Hiking Heaven; Hiking Hell
© 1987 by Steven K. Roberts
Nomadic Research Labs
June, 1987 - Calf Creek (Garfield County, Utah)
This is hard-core wilderness. The Escalante River area is a
violent, convoluted land, a twisted marriage of desert and mountain
with much infidelity on both sides. Madness happens here; the
land kills the unwary without remorse, yet delights the eye with so
many absurd contrasts that there never develops a sense of
figure-ground. This is far away from everywhere, hard to get to, and not the way to cross Utah if you're
in a hurry.
At Calf Creek, which feeds the Escalante, there is a campground with 12
sites and a high-pressure spigot of cold clear water. We claimed
the last spot, set up our porta-condo, and went for a short walk.
A 5-mile round trip trail led to the falls, but we had only two hours
until dark.
A few minutes along the tame path, carrying only my cane, I had that
same craving that besets one accustomed to spicy huevos rancheros when
confronted with unadulterated grits. A ravine beckoned from the
left, smothered in a chunky salsa of twisted rock, rolled boulders, and
cactus -- angling up a few hundred feet to the base of stark white
tortilla cliffs. ¿Por
que no? I veered off with Maggie following, picking my way
around the obstacles until they became so closely packed that I began
springing from each to the next, shoe sounds sandy on soft rock, echoes
from the cliff touching my words with portent as I pointed out the
sights to my suntanned woman.
Cliff base. Drawn by the pheromones of naked rock, I felt my way
to a mighty crack and entered -- climbing higher, sweaty, rising into
the body of earth and sensing, somewhere ahead, the exultation of a
peak. As the passion rose, Maggie called to me... perhaps jealous.
"I don't want to go up there."
"OK. Why don't you go around the other way? I'll climb to
the top, walk along the edge, and find a way down to meet you... it'll
be more of an adventure."
Hesitantly, with a worried face and a glance upward, she agreed --
already looking small against the massive impassive folds of untamed
land. She nodded, took a step away from me, then turned and said,
"I love you."
"I love you too," I called softly, my voice carrying along the great
concave wall. For a moment our eyes locked. But my beard,
dripping sweat, tickled hot sandstone; Maggie waved and walked away. I
looked up, had a brief thought about madness, and climbed. And
climbed.
The ravine grew treacherous, with steep slopes of loose rock, boulders
wedged precariously overhead by their corners, blind alleys of slick
stone. I slipped once, cursed, scratched a knee and hung panting
to a scraggle of rasty plant life... then pressed on. "I'm not
coming down this way, that's
for sure," I muttered, inching my way up, up, much further than it
looked from below.
Thirsty, already regretting my foolishness in hiking empty-handed, I
reached the top... or the illusion of same. Through wrinkles of
cactus/sage/sand/rock I climbed on, quickly now, until at last I was on
something approaching a level plain of rocky sage. Ahead of me, the sun
was turning colorful in preparation for the evening's sky show.
Then I turned around.
Everything looked the same. A maze of ravines and gulleys
radiated from my feet, the land so complex that there was hardly a clue
to the location of the cliff that had seemed so grand and imposing from
below. No matter. I wanted a different route down
anyway. Thinking of Maggie, I set out for the most obvious
promontory -- a journey of some 15 minutes that was complicated by
unexpected obstacles of vertical stone, deep creases, and impenetrable
thickets of something hard and manzanita-like.
At the edge, dizzy, I looked down a few hundred feet over a
boulder-strewn slope, and there, far away, was tiny Maggie -- a speck
of pink and brown like a cool Baskin-Robbins sundae against a backdrop
of designer desert colors. I whistled the Morse code MV, "dahdah didididah" and she looked
up, returned the call, and for a moment all was sweet:
communication, the sight of my lady in this wild land, bas-relief rock
in the low-angle light of evening. "I'll head over that way," I
called, echoing. Squinting a half-diopter of correction, I could
just catch her wave.
