The last few weeks have been difficult. I’m not 100% sure why, but something happened two days ago that really sort of broke things.
My book proof came in. Rangers of the Rift, Season 1, professionally printed and bound between glossy covers. My first book baby.
I should have been delighted, but instead, as I studied the “product” for imperfections, deciding which ones I could live with and which I’d need to excise, deciding if the printer was ultimately at fault for some of those imperfections and wondering whether I needed to source a different printer—I felt nothing but disappointment and exhaustion.
My writing partner said she’s heard of other authors who face a similar feeling, holding their first book in their hands.
“I think it’s sort of like postpartum depression,” she said. “You work so hard on something and it just doesn’t bring the joy you were hoping for. You just feel tired.”
So when my partner asked if I wanted to come on a 13-mile, off-trail bushwack to explore what used to be a trail 30+ years ago and has now been reclaimed by the wild—”How hard will it be?” I asked. “An epic,” he warned, then added, “I don’t want to have to get rescued.”—I said yes.
“You’ll be up for it?”
“Yes.”
I would be up for it. I had to be.
Because I needed to feel something other than that post–book-birthing sadness.
—————
Knagee Trail to Davis Spring Trail to Butterfly to Incinerator Ridge
Classification: Adventure Hike (Epic)
In the first two miles, we lost 2000 ft. But we were on mostly decent, if seldom-used, trail. We saw what remained of a collapsed mine, the ruins of an ancient cabin (originally maybe 25 sq ft). We spotted bear scat and tracks, evaded poison ivy.
Then we hit the exposed ridge where the trail had been swallowed by wilderness: native grasses and thickets of agave and yuccas, the muscle-y red sprawl of manzanita, miles of blisteringly hot high desert and blue sky.
We picked up the trail again only during the descent off the ridge where it was so steep that the original layout could still be traced: a bit of bench here, the faint chevron of a switchback there.
Down into the canyon? Or up over the next hill?
We would have to go down eventually to pick up the return line, supposedly where the four canyons converged. But it looked so thick in the canyon bottom, we chose the ridge.
No signal here, on the backside of the mountain. We could see, far into the distance, the familiar cliff formations where we often climb: The Boneyard, The Headstones, Ridgeline, and Sky Valley. Beyond that but invisible lay the highway. And somewhere beyond, the city.
But city was anathema to this place.
A large black bear, fur gleaming in the glaring sun, awaited us on the hill. It watched from its lookout along a slope of vertiginous talus, large chunks of granite appearing like cobblestones from 100 yards away.
Usually, you don’t approach a bear. But today, with nowhere to go but onward, the bear was on our line—
—so we trudged toward it, calling loudly, hoping it would run.
All through the next mile of rough ground, we thrashed and yelled and hollered. Be as large and loud as possible when facing a black bear. When facing a grizzly bear…pray.
Now six miles in, we descended into the remote limestone canyon. The water curved gracefully, carving rock in sensuous swoops and scoops. We boulder-hopped another .five miles, avoiding poison ivy, desperate not to soak our feet. The 6-mile return trip back, all uphill, through near unspoiled wilderness would be disastrous with wet, blister-inducing socks.
View this post on Instagram
Some hundred years ago, a rancher must have found their way to this canyon from the grassy Tucson valley, still 4000 ft below us; for where the canyons joined, signs of cattle abounded. The cattle had carved up our target sidehill and made the seventh mile an easier trek.
Still, there was plenty of bear sign, too, and we had many off-road miles to go. And it was getting on into late afternoon.
There were platforms of oak-shaded understory, hillsides covered in blooming scarlet hedgehogs and fiery penstemon, unidentifiable bugs, birds, and whitetail deer. We were in their country, and it felt good to feel so small.
We found the derelict corral just past sunset. Long lengths of rusted barbed wire twisted around a vertically moored branches and upright stakes, sometimes wrapped around still-living trees, such that the bark had long since grown around the wire.
