"Destiny" 30"x40" oil painting by Steve Alpert
Grand Canyon, June 1972. It was a hippy happening at the South Rim campgrounds. Along my hitchhiking trip I arrived with my two new buddies from U of Illinois I met at a campground in New Mexico, mentioned in the previous post on this blog. Tom was a young party hardy dude and his buddy, whose name now eludes me were doing the cross country thing, joining the legions of long hairs who took to the road that summer. We stayed in Las Vegas, New Mexico for a few days. They had a pal just home from Vietnam and the party was on. One night we went to a roadhouse honky-tonk out in the desert. Tom offered a challenge to his army pal; bankroll the shots of tequila and Tom would down one a minute for fifteen minutes. Seemed like a good idea at the time. Tom got to number thirteen and then barely made it outside to purge himself of the poison. A good time was had by all. Funny, the more we drank, the better the band got.
Couple of days later, the Grand Canyon. About fifty fellow travelers of all shapes and sizes equipped with substances of all shapes and sizes gravitated to this one sprawling campsite. The fire burned for days and nights, singing and reveling. The smells of the Douglas Firs mixed with smoke from burning Pinion Pine and mesquite were intoxicating enough. But of course, there were other intoxicants of the day.
A few days in, a group headed out to a shangri-la spot somewhere in the depths of the canyon. A big party deep in the recesses of a remote area of the Grand Canyon replete with crystal clear travertine pools, as turquoise as the Caribbean. Sounded very good. I was invited. I said I would join them on the second day. How do you get there, I asked. Oh, go down Hermit’s trail and at the bottom there’s a fork in the path, go left and it will take you there. Being nineteen I didn’t write anything down, just had a visual picture in my mind, such as it was. I would find it. Solo.
The next day I managed a ride to the trailhead of Hermit’s Trail, a few miles west of the campground along the South Rim road. I had my fifty-pound pack with me. First but not last mistake.
Down the steep and treacherous switchbacks for one mile to land on the first plateau. A dome of deep smacking blue sky, cloudless. Sun moving to the top, early summer heat radiating off the rocks. Two hours in I reach a fresh water wellhead under an overhang of red rock, naturally hollowed out by eons of wind. A well-worn fireplace next to it. A good stopping place for a lunch of whatever I had. It was quiet out there, God was it quiet. Like you had the best headphones on kind of quiet. All you could hear was quiet. No wind. The sun was really working now, heat waves blurring the narrow trail heading north toward the Colorado, still another few miles down.
Picked up the heavy pack and off I trudged looking for the fork in the trail. Another hour or two passes and I am noticing how really alone I was, really deep in this canyon. No fork, yet. Arms and legs now covered in sweat and thin films of desert. A fork! Make a left. They did say a left, didn’t they?
I took the left; only this left trail was going into a narrowing canyon. Beautiful young Aspens all along shimmering in the sunshine, sending it’s light signals back to the sun. Caves up on the cliffs. I know this is not the correct way. And then I heard it. A sound I will remember forever.
It was an animal, a big animal communicating to me that it was not pleased with my visit to its very own turf. It was the roar of a big cat. I’m not talking a Maine Coon kitty cat; I’m talking Mountain Lion, Puma, or some damn thing like that. I never saw the beast and I chose not to investigate further but to take Leo up on his offer the get the hell out of Dodge.
Decision time. High noon. Sun beating down. Three choices. Continue on, try to find the trail that some stoned out hippie told me about? Good luck. Backtrack and spend the night at the well, alone. That seemed like a tough call. There’s that big kitty cat out there, even though I knew the critter was probably more frightened of me than me of him. Did I really want to be thinking about that through a night alone a mile away from Whiskers? Or, bag it — head up and out of the canyon, more than arduous at best, more like Herculean given the heat, fatigue and that freaking pack that seemed to weigh one hundred pounds and would have to haul it up one mile up those steep switchbacks in the late afternoon sun with the canyon heated enough to bake bread — oh Man! And my depleted supply of water in my canteen. There’s the real clincher.
Interesting lesson. To be so incredibly unprepared to just wander into a very wild place figuring I would just wing it. To be young and stupid!
Stay tuned…
