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davidbrigstock · 1 year

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Nov 14

Day 42: Julian CA to Brawley CA

Miles today : 76 miles

Feet of Ascent today : 650

Total cross country miles : 2975

Total cross country feet of ascent : 80957

Last night’s rest was just what the Dr (dokta) ordered and I was glad I could actually move my legs when I woke up! We had breakfast at 7am at a cute cafe down the street, expecting that we would soon be well on our way despite the 39 degree temperature. Not so. We experienced a “wardrobe malfunction” that delayed us by an hour: the overnight hotel laundry service failed to materialize (no I’m not lazy; there were no machines for guests to use themselves which was very annoying) but they did it for free first thing in the morning and gave us a discount on the room which was nice of them. So we were finally on our way just after 9am - a late start for most cyclists but the day’s ride was not pegged as being particularly arduous so we were ok and it was a tad warmer to boot.

What goes up must go down and omg the downhill run out of Julian was truly unbelievable, with incredible winding roads, steep gradients, and awesome views. Since we had to descend more than 4000 ft, the vistas just kept coming, one bend after another. I thoroughly recommend this ride to anyone who has the grit to pedal up to Julian first.

As we descended, it became much warmer and the land leveled out so the pedaling started and the cold weather gear was shed in stages. Soon we were in desert - think sand, dune buggies, RV parks, and possibly even Walter White wanna be’s.

I knew in advance that there were very few stores (for drinks and snacks) for at least 50 miles across the desert and I’d done my homework so I confidently led Matt down a turn-off to THE store about 1/2 mile down the road . We arrived and … it was closed. Google’s fault, not mine as I’d checked the hours carefully. Problem - Matt was out of liquids and I was running low and there were no open stores for at least 30 miles ahead of us.

We wandered over to a seemingly deserted bar so I walked around the back and miraculously found the owner in the yard. He immediately befriended us, wanted to know how he could help, and guided us into the empty building where he invited us to restock our water bottles. He even had Gatorade ! Evidently this is a well known destination for miles around and I’m sure it’s a hive of activity at other times but at that precise time, he literally saved us from a crisis. Shad at the Iron Door Bar in Ocotillo Wells. Remember that. He may help you too one day. You’ll surely find him if you are dune buggying in the Ocotillo Wells State Vehicular Recreation Area.

Now rehydrated and nourished from the energy snacks that we always carry with us, it was a straight shot across the desert heading east and then turning to the south and soon passing by Salton Sea on our left (Read about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salton_Sea) Also by this time we were 200 feet below sea level - amazing to think we were at a lower elevation than we’d been at in San Diego just yesterday.

About 12 miles from the end of the ride, my front wheel hit a small rock which immediately caused the tube to burst but without damaging the wheel or tire. I’m a pro at dealing with flats (lol) and, conveniently, this happened on a bridge so the concrete walls made a convenient work station and lean-to for both bikes. We were back on the road in about 10 mins.

The area became very green and agricultural as we neared our destination of Brawley; it’s pretty amazing to think of the diversity of landscapes that we experienced today. We stopped at a Subway to get some food in us and then checked in at the Best Western, all in the fine “Crossroads tradition” that I became very much accustomed to earlier this year. Dinner was at Inferno’s, one of very few restaurants in Brawley but it was very good and helped us fuel up for tomorrows 80-mile ride to Blythe for which we will have headwinds in the 15+ mph range. Not too happy about that.

Todays Relive is a “good un” !!

https://www.relive.cc/view/vmqXB3Zx5oO

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moteldogs · 2 years

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New Mexico, part 1: Border to Lordsburg

Journaling about walking in the desert on the Continental Divide Trail, under read more for courtesy (don’t say I never did nothing for ya).

Day 1

Mileage: ~8 miles

It’s hotter than hell in the New Mexico bootheel, so hot that when you pray to God all you’re likely to hear is distant heavenly laughter. On your own, kiddo.

