Section 6: Oracle to Tucson
"Hey guess what? I love you too."
I took a deep breath and listened to the old brag of my heart - I am, I am, I am...
I'm in Patagonia! Not the South American region, but a small town in Arizona. It might as well be South American though, with the mountains all around and musical tones of Spanish in the air. We're posted up at a bakery called Ovens of Patagonia, and I highly recommend their sandwiches. They have milkshakes too! This update will catch us up to the present; luckily, I took a fair amount of notes after Oracle, and I have plenty of time to weave them into a post.
On the way out of Oracle, I was struck by an affliction that my friends and I have dubbed "town gravity". Sometimes, miles leaving town are much slower and more exhausting than miles in the middle of a section, a pull that's akin to a gravity well. Achieving escape velocity requires summoning reserves of energy and willpower that ought to have been restored by a rest, but are often cancelled out by the weight of a full food bag and a stomach overloaded with sugary, fatty treats. The departure from Oracle also featured a 4,000ft climb in baking heat, and I paused halfway for a ten minute break that gradually stretched into an hour. I wanted to have a nap, but discarded the idea as too time-consuming and unlikely to help. There was a tiny resort town at the top of the climb, with wifi and a heated rest area where hikers were permitted to sleep, and I wanted to get there before dark. Constantine was well ahead, as is our custom. I'd told him I'd be along shortly after my snack break, and if I was too far behind, he'd likely worry. I didn't want that. He likes to get long ascents over with in a single run, whereas I procrastinate, fiddle with my gear, eat unnecessary snacks, and fantasize about the stack of books waiting for me back in the van. Time to go. It wasn't even that hot, I was just cranky. I put on a new audiobook, got bored, switched to an old one, got bored, tried some music. Bored. I was just bored! I put the new audiobook back on and tried to maintain a reasonable pace.
A podcast about bear attacks kept me entertained for half an hour, but when it ended, I paused again to dig snacks out of my pack. A late breakfast had thrown off my eating rhythm, so I chose the most extravagent items in my food bag and downed eight hundred calories of sugar in about five minutes. This made me even more sleepy, so I stretched out next to the trail and dozed for ten minutes. Gaining cell service on the ridge, I texted Constantine to let him know not to worry, and hunted around for my missing motivation. The unspectacular section north of Oracle should have had me psyched for the mountains ahead, but I found myself actually wishing for a flat roadwalk. For someone who spends most of her time exercising at high elevation, I really hate going uphill. Cloud cover was rolling in and the air cooled as the afternoon wore on, but I still found myself procrastinating mightily, checking the elevation profile every few minutes as if the terrain would somehow change just by looking again. Up, up, up, steep and gravelly roads and not much in the way of views. Nothing to do but hike on. I was commited to a night-hike now, given that dusk was falling earlier and earlier, and every mile in the dark is that much slower. The longer I sat around, the later I would be, but I didn't WANT to, dammit. Nothing was wrong except my attitude. Less than 200 miles to go, and I was just wanted to get it done.
Near the top of the climb, the view opened up to a panorama of sky islands and flatland towns. The lights of Tucson blazed in the valley, and I began to feel more energetic. The first highway into Tucson was just 22 miles ahead, but we'd be skipping that entrance and going in from another road crossing, 80 miles away. Dusk fell, but the half-moon shed enough light to see the road so I didn't stop to take out my headlamp. As a consequence, I missed a trail junction and followed a parallel two-track for an extra quarter mile. The road dead-ended at a cliff, lined by barbed wire fence on all sides. Dang. I did find a small geocache there, but there was no candy inside, just miniature logbook with only three entries since 2016. It's a cool feeling to find yourself where few other people have been, even if you ended up there by accident. I still didn't bother to get out my headlamp, since I was pretty sure I'd put it away in the wrong bag and buried it deep in the pack. Instead, I turned on my phone's flashlight to find the junction, and continued my steep rocky ascent in the dim.