A labyrinthine chute must have once conducted the cattle into the corral, which was now the residence of a large bear, judging by the tracks. We followed the maze, the whisper of wind through the shadows and the creak of tree limbs seeming in tribute to the ranchers and animals that once used this corral, long gone.
We were still on route, according to the GPS. But now, after leaving the corral, the sunlight fading and the hillside completely devoid of anything remotely resembling a trail, the going became more difficult.
Our bodies were fatiguing. We’d been hiking for 8 hours. We should be seeing signs of the Davis Spring trail according to the map, but all we saw was wilderness.
Dusk descended. The canyon frogs bleated out their mating chorus. The forest grew still except for our clamor: our thrashing and panting and too-cheerful conversation. We longed for a trail.
But there was none. We followed deer routes, crisscrossing hillsides, sometimes far too steeply. But it was better than trying to blaze a path through the bed of slippery oak leaves and fallen trees, low-hanging juniper, and snarls of acacia and cat’s claw.
Mile ten was a slow and brutal uphill battle fought often on all fours—and not always intentionally so. The deer trails dried up. We watched a honeyed fingernail moon appear low on the horizon and set. Then there was blackness but for the glow of our headlamps.
It had been dark for almost two hours when we reached the ocean of ceanothus fendleri, often called buck brush or deer brier. This tall, sprawling, close-growing bush is passable but armed with spines and will leave the traveler covered in head-to-toe hairline abrasions.
And of course, this is where I had to see the glowing feline eyes, two round moons reflecting in my headlamp’s light, fixed on us. They belonged not to a deer, for those are on either side of the head. And they were too big for a coyote or bobcat, and the behavior was too mulish and curious to be a bear, for the creature didn’t flee.
Instead, it slunk nearer. And watched.
How long had the mountain lion been stalking us? It was as near as thirty feet now and was undeterred by my yelling and pointing.
My partner found us both pointed clubs and told me to keep it blinded, its eyes in the light of my headlamp, as he continued navigating us through the Fendler’s ceanothus by GPS alone.
The wind picked up.
We thrashed another 45 minutes, those eyes tracking us, the flood of adrenaline erasing the ache of sore muscles.
I told him afterward, “Without that cat on our tail, I would’ve had a hard time getting through that last section.”
Sometimes, fear is useful.
But it is a strange feeling to know that you are prey.
Finally, we hit Davis Spring trail, what’s left of it before it goes to complete obliteration.
We had left three miles of brutal uphill and 2000 ft to climb. But heck, it was all on trail. Now was just the grind and fatigue and pulsing ache of exertion. All we needed was the will to stick it out.
Still, I kept looking over my shoulder and sweeping my light low around the surrounding scrub, looking for those saucer eyes in the dark.
Davis turned to Butterfly turned to Incinerator. And then we were back and triumphant, glad to see the car again after 12+ long hours.
View this post on Instagram
***
Somehow, the raw physicality of this hike aligned all the hard-edged, kaleidoscopic pieces of my dreams for my author career. Being curious, being determined, being lost, being resigned, being broken down by the wilderness, being prey, being found, being safe. I decided: This is what living looks like.
And perhaps, holding that book in my hand, I had only just reached the beginning of the descent off the sun-blasted ridge: miles of untrod bearatory ahead and who knows if there’ll even be a trail when I reach the other side.
***
“Bearatory?” my partner repeated archly, pausing his fight with an oak to turn and look at me.
“Yeah, like bear territory. It’s clever.”
His lips pursed, but then he yelled, “Yo, bear!”
“Hi, bear!” I echoed. “Sorry we’re in your bearatory! We’re just going! On our way out! Don’t eat us!”
“Bearatory,” I heard him mutter, his smile audible.
————————
Thanks for going with me on this journey.
Stay safe and sane and happy,
~River
P.S. Episode 5 (Advanced Review Copy) are available free to subscribers for FOUR MORE DAYS. Hit the FREE books link above.
