Desert Trail: High Desert

The High Rock Canyon corridor I followed the Lassen-Applegate Historic Trail. Following in the wagon ruts and footprints of pioneers is pretty damn cool. This form of migration, the movement I love to do, to me, all ties is together, even a vagabond 150 years later with a family trying to find a new life, a new hope. The walls abruptly rose and looked graffitied with green lichen. I passed ancient caves etched with settler carvings or passers-by petroglyphs. Old homesteads, rather remnants of homesteads, spread out through the canyon evenly. Settlers laid crop, grazed cattle, and tried to earn sustenance out here in this harsh high desert environment. Even older relics and signs of even older people remained. Obsidian flakes and glassy volcanic shavings littered High Rock Canyon and atop the sagebrush high plateaus. 

How have we let it go? Why have we forgotten it? This Desert Trail, I have a hard time gathering an understanding as to why the route has slipped through public knowledge. Almost like the occasional memory lapse of what the pioneers did. We get wrapped up in the easy stuff, the popular stuff. Some history needs care. I think the Desert Trail needs walking. But with old pioneer routes only the ruts remain as the resources are filed away. I aim to bring those back, the historical information for this route to honor a legacy as a long distance hiker, to pay it forward, to honor those that walked before me.

After a last town stop in Nevada at the small town of Denio I hiked into Oregon with a new shelter. Immediately I felt more secure. Once in Oregon, the DT then coincides with the Oregon Desert Trail. In fact, the Pueblo Mountains, well, just read this snippet from a 1980 folded map from the Desert Trail Association: 

‘The Pueblo Mountains section of the Desert Trail is the first officially recognized and authorized portion of a proposed Canada to Mexico National Desert Scenic Trail.’

The Corridor Concept: ‘The Desert Trail, by its very nature, is not a clearly defined path or constructed trail such as the PCT or the AT. Instead, it is perceived as a corridor without specific borders, through which the hiker may pass choosing his own route. The purpose is to avoid a beaten path...The hiker is not expected to walk directly from cairn to cairn, but to wander and investigate things of interest as his or her fancy and time dictate.’

The Pueblos are marked with tall stacked cairns strategically placed at visible points and spurs. I marveled at some of these because they were just as old as me. Totems that provided heritage, communicated the past with the present and the future. But can a totem communicate if nobody walks from one to another, it the totem doesn’t signal any route direction? That’s what gets me: this route is as old as other trails, even began with just as much exuberance as others. Maybe is the dominant trait of the desert itself. The desert forgets things, forgets as in a verb sense, as in evaporating things, decaying things into remnants. But as I hiked through the dramatic beauty of the Pueblos I put these sentiments out of my head. I was right here and right now, right where it mattered. Besides the smell of mahogany in the spring, how potently sweet the air is, alluringly better than a donut shop, or granny’s pie...that’s what matters. Simple shit.

I was reminded of a big bear of a man, retired from the forest service, I met last Fall in the Pueblos while on the ODT. He hunts in the Fall and whittles little thing-a-majigs out of mahogany. He showed me a beautiful, smoothed fish hook out of mahogany around his neck. I admired that bloke. When will I ever do something creative, or take the time to create, or find a small and focused passion that I can whistle to? Something small, yet creative, something with a scented wood, a small carving knife, something that passes the time with glorious insouciance; what ever I create I create.

