Section 5: Superior to Oracle
"I really should think of a better quote but I forget what we even talked about."
Ah well, I've done it to myself again. Trail time is a slippery thing. I left Superior not even last week and yet the memory of that section has almost completely disappeared. It turns out I took almost no contemporaneous notes of what was actually going on - internally OR externally - even though I'm sure I did some A+ thinking and the section was quite interesting. I'm tired. Not the kind of tired one can fix with a nearo day, or a good rest and pizza in town. The end of hiking season brings a bone-deep sort of weariness that requires absolute focus on trail, and a total vacutiy of attention in town. We arrived in Tucson at a respectable hour, 7:30am, and yet I managed to get absolutely nothing accomplished for the entire day. I sat on the hotel bed reading essays and working on a prose poem about Manitoba, which I may or may not post here in the off-season. We congratulated Hardy and Sie on their finish, and Lorax gave us a ride to a buffet and a gear store so I could get new shoes. That's it. That's all I did. Well, I also ate another family-sized box of fried chicken and a half-gallon of Oreo ice cream. I weigh only 123lbs now, stretched over my lanky Scandinavian frame like butter on too much bread. My stomach is a bottomless pit. God Bless American Consumerism - restaurant portions are seemingly designed for hiker hunger, though I have to take ten minutes breaks during meals to let my digestion catch up. Let's see what I can remember for you, while I slam my third breakfast of the day.
Superior was windy as hell. Gusts over 70mph battered the buildings, and we were both glad not to be hiking that day. There were lots of AZTers in town, all taking refuge from the ferocious wind. I wanted to be sociable, but my extrovert tendency was muted. It'd been a long time since I'd needed to make small talk and wear a smiling face for strangers, and I couldn't quite remember how to keep my mask on. Three new hikers, an internet acquaintance, and friendly trail angels. It was very welcome stimulation, and yet it was also a lot. Decision fatigue set in, and I misplaced my PNT bandanna somewhere in the trail angel's house. Constantine offered me his spare, which was kind of him, but it was covered in American Flag print and I didn't end up using it. Silly, maybe. Though I'm critical of Canada and of nationalism in general, I sometimes feel weirdly patriotic when I'm in the States. The culture down here is different in subtle ways, and I find myself declaring Canadian pride to pre-emptively explain my eccentricities. I'm a weirdo back home anyway. I've basically never been involved in mainstream heteronormative culture, but at least down here I have an easy excuse for my indifference to arbitrary gender norms and social conventions. I'm out of course - a loudmouth socialist queer like me can't avoid mentioning ex-girlfriends or political desires, not unless I leave out huge chunks of my life - but I don't read as gay to the uninitiated, and my tomboyish manner is at odds with my aesthetic. The fact that Constantine and I are obviously a couple doesn't help. Bisexuals confuse people, I guess? I'm certainly not the one that's confused about it. When conversations falter, I often get the vibe that people aren't expecting boldness and intelligence from a pretty young thing. The manic pixie dream girl routine gets old, and I can't be bothered to hide my contrarian nature. I don't fit into any easy category, and some folks are unaccustomed to interacting without a script.
Back on trail around ten, we had a short climb back up over a ridge, then came into a series of wild, craggy valleys. Wind-carved rock sculptures of sandstone and marble studded the landscape. By some quirk of geography, many of them had a distinctly phallic appearance, and we fully regressed to our adolescent selves. "Hey, you were trying to get your hiking boner back, right? I found it!" "Wow, gonna need a lot of lube for that one." “This mountain is just compensating for something.”
Hiking boner (roughly equivalent to "stoke level" in skiing or surfing), is a term I've adopted from Carrot Quinn's excellent book, Thru-hiking Will Break Your Heart. It's a great way to complain about the trail without actually complaining. "It's too hot out for my hiking boner." "Fully flaccid, eh? Gotta fluff it up for this climb!" “Where's Viagra when you need it?”
A later start to the day meant we had a bit of night-hiking to get to the water. My headlamp batteries were beginning to fade, and the gravel descent to the river was treacherous in worn-out shoes. Our source was actually the Gila River! We'd been walking along its tributaries for days, which explained the resemblance I'd felt in the last section. Like I mentioned in a previous update, I did zero research before this trail, so getting to drink from my favourite river was a wonderful surprise. As the sun sank, I began to hear an unplacable but familiar sound. Soft squeaky chirps at the very highest range of my hearing, random and yet seemingly purposeful. It took me a minute before I located the source - small shadows streaking out of a cave on the cliff wall above. A bat migration! The Mexican Freetails were headed south for the winter, where they would snuggle by the millions in cosy hibernation. An occasional furry dive bomb would shoot across the trail ahead of me, swooping up the moths that my dim headlamp attracted. I hate moths, especially when they fly straight into my face. Large-winged insects of any kind startle the crap out of me, as I'm irrationally afraid that they'll fly into my mouth and I'll choke. Yes, I know it's weird. So I was grateful to the bats for eating my chief nighttime antagonists, and was pleased to have their company while I navigated a spooky twilight through the cactus. There are a few types of chunky, branching cacti that resemble shoggoths or HR Geiger monsters in the dark, or else they look like people hunched into torturous shapes. I'm prone to frightening pareidolias when I'm alone, and tonight was Halloween. The bats were a welcome reality check, and also very festive.
