dry. I can see squishy footprints from a hiker I feel sorry for just nos because I know precisely how awful that sticky mud walk is. So I’m cool and moving well and my fairytale mountain appears over an enormous dried out tank. It’s those little things that tip this walk toward a happy place.
Though I am totally exposed to the sun and suck down water fast. I need to find a tank with water soon. My map app ‘Far Out’ has recent comments that Horse Lake too is completely dry, but I spy some glistening in the sun and head over on dry mud to filter a liter. It’s a bit brown but tastes delicious.
I carry my entire operation through a fence and into shade and guzzle a liter and save another to carry to camp and continue on feeling much better. Soon, the trail sends me to the edge of Anderson Mesa and I finally get s view of Upper Lake Mary fed by Walnut Creek where I had lunch.
It’s wild up here seeing so much forest, the fairytale mountain and lake. The trail cuts around Lowell Observatory’s Navy Precision Optical Interferometer. It’s one of the most precise telescopes in the world that can separate distant stars that normally appear as one clump though all I see are an array of long white tubes.
Nearby is Prime Lake and a sign tells me it was created around one to five million years ago when underground voids collapsed making surface depressions that were sealed by clay deposits. Some of those deposits are on the bottom of my shoe.
The important big today is that this is a wetland visited by 100 different bird species. Even when dry, this collapsed void is a very important component of ecosystem. Birds are singing, quacking, and hooting and I walk on ready to find a site.
I come to a road and meet a couple with a van sitting by a fire. Of course I ask if they might sell me a beer and Lindsay gives me the good stuff – a super hoppy IPA. Ryan asks if I know the trail ahead. When I say no, he gives me a detailed description of where to go.
I follow his suggestion, across a meadow, down through a lovely oak forest, up a road next to another protected wetland and up to the Arizona Trail sign. Right here, under pines, is a flat grassy area awaiting the alicoop.
How did he know? And just the exact amount of distance I wanted to go so I’d still have daylight to dry the tent and bag, have dinner, change and crawl in. And now the stars are out, the ones that can be seen as distinct objects by the observatory up the hill. And my bird friends are quieted down too. Only the wind above in the pines sings me to sleep.