After a windy night, the morning had a calming about it, still. The air felt empty yet up high in the Steens low hanging clouds plummeted off the craggy eastern rim. Pockets of freshly dropped snow speckled shaded seams and ledges. I started the climb. I admit I had been ultra-cognizant of Wildhorse Canyon, of how overgrown and brushy the way was that made for difficult travel. I had a plan, to learn from the landscape when I was here last Fall. A faint jeep track climbed steeply up towards Hat Pass and the craggy and ominous ridgecrest. Suddenly, on a small and steep descent, like a rattlesnake bite, my ankle went out on me again. It happened so fast and I could hardly catch myself as I was moving too swiftly down hill. I braved myself with my poles and leaned to my falling side, my go-to left side. Usually I can roll out of it but with the rocky terrain my knee and elbow took the brunt of the fall. I sat in the tall and green grass, leaning on my backpack, my back angled down the leaning of the jeep track. I cursed at the air, yelling at my ankle. My first thought was that I dislocated it because it seemingly just collapsed under itself along with a very loud pop. That, and with the previous two injuries on this trip, something just didn’t feel right. I became lightheaded, my blood rushing to the ankle, the knee and elbow. Before I had the gall to reach for my ankle, the tingly and dizziness of the head proceeded to flood my vision. While I was definitely conscious of fighting the pain, of trying to curse the pain away, eventually I succumbed to it. My vision, with each blink, slowly turned to pixelated cubes. Purple and blues, to a dark pink and a gloomy violet, I heard a ringing in my ears until I was sitting at a bar, slunk down in the corner, dark red and dank, I was flung back to LA when I drank a lot and wallowed in a coupled madness and sadness. I finished a pint and said, ‘Another.’ The scene woozily changed, morphed to a time in a Coloradan Winter when I was severely depressed. I felt the agonizing pain of waiting for something to be over, abhorrently defiant to what was infecting me. The welling up of a fighting spirit took hold. I clawed my way back out, scratching my way to consciousness. And everything went dark. Space and blackness consumed me and I wasn’t there. Time erased. The pixelating of cubes creeped back into my brain room. Purples and blues and dark pink cubes melting together in a stacked screen slowly like I had started to blink. I felt almost nauseous but I remember wanting to fight, to keep at it. Then, I kept blinking and trying to piece what was in front of me as the thought 'why am I here?' kept going over and over in my head, and I felt like I was a giant in the grass, I didn't know where I was at and I would shake my head to gain some clarity and vision back. ‘Why here?’ I felt like I was on a psychedelic trip with the colors and the consciousness thoughts. I saw my knees, my left cinched upright and leaning left, my right buckled and splayed out behind me. The grass was really tall, like tiny yet tall trees. I shook the fuzziness loose. ‘Why am I going through this,’ I spoke out loud in my head. A refusal of acknowledgement, the fight for life, like those visions of the past knowing I would get out of there someday, that black out space...yea, I’ll get out of it. 

My other senses kicked in besides the nausea. My hearing sprang back as a loud, tapering whir developed in until everything came together, a synergy of senses. Everything became clear, like that, just as quick as the snap that had happened. I looked at my legs and the tall grass and then remembered my ankle and felt for it. I looked at it glaringly and felt no deformity and yelled ‘C’mon!’ as if I had been cut off in mid sentence and had abruptly rejoined my cursing. I felt mad at myself and whatever it is out there to let that happen again. And, I wanted to fight, to regain focus and stare it in the eye and say ‘C’mon! Is that all you got?’ 

It's been the whole trail though: the need to adapt and grow into a new phase, to abolish what has been fighting me, to let go. The ankle is just the catalyst, a long lived weakness I cannot shake. Funnily enough, that ankle, over all these years, through 2 breaks and countless severe sprains, is on my strong leg, the one that supports my weak left foot and leg. Without the right ankle, I wouldn't be able to do all this shit that I live to do. My right ankle is my totem, my connection to the past that imparts and guides my present. Each step a new present, a new moment, no matter how painful.  I could just as easily let whatever it is swallow me up, but I need to fight. To suffer, to endure, then fight.

I pulled up, checked my self and my immediate surroundings, then tipped my cap to the area in thanks. I turned and walked away with a focus, a grit to get through the nasty bushwhack, the next moment. Only this time, I would do it better.

Up at Wildhorse Lake I soaked my ankle in the clear waters. Snow filled the basins and slopes above while cornices hung off the rim and crags high above. Funny, in the blazing desert of the Mojave I thought about this lake, fantasizing about diving into the cold waters. But like everything, everything is fleeting. I would forget about the lake and the waters the second the wind stopped or after every warm water swill and the oppressive heat would bring me back to the moment. With my ankle soaking I chuckled as my toes got so cold they began to sting. Such a temporary and simple sensation that makes you feel so alive.