The CDTC shuttle drops four of us off around 9:30 am at the southern terminus, 10 feet away from the Mexican border. It’s a rough road into the terminus monument and riding shotgun, I barely keep my stomach where it belongs. We take a group picture at the monument, chitchat with some southbound hikers who just finished, and say goodbye to the shuttle driver’s dog Cookie. I’m the second one to step out onto the trail, and within 50 paces I’m hurling in the dirt. Car sickness catching up with me after all. I finish upchucking, kick some sand over the evidence, and keep it trucking. Pretty sure nobody saw. I better not end up getting a trail name based off my bright orange puke (sweet potato fries, you betray me).

I walk with a guy from Seattle named Blue Steel for awhile and we make decent conversation, but part ways when I stop for a couple minutes to mix some electrolyte powder in one of my water bottles, in hopes of counteracting the epic puke fest from earlier.

The day drags on towards noon and gets even hotter. The sun beats down. It’s all cactuses and creosote and the occasional prickly alien-looking ocotillo, almost no shade to be found. I watch Blue Steel’s shiny reflective hiking umbrella and bright blue backpack (name origin? need to remember to ask about this if I ever catch up to him) bob up ahead. About 5 miles in I find myself crouching and dry heaving by the side of the trail, and I make an executive decision to find what shade I can and wait out the high noon heat.

Slithering down into a dry wash and under a creosote? mesquite? tree that grants sparse shade, I feel like shit. I throw my sleeping pad down onto a patch of shade just big enough for me to fit in curled up, and promptly crawl away to puke. On hands and knees under the blazing sun, watching my watery vomit (pink this time, from the Pedialyte powder) trickle into the sand. I crawl back to my sleeping pad and lay on my belly, head on my arms, and puke some more until I’m just dry heaving. The sand sucks up my hurl, any liquid it can get. Lesson one for me: you can’t afford to be picky out here.

My head pounds. This could be very, very bad. I think back to my EMT and Wilderness First Responder classes. Heat exhaustion can lead to heat stroke, which will kill you by cooking your brain inside your skull and denaturing the proteins in your body. Was vomiting a sign of heat exhaustion? I’m pretty sure it is. Then again, I was sick to my stomach last night, and this morning on the shuttle ride in. I assumed it was nerves and car sickness respectively, but maybe I caught a stomach bug somewhere. Still very, very bad — puking is dehydrating as it is, and with the sweating I’ve been doing and the scarcity of water out here, I can’t afford to waste fluids by splattering them on my sneakers. The mantra I learned as an 8 year old pops into my head — 3 weeks without food, 3 days without water. If I can’t keep enough water down to stay hydrated, and if I can’t get well enough to walk to the next water, this could kill me.

I pull myself together enough to drape my tent fly over the branches above me, adding a little extra shade. I take a few cautious sips of water and almost immediately bring them back up. Motherfucker. It’s 8.6 miles to the access road and the first water cache. The shuttle driver will be back tomorrow morning. I can hitch a ride with him back to town, I just have to keep it together until dusk, when it’ll be cool enough to start walking again. With nothing else to do, I doze fitfully in the heat.

I wake up around 2 pm, sweaty and sticky. I force myself to get up to take a leak. I expect to hurl again from the motion as I stand up, but I actually feel okay. Hallelujah.

Returning to my sleeping pad and curling up to read a book on my phone, I still feel okay. I make myself drink a tiny sip of water and immediately get nauseous, but I decide that even if it comes up, I’ll just swallow that motherfucker right back down. Like the dirt, I can’t afford to be picky. After 10 minutes I’m okay, so I take another sip and go back to my book. 10 minutes later, another. And on like this until 4 pm. No upchuck yet. It’s even starting to feel a little cooler outside. Glory be, yadda yadda. I might make it through this without running back to town with my tail between my legs.

A lone vulture soars overhead. I say fuck you pal in my best Brooklyn dockworker voice, but the bird doesn’t seem to be here for me anyways.

I haul myself out of the wash at 7:30 pm, after keeping down 2 liters of water and even some food. The sun is going down. The air is cool and the walking’s easy, powered by the high of knowing I can be killed, only not today. The lights of Mexico behind me, Orion’s Belt above me, and a good solid trail under my feet.

Day 2

Mileage: 19 mi

I walked by headlamp for a few hours last night, then cowboy camped after getting too tired to navigate. Up at 5 am and walking. I make it to the first water cache and fill my bottles. The couple who started with me, Rachel and Rainbird, are there too and throughout the day we leapfrog past each other.