I was so slow getting down to the river that Constantine had already set up camp and gone out for water by the time I arrived. It was a bushwhack and a half, apparently. Gnarly old barbed wire fence was strung throughout the brush, tangled all over the riverbank by a previous flash flood. He'd grabbed some extra cooking water to spare me the trek. Just as we were settling down to sleep, a helicopter crested the ridge and thundered over our heads to the riverbed. What the fuck? It was acting strange, circling low and turning its spotlight on and off with no discernible pattern. Up and down the Gila, low and slow, incredibly, annoyingly loud. "Military exercise?" I had to semi-shout into Constantine's ear for him to hear me. "Search and rescue? Scientists counting bats?" It was pretty clearly a military chopper, so we discarded the last two hypotheses. Still, it was unsettling. It didn't seem like a drill, as the chopper was sweeping back and forth with random, frenetic urgency. Then it got worse. The helicopter dropped almost all its altitude, hovering level with our perch on the high banks. It turned its lights off and sat there ominously for nearly ten minutes, face to windsheilded face. The canyon was hot, and I had been lying nude on top of my sleeping bag. Terrified, I scrambled into my clothes and hastily threw everything but my bedroll into my pack, in case we had to run. Worst case scenarios raced through my mind. If the soldiers had bad intentions and came out to find us, what could we do? We were fucked. "Hey, it's okay. I'm sure it's just a drill. I'm with you, I'll keep you safe." Constantine was trying to soothe my panic, but it was a somewhat futile effort. What could he do to protect me against two or more armed men? If they came after us and we couldn't get away, they'd just shoot him and bury his body in the desert. A shallow grave was the least of my concerns. Bored privates with no supervision - I was sure they intended something worse than death, though death would swiftly follow. They wouldn't leave any witnesses. Calm down, said the rational part of my brain. It might be practice search and rescue, or they're border patrol out looking for someone specific. This isn't a war zone. You're not doing anything wrong, they're just trying to see who you are.
But my years of protest and street activism had taught me that uniforms empower the worst forms of violence. Montreal's SPVM and Quebec's SQ are notorious for brutalizing protestors, and for sexually assaulting arrestees. I've even heard conspiracy tales of activists being disappeared, snatched away in choppers by SQ thugs. I haven't seen evidence that would make me believe that paranoia, but it's true that the paramilitary SQ are particularly rough. I'd experienced police agression on more than one occasion, and doubted that the US military would be any more gentle. (Is it fair that I see a soldier or cop and automatically think "rapist"? Not at all. But PTSD doesn't give a shit about fair, and the sight of kevlar and guns sends my body into full fight-or-flight. Freeze, run, hide if you can, and if that doesn't work, fight for your life. It's the response of a cornered prey animal, nature red in tooth and claw.)
These soldiers, of course, were NOT predatory rapists out hunting hikers. The helicopter turned its lights back on and continued its search over the desert for another hour, before taking its cacophony off into the night. I was extremely shaken, and also felt extremely dumb. I knew there had been nothing to fear, but I couldn't control my brain. Having a PTSD episode when you're with someone else feels kind of like throwing up in front of your boss. It's not your fault and nobody's mad, but you wish you could melt into the floor regardless. I was so embarrassed, I toyed with the idea of setting up my own tent and hiding in a nylon cave of shame. Constantine talked me out of it though, great as he is at dealing with emotional stress, and I took one of my emergency anti-anxiety meds so I could fall asleep.
I woke up feeling better the next morning. Constantine let me sleep in a bit, since I'd been up past midnight enumerating my fears. We set off with the river flowing lazily below, dropping steadily down to the valley on mountain bike trails and forgotten old roads. Our last water source for the day was the Gila again, so we cut down on on a rough two-track, where the topo lines indicated a bit of a beach. Much better access here than at the trail crossing proper, though the downed fence was still a hassle. The Gila tasted exactly like I remembered. Silty, tannic, with an aftertaste of rust. Hello, old friend, I thought to the river. Even now, some poor late season CDT hiker could be thrashing through the canyon downstream, laboriously slogging through the rapids and thorns. They could even be in the hot spring right now. I originally thought of it as "my" hot spring, and laughed at my arrogance. If I have any claim on this river, it's that I belong to it. Nobody can own a river, especially not that river's child.
The rest of this section is a blur of ranch roads and heat, except for one thing. Two nights before Oracle, we encountered what has to be the worst water I have ever used. It was a dry, dry section, and the cattle tanks were churned up mud, if they were visible at all. Mostly, they were dry and cracked splotches of earth, distinguishable by rings of dessicated hoofprints. Our only source before the trailhead cache was a nasty spring trough - Hardy and Sie had sent us a photo, prominently featuring the corpse of a cow. We'd have to take at least three litres of this water, enough to cook dinner with and drink the next day.