In Frenchglen, at the historic hotel, I sat at a family style dinner with friendly strangers. They were so much more friendlier than me, as I sat with a butt cheek hanging off the edge of the bench. Why do I struggle with these things at times, the strength I need to muster just to say hello? Luckily, they had more guts than me. Once opened up, I marveled at the story of the older gentleman who was an ex-police chief telling the scene of a murder, the stoicism and emotional charge, at the same time both crippling, the whites of the victim’s eyes as she was covered in blood, still alive, gasping for air, because the killer put the victim in the trunk of a car that had the monthly purchase of frozen foods the victim had just bought. 

‘You just had to. It was my job,’ the fire in his eyes, the grit in his fingertips as he clenched his fists, as he was asked from the inquisitive gal, ‘How can you deal with it?’

From Frenchglen to the end of the original finished, scouted and conceptually mapped Desert Trail route at Highway 78 back in the 70’s and 80’s, roughly 60m is what remained before I would embark on what Buck Nelson pioneered in ‘12 on his way to Canada to make the Desert Trail ‘complete.’ High sagebrush mesas peppered with juniper and pockmarked with the occasional volcanic crater, I strode over indiscernible jeep tracks. The high desert steppes were green with Spring, a blue tint blending in with the fecundity of an arid realm. The cows ranged and grazed over the sprouted grasses, most waving in unison in the bullying wind. Most cows would scatter as I cruised on through. But I found a calf laid down sunkenly in the grass. I whistled as I neared, hoping the calf was asleep, as goofy as they can be. Within 10 feet, he jumped up and looked at me unalarmingly. I knew instantly something was wrong. His right front ankle, mid foreleg, was swollen like a softball. Snakebite or gopher hole, either way, his moment would last too long, cemented in certain death in a vast emptiness. He hobbled away and stopped within 20 feet of me, the pain obviously preventing him from going any further. 

Because I have to. Except mine seem to be moments of self-centeredness. Could I care enough to have a will of duty, of compassion, whether hero or calf? Or am I always on the brink of moments thinking everything will end and I will forget immediately and sense an illusory and sensate instinct each step at a time? 

I think I’m better than that, but I don’t believe that. Because I always sense the brink of things.

And I wonder: if a trail isn’t walked does it exist? Is this route real as I walk it? I perceive that it is real. No path, no footprints, except for the ancient past frozen in clay and mud. Will this always be here or is it a fleeting footpath? To me, when I look down at the brink I see an endless abyss, a wisp of wind meandering down a ghostly path, an elongated totem pole filled with pain, with struggle, with endurance, and most importantly with love.

Desert Trail: Basin and Range Part 3

I started up Guzzler Canyon. Wide views of plains of sagebrush and basalt pillars that cliffed out an abrupt edge on high mesas. Soon, the storms rolled in. I sheltered under a small rocky alcove, crammed beneath a ledge using my backpack frame to keep my legs dry. I could see the curtains of rain imminently approaching and splattering the hillsides around me until the cell hit me. Then, a large cove under a big cliff with piles of wild horse shit. A hawk, maybe a falcon or a goshawk, squawked above me and swooped around me telling me the nest was nearby. I napped for a while under the weather seemed tame. Soon, up on the crest, another cell hit. This time a cave up high on a spur ridge would suffice. I sat crouched and huddled in the middle of the cave and had a Zen moment. A calm meditation absorbed me and I breathed. I felt the drips running down the lichen covered and gritty walls. I watched the tops of the crest as curtains of rain oozed across the curves. Slowly, the scene went by.

Small game traps, deer or coyote or bobcat, were spaced out up the drainage I ascended to towards the crest of the Sahwave Range. This day seemed different, clearer, still abundant storms but negotiable. I meandered on knobs with granite outcrops. The granite channelled drainages seamed up the steep range, horse trails ran gloriously up and down and across the range, and expansive views of all the playas and ranges around held me in no short of a gleeful fervor.