I’d been planning to sleep early in a shady wash I saw on the drive in, but I make it there at 9 am. The day’s still young and I don’t want to lay down and sleep now. I want to make it off this roadwalking section, which means I have 10 miles still to go. And I need to do at least 20 miles a day to make it back to Lordsburg in 4 days. I keep walking.

Around eleven the heat is intense. I should be going to ground right about now, but there’s no shade to be found. At least I’m not nauseous. I keep walking.

12:30 — I sit down to put on sunscreen and tape the blisters on my feet. The next water cache is only a mile away, but a comment on Farout says there’s no shade there until 4 miles later, under a tree that’s up a hill. The sun beats down. Highs of 92 today. The heat’s only going to get worse the rest of the afternoon. 5 more miles of totally exposed walking is not going to do anything good for me. Christ, just one patch of shade.

I keep walking. About a quarter mile off the trail is a stand of promisingly big acacia trees. The ground is covered in thorny plants and dry cow pies, but under one tree is just enough bare dirt for me to lay in. I hang my tent fly over the branches to give the tree’s sparse shade a hand. It’s still hotter than hell, but at least I’m not hurling and at least the cow pies don’t smell. I drink my gross electrolytes (orange this time!) and wait for dusk to come.

Haven’t been eating much, which is maybe a little concerning. I think the heat messes with my appetite. Walking at night, I actually got hungry and sat down a couple times for a snack. Still, not enough calories in for the work I’ve been doing.

5:40 pm. Had to move spots with the sun. Circled around to the other side of the tree when my phone briefly quit holding a charge from the heat. I used to think I didn’t get lonely but now I know that’s not true, and also being lonely sucks. I miss my dad and I miss sleeping in the car while he drove, and I hate that I have to be a grownup and deal with my own shit. It’s hot out here and I’m scared and I’m trying to be tough, but I just want my dad to come pick me up and give me a hug and tell me it’s okay. Probably I’m tired and hungry right now and that’s why this is happening in my brain, but I just want a hug. I don’t want to be alone in the desert anymore. I want to be safe and held and not have to worry about anything. I finally fall asleep, fitfully for an hour or so.

Leave the shade tree around 8 pm. The sun’s going down. I sob most of the way to the second water cache, so hard it brings me to my knees in the dirt. I miss my dad.

Make camp sooner than I’d planned. I’m tired, bone-deep emotional exhaustion that usually comes from being hungry or sleep deprived. I decide to set up my tent instead of cowboy camping, which adds at least a half hour to the bedtime process. The sand is too shallow to set any stakes, so I guy-line everything instead. I prefer cowboy camping, especially when the weather’s beautiful like now, but it’s this tent’s maiden voyage and I figure I should get adept at setting it up before I have to do it in the rain.

With the tent set up, I crawl inside, strip down to my boxers, and shovel food into my mouth while horizontal.

Day 3

Mileage: 22 mi

I’m on the trail again later than I should be, around 7. It’s about 15 miles to the shade tree I’m aiming for, so I’ll be racing the sun today.

After packing up my tent, I take a second to wash my face of the epic amounts of blood crusted on from the nosebleed I had in the middle of the night. I took some ibuprofen yesterday for the blisters, so that combined with the dry air probably caused the nosebleed. My feet feel a lot better, though. I was barefoot in my tent all last night, which I think helped ease the blisters. I retaped them before setting out today anyways.

The heat doesn’t bother me too much today. Either I’m better hydrated or I’m getting acclimated. Probably both.

I see a snake laying on the trail, and am jumping away from it before my brain has even processed what it is. Like a horse with a garden hose. I haven’t lived in a place with dangerous snakes since I was 6 years old, but somewhere in the back of my brain, evolution has hardwired SNAKE BAD SCARY into me. Guess I’m a descendant of people who didn’t get killed by snakebites. Sweet.

There’s trail magic near a junction, under a big shady tree. Gatorade in a cooler (the ice is melted into water, but the drinks are still cold!), fun-sized candy, and gallons on gallons of water. I sit under the tree in the wind and shade and feel good.