What had appeared from below as a simple cliff edge, however, was
anything but. Progress parallel to the distant thread of Calf
Creek was an exhausting process of climbing back up to level desert,
picking a new crenelation to explore, and struggling down through
another series of obstacles to a promising descent... only to find,
after many minutes and another 10 cc's of sweat, that a sheer
bone-shattering drop blocked the way. The first time, it only
made me nervous.
The second time, it terrified me.
Sunset was nearing. My mouth was as dry as the harsh land
underfoot. I found a wide crease in the ground that had to lead all the way down and
plunged into it, slipping on slickrock, tossing the cane down and
retrieving it, descending parallel vertical walls with fingers and
toes, crawling through thorns. Water. I needed water. This
had to go down. "Dahdah
didididah!" I whistled, stumbling too noisily to listen for a
response. Deep crack, wiggling through, dropping hard a few feet
with the dim awareness that this could be a trap. Sliding in
sand, this has to do it,
leaping a mini-abyss and approaching the knee of a gulley.
I looked down with a moan at a vertical drop of some 30 feet. Oh
no... "Maggie!" I called, not sure what I'd say if she answered.
"Maggie!" I listened, probed with my ears; all was silence but
for a faraway truck and the distant goddamn laughter of carefree
campers. So close...
Back up. Scared now, the light fading. The places I had
descended with the aid of gravity were places I would never consider
climbing; I threw myself at them and clung spiderlike to cracks and
stones, clawing, panting whimpers dry and painful as the air
chilled. My shirt stank. Topside again, deeply aware of
being in trouble. Now what? I called again, found my way to
an unfamiliar promontory, waved my shirt, called for Maggie, called for
anyone, cried -- for the first time in my life -- for help. No
response. Just the same goddamn laughter from distant people with
plenty of water and nearby sleeping bags.
Delirium hits fast. I staggered the desert, none of it familiar,
the sunset colors deep and beautiful like a female assasin in a James
Bond movie. Just me and my cane and an injured ankle; no water, no ham
radio, no flashlight, not even a way to make a fire. Cold nights
out here in high desert... Maggie would be frightened by now, probably
thinking about search parties and helicopters. I tried another
crevasse, ripping my skin uncaring, losing the rubber cane tip, running
clink clink stumble curse over rock only to teeter on another brink,
turn, struggle back up by feel and trick-light, thinking of narrow flat
places where I could sleep, thirst, die unseen in the desert like a
sick animal -- an idiot hiker without a water bottle.
High country again. Running now, gotta find a footprint, how the
hell did I get up here? Deer trails, a sun-bleached antler.
Nothing familiar; the twisted rock leering at me, wanting my
moisture. I licked my sweat to ease the mouth, stabbed toes
deeply with cactus needles, pushed on into twilight ignoring
pain. "Maggie!" Goddamn laughter down there, gotta get to
it, gotta find my woman, need a hug, need a gallon of water, need to
stay alive.
"Foots!" I cried suddenly. "Foots!" In the sand was an
impression of my tattered Avocet cycling shoe, unmistakable, aiming at
me. Tracking in a frenzy like a hungry dog after a wounded
rabbit, I ran tripping through the cactus, crying "foots" in exhausted
glee at each shoeprint. On slick rock I lost the trail, but it
had to be here somewhere; I sniffed around in the near dark and picked
a route, last chance, plunging into the chute, sliding, shouting,
riding a mini-landslide, jumping into blackness on the dubious advice
of echo-less shouts. The cactus needles in my foot, the cuts, the
throat -- none mattered, for this one was going down, down, one bad
jump and an awkward fall into rocks, nothing broken, limping through
sand, a tree branch in my face... the road!
Clinking the cane on sweet asphalt I race-walked in parched ecstasy to
the campsite, number 12. Maggie. Running now, dropping
cane, sweaty hug, trembling, a beer drained in seconds, more hugs,
tears, stories. Under the cold spigot I lay, inhaling sweet
water; the cliffs a dim sinister shape against starlit sky; the thought
of me still up there absurd, frightening.
And sleep, oh the sleep. Warm Maggie comforting, skin the
opposite of rock, moisture intoxicating in the sweet sweet night.
So close...
This was an excerpt from the book-length collection Miles with Maggie, available in our
PDF Store for
$5.95.