At the steppes of the Blue Wing Mountains, a horse at the bottom of a drainage, white speckled with a black-striped on face, ran away from me after some curious huffs and puffs. After the ensuing climb I crested the small range, a mirrored reflection in the playa a few thousand feet below brightly reflected the sun and sky on top of freshly dropped rainwater. I felt the cool wind hit my sweaty body. Flaky and angled rock covered in orange lichen angled out of the ground. The Blue Wing outcrops were like finned backs of dinosaurs or ruffled feathers of a bird on alert. Such a stark contrast to the Sahwave Range that was composed of granite and rocky outcrops. Then, I noticed the same horse from down below. We had a stare down, then he snorted and again ran away. I side-hilled a peak to regain the crest and to start a steep descent. I found him again, this time on the slopes. Being upwind as I was, I watched him roll in the dirt and take off on a short sprint, then trot on the rounded ridge in front of me, descend and disappear. Like that, a powerful interaction, then gone forever. Just how I like it. 

I felt pretty lucky I hadn’t got hit by a storm most of the day as I could see consistently roving cells move throughout the basins and ranges. At a spring I found water and in the narrow canyon watched a big cell dump water on the playa and the basin below. Lightning flashed and I could see the crooked electric shaft hit the playa. I watched the cell slowly creep and spill, floating and morphing with the wind. I figured to set up camp early after a big mileage day. I slowly hiked down the drainage taking my time so as to not walk into any stragglers of rain drops. I turned my ankle on a small rock. I was so mad, cursing at the sky or no where in particular. Just got whatever curses I needed to get out. I cannot describe the frustration I had at that moment. So, I found a sheltered spot and laid out my bedroll. Then, I looked for my tarp, the next thing to do before bed under a stormy sky. I rifled through my gear. My tarp wasn’t there. I must’ve left it at my lunch spot at Big Bank Spring. I retraced my memory and I couldn’t place it exactly. But at Big Bank Spring I had been in a hurry to pack up to avoid a storm and I must’ve not packed it. My routine has been broken because the tarp wasn’t in its usual place because of how wet it was. With the ankle providing me with fresh pain and light-headedness I became really confused, utterly befuddled by such an action and feeling. I have not done this before on trail, especially with such a crucial piece of gear. I spent the next half hour finding some sort of sheltered camp to no avail, for I was on the edge of a playa. Very low shrubs laid about before an expanse of caked dirt. I watched burros and wild horses, coyotes, and antelope all cross the playa as the huge storm floated west. The playa after the storm brought out the wildlife, as the horses and burros bucked and snorted, with the antelope sprinting and suddenly screeching to a halt, and the coyote, the interloper, surreptitiously sneaking across with hunched shoulders. An incredible sunset was on display with the tendrils of the storm brilliantly aglow in pink and orange. And I was so embarrassed, mad, frustrated, and confused. I laid down astride a low scraggly brush in a small sandy depression and rigged up my plastic ground sheet and slid my quilt into my trash compactor bag as another cell neared. Thunder grumbled and I felt so vulnerable and uncovered under the approaching ominous cloud. I could hear the rain coming. I felt a bit unnerved, even scared. 

I didn’t feel disencumbered by my ineptitude, rather I felt at a loss, an unexplainable action of losing an absolute need by an action unfathomable before. Fuck, maybe I’m getting old. But the whole thing made me think of ‘home.’ I don’t know how to put it. I’m from Los Angeles, live in Colorado, but I dwell in the wilds wherever I set my shelter up. That’s ‘home.’ And I left it by accident, abandoned my home without thinking, rushing and not taking care. Even though I’m only with my ‘home’ 5-7 months out of the year, it is all I got.

I hardly slept that night, so worried about getting wet or being unprotected from a thunderstorm. I kept popping up and looking around. Throughout the night the constant braying of the burros laughed in the empty space. That’s what it felt like: space. Floating there in the bottom of an enormous sea, completely vulnerable to whatever rams into me, I, not an equal force. I could not provide any push back. I had to take it, come to grips with my pain and heart ache, my disappointment, my disbelief. And the burros braying through the night made me laugh. They sounded ridiculous and the brayings sounded like the burros were under the same insanity and pain as I, only funnier. I would laugh, then playfully tell them to shut up. Some would get near me unawares of my clandestine bedroll at the shoreline of the playa. Towards the wee part of the morning I heard a couple of them trotting on the playa floor not far from me, their clopping hoof prints thudding across caked mud, their brays quite loud. Wild and untamed, usually solitary, the burros still have a banded instinct. They playfully fought, tussled with each other. I, for the first time on this trail, felt lonely. I packed up under dark skies, the moon trying to make an appearance. My aim to get to town a bit early to situate myself with another shelter, the most important piece of gear. I couldn’t be at risk this vulnerably unsafe. I needed to solve my problem. I walked out into the dark playa, the extreme faint glow of dawn creeping up, and took a bearing and simply split apart the blackness.