Something rustled the bush next to me. It rustled again, then crashed through a particularly noisy patch of sticks. Spooked, I turned on the light and caught a flash of green eyes, before the animal whirled away and continued making noise somewhere just above. The trail was contouring a densely wooded slope, and I had no option to retreat or investigate, only move forwards or backwards on the path. It was following me! "Whatever you are, fuck off!" I yelled. "I'm a big scary human! I'll eat you for dinner!" From the noise and the spacing of the eyes, it couldn't be too big. Coyote, bobcat, maybe a javelina? Probably a cat, but cats don't make noise unless they intend to. Earlier in the year I'd been stalked by a wolf in broad daylight, and was feeling especially uneasy about predator encounters since then. "You're not a bear or a cougar! You better not be a wolf! Go away!" It almost certainly wasn't a wolf. Wolves are stealthy and intelligent, and you can feel their eyes tracking you even when they're still. Being stalked by a wolf is terrifying on a deep, instinctual level. Whatever this thing was, it didn't give me that feeling, but I still did not like being followed by an unknown creature in the dark. The trail dumped me out on a flattish ridgeline. I scanned my flashlight in a circle, but saw and heard nothing. Feeling haunted, I kept the light on and practically ran the rest of the way into Summerhaven, only slackening when I met the paved road and the reassuring glow of vacation homes.
The rest area was lovely as described. A nice modern facility, with a clean lobby and outlets that promised a luxurious sleep. Another hiker named Boy McGuyver had joined us in Oracle, and he and Constantine were chatting as they finished their meals. McGuyver opted to sleep outside, as the lobby had a fluorescent light that could not be turned off. I tried to fall asleep - was it just me, or did the concrete sort of smell like garbage? A sudden rattle came from the women's bathroom, and I asked Constantine to go check on it. Probably a mouse, but I felt childishly afraid, a juvenile throwback to monsters in the closet. It was just a ventilation fan. "You can go to sleep, Magpie. You're safe."
I almost succeeded until a distinctive shape scuttled across my legs. I shrieked, scaring the hell out of Constantine, who'd been solidly snoring next to me. "Sorry, sorry. There's a huge spider, it startled me." The spider was crouched in a crevice of my food bag, surveying us warily. "I'll just kill it." Constantine said. I got the sense he was grumpy, but his voice was full of patience. "No, don't kill it! Spiders are friends, they eat mosquitoes. We'll just trap it and move it outside." But the spider evaded our efforts and scurried away under the door of a maintenance closet. Great. The only thing worse than a spider you can see, is a spider you previously saw and now can't. "Do you want to just go sleep outside?", he suggested. I did. But I also didn't want to annoy him with my silly fears, and hesitated to answer. "Come on, let's go. I can't sleep knowing there's a spider about to crawl on my face." Good man. We wearily relocated our pads to a cool, dark spot on the deck and conked out instantly.
Then we were up again, 2am. The afternoon clouds had conspired against us; it was raining, first a drizzle, then a torrent. We grabbed our possessions and hustled indoors once more, shortly followed by a soggy-looking McGuyver. It definitely smelled like trash in here. I tossed and turned for a while on the concrete floor, then gave up on sleep and loaded a book on my phone. I'd requested New York 2140 from the library almost a year earlier, and they had finally made good on the hold. It was an exciting story and I raced through chapter after chapter, unbothered by fatigue. I was approaching the novel's hurricane climax when Constantine began to stir, one hand searching out breakfast while the rest of his brain slumbered on. The world outside was as stormy as my book. Hail and rain pounded the tin roof of our little shelter, so I let him sleep and finished up the novel. It was great - you should check it out.
The rain didn't let up until nearly 9:30, so we sat around with McGuyver and ate breakfast indoors. He had a more relaxed hiking style, and we probably wouldn't see him again. When the skies relented, we left him to his morning whiskey and headed off into the wild. The top of Mount Lemmon was high enough that the biome was no longer desert - rather than cactus and sagebrush, the trail was surrounded by towering pines. Maples and other deciduous trees were dropping their leaves, a bright red carpet on granite and loam. We climbed an unassuming ridge and stopped dead in our tracks, astonished at the view. A shallow glacial cirque was transformed into a flash flood zone, water draining away before our eyes. It was a good thing we hadn't tried to get out of town earlier; the granite bowl would have been utterly impassible. Everywhere, we saw the signature of past flood events. Towers of stone had worn away to blobby, rounded forms, a tidal zone stranded in the high alpine. Shapes like mushrooms and Snoopy, stacked all together in a giant game of Jenga. It was an M.C. Escher portrait of Northern Ontario, the Whiteshell seen through a kaleidescope lens. I was exhausted and underslept, but my sense of wonder was intact, and we traded exclaimations and jokes all throughout the labyrinth.
