I woke up on Saturday morning, our second full day at the lodge, with a sense of excitement at the days plans. Not only had I resolved to attend the Divine Liturgy at Mary Undoer of Knots, and practically promised to do so, but I had glorious plans to go hiking.
Each time coming up to Summerhaven, I had made it a point to walk down the main road through the rest of the village for about a mile until it dead ends at a national forest fee entrance where there are picnic grounds and several trailheads. The picnic grounds are usually full of people on day trips from Tucson, and there is little parking (parking is the great premium in Summerhaven---the lodge room comes with free but not guaranteed parking).
But the most hiking I had done was hardly any at all, in all my visit. Just walking down the hill to the fee entrance and coming back up had satisfied my curiosity so far, perhaps additionally following the trail down the creek briefly before turning around.
This year I wanted it to be different. I seriously needed a good hike. I felt disconnected from my body in a disturbing way. Last summer I had felt like I was rotting inside in the heat, especially when stricken by the vertigo and balance issues. I had done one serious hike recently, in the McDowells, and had tortured myself by overextending myself to the point of endangering my life (given how many people die each year). Now I was up in the pines, in a cooler environment. I yearned to get outside and feel my legs moving.
I left after breakfast, walking out of the hotel with my REI light day back, and with a flask of water. The amount of water one uses depends a lot on the temperature and heat. The day looked to be cool, with dark grey clouds covering the sky. Good hiking weather.
I started heading down the hill on the main road, but instead of going all the way down to the fee entrance as I had in previous years, I forked off onto a side road up the mountain that supposedly led to another trailhead, according to a sign. I wanted to explore it. It took about twenty minutes to wind my way up through the residential area to get to the trailhead. As I always do I scrutinized the map at the entrance euntil I had a sense of the entire route, and then took a picture of map with my phone.
It was a glorious hike. The route was narrow and rocky winding up further until it leveled out in an area that was still recovering from a fire years ago. As such it felt like being above the tree line in the Rockies. In fact, the whole experience brought back to me the feeling of an alpine hike, the kind I had not in years. It made me realize how deficient is the desert for satisfying my soul that way. It's not just about the heat and the sun. It's about something deeper, and I could sense I was experiencing something my soul had starved for.
It felt almost awkward, humiliating to come to this realization. What a benighted life I had been living. I felt years younger all at once, as if my life had been interrupted and was now resuming.
It was also a magnificent test for my new barefoot hiking shoes. I had ordered them almost two months ago but had not worn them until a few days ago. Instantly I discovered that they were a key to recovering core strength I had lost last year. They gave me back an ability to feel the ground with my feet in a way that radiating up my legs and body. The gloom I had felt for a year, at least over that, disappeared when I was on the trail. I could tell my core was still not as strong as it was, but I knew it was just a matter of time and effort to recover further.
Overall, I loved the shoes, at least when I was on a smooth trail. The shoes are not ideal for trails with lots of rock, however. For one thing, if one steps on a jagged rock edge, one can feel it directly on one's feet. Likewise it is quite possible to stub one's big toe on a rock with these things, as I discovered at one point. Were to look for the idea hiking shoe, I would adapt these ones with a slightly thicker part in the middle of the sole, and maybe a thickened part for the big toe. Meditating on this as I hiked, I thought of the hardcore ultralight trekkers, mostly young of course, who hike the Continental Divide trail and such in shoes that are basically sandals. This is to save weight on one's feet, so one does not use up strength and calories lifting the weight of a hiking boot over and over. For myself, I need more covering--perhaps a little bit more than the shoes provided.
It was a pleasure to sink into such thoughts. I followed the trail over several ridges into the official wilderness area and then took the fork that led down a gorge to exactly the fee entrance I was familiar with. The last section coming down the gorge is officially part of the Arizona Trail, which crosses the entire state south to north. It felt gratifying to hike a bit of it.
Then I walked back up the main road, as I normally would do, until I was back in Summerhaven at the hotel. It felt glorious--a great thing to do as part of the Fourth of July. But it made me realize that I have to do this on a more regular basis, this kind of hiking. The desert doesn't work for me, for various reasons. What to do?
Additional Notes:
1. These are the shoes I was wearing---the Hike Caspians (link). I think I ordered size 11. Besides the issues above, which can be remedied perhaps by ordering a different shoe, I noticed the toe box felt constrained on my right foot, where years ago I developed a mild bunion from wearing hiking shoes that squeezed my toes. I am forever in a quest to find shoes with ample room for my toes. The only trial shoes I found that would even come close were Salomons, which I worn for years, although they are still not wide enough in the toe box for me.
The Hike Caspians here sadly suffered a little bit from that. All that design and you are still squeezing my toes, just a slight curling of the middle toes on my right foot but enough for me to notice and be bothered by. This is despite the fact that everyone now says "we have wide toe boxes." Why is it impossible for anyone to actually believe and execute this?
2. At one point, back between the ridges in the wilderness area, I managed to lose the trail. Somehow I thought I was supposed to scramble up a rock incline. When I got to the top, I saw what could possibly be the trail and began following it, but skeptical I made made the wrong choice. Not wanting to scramble back down the incline, I saw on a fallen burn log and rested while I admired the view of the wilderness and the top of nearby Mt. Lemmon (the actual mountain, that is), topped by an astronomical observatory from the University of Arizona.
My patience was rewarded when several groups of hikers came along on the trail in the direction from where I'd come, talking loudly. They did not see me but I listened as they passed, and sure enough they did not follow me up the rock incline but proceeded along the trail below me. I noted where they passed and saw I could recover the trail easily without reversing course.
Every good hike somehow has a moment where you think maybe you screwed up in a way that has put yourself in danger, even in a mild way. A hint of that feeling is like salt on a meal. It is useful to remind oneself of one's essential fragility, and that the elements and nature can be unforgivable, if one does not have proper respect for them.
3. At another point, I detoured off the trail, accidentally following a blind spur that came to a dead end at an overlook after a hundred feet. There I found, amidst the grassy brush, a small spring in the form of a tiny pond only two feet in diameter, and the marshy outflow going down the hill. There is something so beautiful about discovering something like that spontaneously.
4. If I were going to scold myself over anything it would be lack of preparedness for rain. I had a wool cover, but nothing impervious to rain. By the time I was ascending, dark clouds were rolling in. Realizing my stupidity, I began mentally preparing for the miserable experience of being caught in the middle of a downpour. Fortunately it never came. What really surprised me was that as I was coming down the gorge, with this mental preparation in mind, I saw folks casually hiking up the gorge from the trailhead at the fee entrance, dressed in the skimpiest of clothes. I may be stupid enough not to have packed rain gear but I'm not that stupid.
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