The grueling 3500ft climb up to Kumiva Peak only fueled my anger. I needed this punishment and each step only expelled the anger and disbelief further out of me. My ankle felt a bit stiff, swollen, but it felt better with movement. I moved swiftly. I knew I needed to push to avoid any afternoon thunderstorms if I wanted to get to town at a reasonable hour. I sweated profusely amid incredibly humid monsoonal air. Salt lines caked my shirt, my face, and my hat. Through the weaving jeep track of the Selenites I pushed until I got to the small town of Empire in which I immediately hitched to Gerlach. I got a new home on order for the next stop, some 180m away. This left me 5 nights with nary a shelter.

What I’ve called shelter: an alcove, a cave, ledges of rock, washes, under the canopy of a guzzler. But HOME? The rock out on the edge of the playa, watching the giant thundercells explode with lightning, I could feel the whir of electricity, the darkness of nature. I tucked my bedding under the awning of the large rock , a small overhang actually. Although my feet breached the length of the awning, and despite my height, I am proficient at being small when I have to. I scoured for this type of rock, a huge boulder strewn from the slopes high above, residing in the flats near the playa shoreline, for 15 minutes. The weather was tumbling, the wind a bit violent, and the clouds too stout. I tucked all my gear under the awning and in the nook where the rock met the ground. I tried to close my eyes with some calming nerve but I could see roaming thunderheads creeping in from the southwest. Lightning flickered in the distance and thunder grumbled like a hungry stomach. Fortunately for me, the rock that was my home that night situated just perfectly against the oncoming whipping wind. I had some sort of quiet from the wind but my eyes could see the storms unless I turned to the inside of the rock. My heart raced as the storms neared. Lightning electrified the air and gave off an exhalation as a sound, like a mute person whispering. The thunder became deafening overhead and I dug my head deeper into my quilt while squinching up my body to get smaller and more compact. I watched the playa light up brilliantly. From pitch black to a bright purple light. Things were getting scary. Suddenly I heard another grumble, like the thunder kept continuing. A night train came steaming along, a bright light leading the way. What a brave soul with the violence in the air. I imagined him a ghostly figure, a skeletal face with a goofy conductor hat, riding the electric night rails. Rain pummeled me and I could here a drip drop drip drop in half seconds. The ground thwacked with huge pelterings of water. In the wake of these storms I rolled over and extended my legs. A few stars came out.

After some assessment I found myself pretty dry. The playa rock provided me with a good home. The morning of the playa crossing, the flats had stayed relatively dry from the night before. The playa had a bit of stick to the surface, more stick than give, so the walking was fairly easy. As the sun rose higher the mud baked harder and the walking became incredibly easy. Straight line bee line, the miles flew. Two cells off to the west moved threateningly and menacingly. I gulped a bit feeling so exposed and vulnerable, for the crossing was roughly 15m. But those two eluded the expanse of the Black Rock Playa. Then, an encroaching storm from miles away slowly took form. I could see the storm being slowed by Kumiva Peak and the rest of the Selenites. The range provided me with an obstruction. However, as soon as the storm hit the playa the sucker really began to move. I started to kick up the heels a bit and constantly checked over my shoulder the direction and closeness of the storm. The rate of speed was astonishing. My hiking really fast turned to a trot, and as the storm ferociously gobbled up the playa then the trot turned into running. I ran to the shoreline of the playa to find any type of cover, for nearly an hour. Out in the playa I was a sitting duck waiting to be potentially struck by lightening. Plus the surface would become terrible to walk on and I would get terribly drenched in the process. The wind howled from behind me kicking up dust devils in wind-throws weaving through tall desert shrubs. Low hanging clouds beneath the cap of the storm hung low as the forefront of the storm like tentacles reaching out to grab me. I kept running, jumping and striding over small gullies, burrowing through softer sand, and lunging around shrubs. I kept at it as the storm reached down. I made the shore as long phantoms of blowsand blurred my vision. The sky darkened and the ribbons of sand howled, whistled as they zoomed on by. Eventually I found a gully and put on my fleece and rain jacket. Rain began and I took off for the rocks under Black Rock Point. I found a large volcanic rock angled enough and leeward of the wind to tuck myself and my pack slightly under. I sat with uncomfortable pokey rocks stabbing my ass. I crouched and hugged my knees, my backpack sheltering my legs. Then, I napped. I fell asleep under the maddening sky.