It was epically gross. My knee was acting up and my shoes were well beyond repair, so once again Constantine beat me to camp and went off to find the spring. He came back with our water bottles and look of supreme horror. Since Hardy and Sie had been there, the springpipe had run dry, leaving the trough with two inches of the filthiest water he had ever seen. Dead bees covered the surface, adding to the stink of the decomposing cow. In my headlamp's weak light, the liquid swirled thickly with red algae, living swimmers and pinworms struggling up through dozens of drowned bees. Even filtered twice, with a bandanna to catch the insects, the water tasted like shit. That's not hyperbole - it smelled strongly of actual, literal poop. The bee bodies gave a nasty medicinal sweetness to the flavour of rot, and it was nearly impossible to drink without gagging. I cooked up my spiciest ramen, and added extra cayenne pepper to mask the taste. We'd have sixteen miles of this stuff in the morning, oh god. I dug out extra packets of electrolyte powder and made one of my bottles into double-strength coffee for the morning. Not so hydrating, but fuck it, I couldn't drink it plain. Not wouldn't. I could not force myself to take a second sip. The thought alone made bile rise in the back of my throat.
"How many gnar points does this get us?" Constantine joked.
"McConkey would NEVER. This is the worst thing I have ever fucking tasted."
"Yeah, me too. Dehydration game strong!"
Even with three lemonade tablets, it was absolutely vile. Constantine gave up and took only the smallest of sips despite the sweltering morning heat, pushing on as fast as he possibly could to the cache. I lingered behind, distractable and irritated by the rocks in my so-called shoes. I tried to drink enough, but it was so nasty that I just could not get the water down. Two miles from the cache, my body revolted. I was beginning to recognize the signs of heat exhaustion - my Arctic constitution seems more vulnerable to this affliction, and the lack of decent water certainly didn't help. I was sweating less than I'd like, headachey and exhausted. Come on body, two more miles. There was nothing for shade, no good place to sit down. Two more miles, let's push! Come on.
Nope. Abruptly and without warning, I threw up next to the trail. The bee water tasted just as bad going the other way. It wasn't full on evacuation, just a warning that if I didn't cool off, NOW, I would put myself in serious danger. Okay, message received. I crammed myself into the meager shadow of a rock and took little sips of my salty rotten lemonade, holding my breath each time I brought the bottle up to drink. I ate some candy to stabilize my blood sugar and wiped the back of my neck and wrists with hand sanitizer, hoping to encourage cooling by evaporation. I began to feel my temperature return to normal. I was sweating again, soaking not only my shirt but my packstraps and the waistband of my shorts. Gnar points indeed. Bury the puke, and let's go. Massive tarantula wasps had congregated around the puddle. Any opportunity for water is a good one out here, and the insects did not care that the moisture was previously used. It was a delicate task not to get stung, but I managed, and set off into the furnace once again.
The cache was mercifully full, gallons and gallons of delicious clear water stashed in a trailhead bear box. The trail angel in Oracle maintains caches all along this arid stretch, and she is undeniably deserving of the name. There was a metal tin of candy for hikers, and the business card for her hotel. We would definitely be staying with her. She could have had the entirety of my bank account and dibs my firstborn son, I was so grateful for something fresh and cold. I chugged a litre and a half, ate a pixie stick and some strawberry drops, drank some more. I wanted to rinse my hat to cool off, but it's extremely rude to use a cache for anything other than drinking. Still, I felt better, and the rest of the way into town was an easy road walk and a jaunt through a fancy state park.
The last night out, we got water from a windmill pump with the unappealing name of "Beehive Well". More bees. Great. But actually, the water was fine. The state park was a Disneyland version of hiking, perfectly manicured trails with hand-lettered signs and detours over small hills for a picturesque view. I was having a good time. Lavender seedheads waved from tufts of friendly grass. No sharp or pokey plants, save for occasional fans of prickly pear. I felt strong and alert in the dusk, aware of my muscles with each powerful stride, buoyant with the lightness of a nearly empty pack. I imagined I was a young hunter-gatherer on an ancient savannah, returning home with the bounty of a successful hunt. This daydream entertained me for the hour or so into camp, where I met Constantine as usual, already set up and cooking his food. He had cell service and texted our trail angel, arranging a pickup early the next morning. I couldn't wait to meet this legend. I was so excited to be in town.
Well, I've been sitting next to the trail for two hours now - yes, Constantine will be in camp before me again, though we didn't exactly set a spot? I bet there's a note in the next trail register, he's good like that. More nighthiking for me anyway, but I wanted to post this while I had the inspiration to write and the cell service to send it. I'd better get going. I hope there are more bats! Three days left, and this trail will be done. Update from Oracle will go out... eventually. Then there will one more trail log to wrap it up, before I transition back to vanlife and figure out what to say about it. I always have things to say - you'd know that by now, since my updates are increasingly long. No song this time, I really do need to hike.
Talk soon, and take care
-Magpie