I don’t quite make it to the siesta tree I was aiming for, but by 2 pm I’ve done 14 miles, the sun’s getting too hot, and FarOut says there’s 3.8 miles still to go to that particular tree. I settle in under a different tree next to a wide dry wash.

An hour later, I notice there’s a snake coiled around the base of the tree. I pack up my shit and set off to find a different tree.

I leave my second siesta tree at 6, having had a pretty ungood siesta. Too hot, not enough shade. Slept for about an hour, which did something weird to my contacts. My vision’s blurry and it takes me a half hour to find the trail again.

The sun is setting as I crest a ridge. Pink and orange, and I start to cry again. I miss my dad. I miss my mama and I wish she were still alive. I miss my little brother and I wish I’d been there for him these last few years. I sit down right there on the trail and sob while eating Oreos. I can’t remember the last time I cried like this, let alone the last time I cried twice in two days.

It occurs to me that between the nosebleed, the walking in the heat, and my apparently regularly scheduled sunset sobbing, I’ve already poured the trifecta of blood, sweat, and tears into this trail.

The Oreos help. I think I was hungry. With my blood sugar raised, I keep walking into the night. The stars come out and I make Cache 3. Fresh water, hallelujah. I aim to do 5 more miles before bed, but that doesn’t happen. I’m very tired and my feet are starting to hurt in a way that’s less blister, more tendon twinges. I’m in trouble if I fuck up my feet, so I spend a frustrating 20 minutes putting my tent up in the wind. (I think about giving up and cowboy camping, but I’ve seen a whole lot of bigass spiders around this section and if I wake up to a huge hairy spider crawling on me I may simply never recover.) Once it’s up, it’s surprisingly solid for a structure supported by trekking poles in high gusts, but Jesus H., getting it set up in those conditions is the worst.

In bed, finally. Contacts out, clothes off, feet sore, still munching on my Oreos. Exhausted. Time to sleep. Goodnight.

Day 4

Mileage: 20 miles

I sleep in a little, waking up at 6 instead of 5. I figure I’ll do 10 miles in the day and then 10 miles at night. That’ll leave me with 16 miles to get to town tomorrow. Really my goal is to find any decent siesta tree so I can take a real good nap.

Once I work the soreness out, the walking’s easy. There’s a strong breeze and I’m in a good mood. The backs of my legs get covered in the dust I kick up.

The tendon twinge comes back eventually. It’s symmetrical on both sides, running on the outside of the bridge, back along the heel, and up to the calf. My blisters are symmetrical too — on the ball of my foot right below my big toe and second toe, and one on the side of each second toe. I wonder if I’m compensating for the blister pain by walking differently, thus fucking up other parts of my feet. I start walking on the blisters deliberately, which on the bright side distracts me from every other pain in my body.

I get to a siesta tree about 10 miles in, around 1 pm, and promptly have another, bigger nosebleed. I now have blood spattered all over me, which is a little gross but makes me feel kinda cool. It’s a good tree, here. No snakes. Some kind of small skull laying in the sand, though. I listen to Jeff Davis County Blues on repeat with my hat over my eyes.

At 5:30 I’m off and walking again. I make the next water cache in half an hour and cross the highway. The wild grass is pale and glowing, the sun burning low in the sky. The powerlines look like crosses.

I find scattered pile after pile of cattle bones, which is cool but a little unnerving. Seeing all the sunbleached bones everywhere is like a constant reminder of the desert’s ruthlessness. In sixty miles I haven’t seen a single natural source of water. There are water caches for hikers, and solar wells for cattle (that hikers also use), and that’s it. You make it through this with human-made ingenuity and the grace of the desert alone. It’s frightening, and peaceful at the same time.

Right when the sun goes down, I start feeling a sunburn I got on the backs of my calves earlier. It’s bad, so bad that it hurts to walk. I roll up my pant legs to keep friction off the burns, take probably too much ibuprofen, and keep going. The night is cool and I feel okay.

I walk until 11 pm, when the trail meanders listlessly across cow paths and open fields with almost no signage, and I’m too tired to keep finding the path. I set up my tent in record time and toss and turn trying to find a position that doesn’t hurt my sunburned legs. Another nosebleed. Town tomorrow.