I don’t know, the wake of the storm left an aftermath on me mentally. My adrenaline had been so high. Now I ambled through leftover puddles of rain, wet sand outlined where the water moved, and I could still feel the huge storm as it moved away, yawning a wake of dizziness, a maelstrom of confusion. My legs stiffened up as I accumulated over 40m that day. I laid down ready for the next big day under more favorable skies.

The skies looked ominous in the morning. Low puffy clouds slammed into Big Pahute Peak. Shit, I thought. These storms had been giving me a fit for a few weeks now. Either the storms put pressure on me to push harder or faster, or exert stress on me in finding shelter or cover, or force me to look at a detour to avoid extreme conditions. What this does is put a bearing on how I feel about this whole thing. Am I doing the route justified? Am I playing this right? Making the right choice? I took a go for the low saddle on the crest to give the storm some time to move on. It didn’t, and I really felt a bit defeated. The conditions and the exposure made it insensible to go up that way. So, I backtracked and cut across the basin to Box Canyon. Since 530am I had been in my rain gear. By 1000am I found a guzzler in the canyon. I was hot and sweaty, while the cool humid air gave me a chill. The rain suddenly came down harder and I found cover under the guzzler. I put my feet up on the tank and cleared out the mice shit to curl up. I fell asleep and woke up about an hour and a half later shivering. The rain had stopped, so I pushed on. The canyon boxed up and narrowed with large basalt blocks choking the gorge. As tedious as the going was only made the rain more annoying. The boulders were slick and the moving was agonizingly slow. I stopped for a second to take a breath and look around, to get my mind and heart out of the defeated state. Up in an underhang perched in a cave an owl stood guard. A stalwart of the narrows, this raptor looked at me stoically, not even a single movement, so much so the owl seemed fake. I squinted to look closer, his eyes piercing my eyes. I wondered if the owl had ever seen a human before. Probably not. I acknowledged the sign and took time and caution the rest of the way up and over the canyon. 

Soon, I was in High Rock Canyon. The landscape didn’t feel basin and range anymore. The scenery felt like a very high desert. Change was happening. The lake with the same name quacked with ducks, coots and sandpipers. I slogged through the mud. It must have poured heavily up here. Murky puddles littered small depressions and filled up ruts in the jeep track. I was now following the Lassen-Applegate Trail, an old branch of the California Trail where pioneers and homesteaders made their way to central Oregon. These ruts were ancient. All from folks trying to find a home. Is this why I do this? To walk until I find that home? To find a place thousands of miles away on foot, to settle and homestead, to endure the hardships and gift of nature? Bah, I shooed the thought from my head. The air remained cold as I slipped and slogged my way through the mud. In the evening, the sun finally appeared. I gauged the sun to give me about 20 minutes of warmth. I cannot express how happy I was to see the sun. I stopped to let the sun blind me for a bit. I blinked and that psychedelic blur fell behind my eyelids. I became entranced and found myself grinning wide, from ear to ear. I simply consumed and enjoyed the absorption of the warmth. The sun fell behind the mesa. I crested a small rise in the muddy road. To my surprise, I saw an earthen hut replete with stone blocks and a mud and straw roof. I got closer and saw the hut was 3-sided. Turns out the hut was a garage, Fox’s garage, from a homestead in the 1910’s. The timing couldn’t have been better. I found shelter, another home for the night. I set up my bedroll and laid down and noticed the moon casted light through the windowless window frame. The angle of light bemused my curios brain. I enacted dumb finger puppets and giggled a bit to myself. I felt very grateful to have a home again. 

If only for a night. She asks, ‘Now, where do you call home?’