The sun returned to its full strength with the afternoon, and we took a lazy lunch break at the end of our descent. We both removed our shirts to dry in the heat, and I considered taking my shorts off too. I'll take any opportunity to go naked in the sun, but the ground was scattered with prickly seedheads and practicality won the day. Picking thorns off of your ass is unpleasant, believe me. Staring up at a bright blue sky, it was hard to believe that we had been soaked to the skin only hours before. We dozed in the sun and reflected on trails we had hiked, smiling and exchanging cliche affections. A perfect moment. The path stretched before and behind, years of hiking in the future, years of wandering in the past. How wonderful to find someone with the exact same passions, the same dedication to an unusual life. I had never felt so lucky.
The rest of the day was a sweetgrass plain, scrub oak and cactus rolling out over low hills. The trail meandered back and forth across a creekbed, the flood already disappearing into patches of damp sand. A thirsty place, with not a drop wasted. I was happy as could be, watching cardinals and crows wheel away on the rising wind. A red-tailed hawk dived down in front of me, snatching up a mouse and sailing off on effortless wings, eponymous tail feathers bright in the sun. Birds of prey are common enough, so frequent that they've become as unremarkable as squirrels. But the close encounter was something special, and I felt doubly blessed by its swift approach. We got to the end of the plains and began to climb once more, the last big ascent of the trail. It was already over? How could that be?
One of the things I like most about thru hiking is the opportunity to simply sit and observe. Of course, you can do this anytime you like, but removed from the obligations and distractions of town, it's much easier to enjoy the experience of sitting on a rock and listening to birds. Towards the end of a hike, it does get more difficult to deliberately choose to be present, given that you're tired and hungry and probably slightly in pain most of the time, but it is possible if you try. The beginning of the climb was much easier than I had expected, and when I came to the water source halfway, I filled my bottles from the clear natural pools and gave myself some time to sit in silence. I was in a narrow wash, mostly dry, and dotted with round river stones. A transitional habitat, between the grassland I had just traversed and the high coniferous forest above. Crickets and a few frogs provided a pleasant background of chirps, over which I could hear birdsong and the occasional crackle of hooves, though I could not see the deer. Short leafy trees were going to yellow and ochre, and the rocks were fine pink marble, studded with glittering mica chips. Some small predator snatched a rodent, which squealed and fought for a moment before being defeated. The victor scampered off out of earshot, unseen. A woodpecker went to work on a hollow tree nearby, grounding the soundscape with odd-meter percussion. Rat-ta-tat-tat, knock-knock, pause. The sweet hay-like scent of dry grass mingled with the fragrance of conifers and juniper trees, and the distinct, luscious petrichor that heralds water. Despite my rumbling stomach and the general discomfort of being underweight, I was utterly content. Happiness is so often determined by expectations. I was expecting a brutal, interminable slog in the heat, so this cool moment of rest was sheer joy. Rocks, water, cloud cover, birdsong - not luxuries by any 21st century standard, certainly nothing to inspire pleasure in the everyday life of an average city apartment-dweller. But in this moment, nothing could have made me happier. Then the gnats descended, so I got up and finished the two-mile trek to camp.
What I'm listening to:
A couple next to me at this cafe is complaining viciously about their neighbour, what joy. Fortunately they have an excessively cute dog, who's currently trying to convince me to share some of my pastry. It's hard to resist - a doberman mix with big sad eyes, but she's not my dog and so, she goes without treats. Ear scratches will have to suffice. Constantine just set off, and I'll join him once this is posted. An easy thirty today, so here's an easy song. A secular hymn of sorts, I sing it to myself in beautiful places and think of its poetry often. It's from an album called “Lost and Safe", a place I always want to be.
Talk soon, and take care
-Magpie