Day 5

Mileage: 17 miles

Slept good last night, despite the pain. I’m determined to make it to town tonight come hell or high water. My legs don’t even hurt that bad anymore, but I take a couple ibuprofen preemptively for the swelling.

Midday finds me in a valley with shady junipers and oaks every few miles, an old tractor parked up by the side of the trail, and a solar well with clean flowing water in the middle of a cattle pen. I fill up my bottles and pass Rachel and Rainbird, rearranging their stuff in the shade of the tractor.

I’ve decided to walk through the heat of the day in order to get to town in time to get a room, so I’m drinking water and pounding electrolytes like nobody’s business. It’s not too bad — it’s probably only in the high 80s, and windy too. The thought of A/C and the world’s biggest beef burrito push me forward.

I make the final water cache around noon, then push up the final hill (really more like eight rolling hills that get progressively higher) while singing old country songs to myself. Is anybody goin’ to San Antone…

Some of my older blisters have gone down, but I have new ones on my heels now, and one of them pops in my sock a few miles out of town. I stop for a break and tape up my feet, sitting in the sun on top a hill. I can see the big rigs flying down the highway below, right through town.

I make the final push and get in right around 5, walking down past sheetmetal trailers, old square body Chevys and fifth-gen Fords, all in shades of oranges and pinks. Sunbleached roofs and heat waves coming off the asphalt. I thank the desert for letting me pass.

I get a motel room, flop down on the bed, call my girlfriend and then my dad. Later I walk to the Mexican place next door and emerge triumphant with TWO beef burritos. I eat, take a shower, wash my clothes in the sink, and fall asleep with the TV on. Bliss.

I’ll take a zero day tomorrow (stay in town, no hiking) to do some errands, let my feet heal up, and figure out where I’m going next. And also probably watch a lot of reruns on TV. It feels good to be drifting on the move again.

#.txt #cdt 22

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lizardtracks · 2 years

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Barefoot

A monsoon sunset, Red Rock, Arizona

8/20/22: The Sonoran and Chihuahuan Deserts are in a rain-shadow environment. Our house seems to be in a micro rain-shadow of its own. Our last two monsoons have been wet. At our house, though, not much rain has fallen. Until yesterday. Now the earth is wet enough to remind me that I once wrote this:

The desert is no place to be barefoot. Not this desert anyway. Tarantulas, scorpions, vinegaroons, cone-nosed kissing beetles, centipedes, velvet ants: every creeping thing is poisonous. And those are just the invertebrates. Thirteen of the thirty-two rattlesnake species that inhabit the Americas call Arizona home. That includes the Mojave rattler, Crotalus scutulatus. Smaller than the western diamondback, the Mojave delivers a venom payload with toxicity second to none in its genus. And they are always agitated. Then there is our poisonous lizard, the Gila monster. No one in Arizona has died of a Gila monster bite in a century. Maybe because their bite is not a sudden strike. Instead, they clamp onto your foot with their tiny, putrid, infected teeth. Then, grinding through your skin to the bone, release their load of toxins. If you're ever lucky enough to find one, that is.

If those don't send you scurrying to the medicine cabinet, or the emergency room, we have an assortment of spiny plants. Sharp sticks or leaves or pads drop from teddy bear cholla, prickly pear, agave, sotol, and ocotillo. And then there is my nemesis: puncture vine. Tribulus terrestris is an invasive ground-hugging exotic. Its shiny green vines and cheerful yellow flowers give no hint of seeds sharp and hard enough to puncture a tire. Common names for the drought-loving caltrop include devil's weed, devil's thorn, and devil's eyelash. Here we call them goat heads. Don't wonder if you've ever stepped on its mature ovule. You'll know.

All that is still not enough to keep this hillbilly in shoes. But the hot, dry dirt is. High in clay, and low in oxygen, it is inorganic as well as alkaline. That alone is unpleasant enough. But it compacts into near mineral hardness. To top it off, the surface is strewn with sharp tiny bits of volcanic rock, a friable, decomposed granite. In short, it is unpleasant to the touch. To the sole.

So the typical desert dweller wears Chacos or Tevas. The cholos and hipsters and frat boys scuffle around in shower sandals and white socks. The hippie chicks strap on Birkenstocks. Hardly anybody who hasn't been out in the desert seeking psilocybin goes barefoot.

And then the rains come.

Sometime in July, the planetary weather gears click into a new pattern. Over the preceding months, a subtropical ridge has shifted north from Mexico. Now it forms a sweeping curve from the Rio Grande's Big Bend to the Sangre de Christo Range in southern Colorado. This creates a large high-pressure system over the midwest, turning their weather hot and dry. That rotation sweeps air off the Gulf of Mexico up across the Chihuahuan Desert into Arizona. Flow from the Pacific joins it, bringing humidity to the desert. Then, a few other things must come together: The midwest must be drying out from a wet spring. Rain must have fallen further south along that Gulf flow. The snowpack in the western Rockies must have, for the most part, evaporated. A low-pressure system must develop over the Four Corners area. And the Pacific cannot be too cool. When that all comes together huge convective storms visit our desert. This is seasonal. A true monsoon.

The rising heat picks up the low-level moisture sending vapor upward. Clouds form, appearing at first as wisps over the mountains. Then the chubascos build in earnest. Thunderheads rise to 40,000 feet, from a base of huge, roiling clouds. Lightning sends jagged, crackling veins of electricity skyward. The thunderheads collapse, sending down drenching, bone-chilling rainfall. Those downdrafts create updrafts, generating more storms, some over the valley now. This goes on all afternoon, storm clouds and storms, rising and falling, now here, now there. And sometimes, if you are lucky, where you are.

This happens once or twice and now the dirt under your feet takes on a different feel. It cools. It breaths. It feels looser, more organic.

It is time to go barefoot.

My time is evenings after work. While I wait for a bed of coals to heat on the grill, I nurse a beer and sit with my feet in the dirt. My bare feet in the wet dirt create a connection. That connection follows a sinuous line back through time and across a continent. My mind won't pick up any particular temporal threads, or settle in one place. But my jangled nerves are soothed by a cosmic vibe where boys in dungarees wade in ponds or relax in shaded woods. A word rises up through my brain like a bubble in a creek: languid. I give in to a state of languor.

 If the chicken takes long enough to cook I read. After the most recent rain, I started again through a cheap PDF copy of Pablo Neruda. Neruda wrote in one poem:

"I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees."

You cannot ignore a line of poetry like that--so charged with passion, hope, sensuality, and an almost unbearable gentleness. So I didn't ignore it: I sought more Pablo. He rewarded me with a line he must have written about my own lover:

"As if you were on fire from within / The moon lives in the lining of your skin."

And tonight because... Because the air carries a light warmth. Because the mesquite trees are pregnant with beans, the weight pulling their boughs down. Because the clouds are scudding away to make room for the sunset. Because my mind relaxes enough to feel it, he rewards me with this:

  "I do not love you as if you were salt-rose, or topaz,   or the arrow of carnations the fire shoots off.   I love you as certain dark things are to be loved,   in secret, between the shadow and the soul.   I love you as the plant that never blooms   but carries in itself the light of hidden flowers;   thanks to your love for a certain solid fragrance,   risen from the earth, lives darkly in my body.   I love you without knowing how, or when, or from where.   I love you straightforwardly, without complexities or pride;   so I love you because I know no other way   than this: where I do not exist, nor you,   so close that your hand on my chest is my hand,   so close that your eyes close as I fall asleep."

At some point, the chicken stops spitting fat into the coals. As the smoke clears, the sun sails below the burned-out porphyritic hills. It paints the clouds, mixing salmon and peachblow with other colors too delicate to name. Then comes a pause, like a pendulum at the top of its swing. The sun reels in its masterpiece. The colors fade. The din of cicadas tapers off. The air shifts from warm to the slightest hint of cool, as if a child unwrapped a popsicle in the next yard. The pendulum starts down, pushing the day into darkness.

I turn off the e-reader screen and collect the chicken from the grille. Tomorrow will be a tangle of frayed nerves, the metronome of the clock, the rush of the deadline. But tonight I am barefoot. 

#barefoot #monsoon #rain #desert #Sonoran Desert #arizona

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