Maverick Philosopher

Work is being completed on a Silly Mountain trail system. I can cover most of these trails in a two to three hour jaunt right out my door. The saguaro on the left sports six — count 'em six — arms, though one suffers from partial erectile dysfunction. It's one old saguaro as is its vis-à-vis on the other side of the trail depicted in the second shot. If you enlarge the second photo you should be able to see the half moon.

Spring is here in the Sonoran desert, the days are warm and balmy, the nights refreshingly cool, the breezes scented with the first outprickings of wildflowers. All manner of critter is joyful, especially us varmints of the two-legged kind.

A bandanna is his ascot and scree collars are his spats. With a staff as his cane, a steep and rocky trail is his promenade. A beat-to-hell, sweat-stained, sun-bleached, Aussie-style canvas job serves as his top hat. Thus accoutred, he sallies forth into the high society of rock and lizard, sun and scorpion, there to see, but not be seen. His calling cards he leaves in the form of bootprints legible only to the coyote and the javelina. His game is Desert Solitaire and his drink water, the philosopher's drink.

I started the month right with a walk out and back on the Lost Goldmine Trail out of the Cloudview Trailhead. Commenced hiking at 5:20 and finished up at 9:40. At a two mile per hour pace, I covered about eight miles. The highs this week are in the triple digits — today it is supposed to reach 115 degrees Fahrenheit — but it's that famous dry heat, dry, that is, until the monsoon season begins. But if one starts early, one avoids the high. It was maybe only 100 when I finished Monday's hike, and at the start, perhaps 85. Here are some shots. Look hard and you will see a baby rattlesnake coiled and rattling, good to go. (Left-click on images to enlarge.) The only varmint of the two-legged kind out there that day is the one depicted.

This is a scene from Monday morning's hike. I made a loop in the Goldfield Mountains commencing at 5:10 and finishing at 10:30. It astonishes me that there are able-bodied people who cannot appreciate the joy of movement in nature. I don't expect people to share my pleasure in solo wilderness adventures. Most people are incorrigibly social: it's as if they feel their ontological status diminished when on their own. With me it is the other way around. But I can easily understand how many would feel differently about this.

I once proposed to a woman that she and her husband accompany me and my wife on a little hike. She reacted as if I had proposed that she have all her teeth extracted without benefit of anaesthetic. She seemed shocked that anyone would suggest such a thing. Finally she said, "Well, maybe, if there's a destination."

A destination? Each footfall, each handhold, each bracing breath of cold mountain air is the destination. Did John Muir have a destination when he roamed the Range of Light? Was Henry Thoreau trying to get somewhere during his crosscountry rambles?

Modern man, a busy little hustler, doesn't know how to live. Surrounded by beauty, he is yet oblivious to it, rushing to his destination. If one does not have the time to meditate on the moonset, celebrate the sunrise, or marvel at a stately Saguaro standing sentinel on a distant ridgeline, it is a serious question whether one is alive in any human sense at all.

You may end up at your destination all right — in a box, never having lived.

In our litigious society, made so in no small measure by a surfeit of shysters, we are awash in disclaimers. Some of these have a tongue-in-cheek quality. I gave an example the other day. A reader from Northern Virginia points us to this disclaimer, an even better example, the final paragraph of which follows:

By entering the Preserve, you are agreeing that we owe you no duty of care or any other duty. We promise you nothing. We do not and will not even try to keep the premises safe for any purpose. The premises are not safe for any purpose. This is no joke. We won't even try to warn you about any dangerous or hazardous condition, whether we know about it or not. If we do decide to warn you about something, that doesn't mean we will try to warn you about anything else. If we do make an effort to fix an unsafe condition, we may not try to correct any others, and we may make matters worse! We and our employees or agents may do things that are unwise and dangerous. Sorry, we're not responsible. We may give you bad advice. Don't listen to us. In short, ENTER AND USE THE PRESERVE AT YOUR OWN RISK. And have fun!

You will enjoy the whole thing.

In a society made litigious by an excess of lawyers, the need for various CYA maneuvers is correspondingly great. One such is the disclaimer. I particularly enjoy the disclaimers found in well-written hiking books. Rare is the hiking book that doesn't have one these days. The following is from Ted Tenny, Goldfield Mountain Hikes, p. 4:

The risks of desert hiking include, but are not limited to: heatstroke, heat exhaustion, heat prostration, heat cramps, sunburn, dehydration, flash floods, drowning, freezing, hypothermia, getting lost, getting stranded after dark, falling, tripping, being stung, clawed or bitten by venomous or non-venomous creatures, being scratched or stuck by thorny plants, being struck by lightning, falling rocks, natural or artificial objects falling from the sky, or a comet colliding with the Earth.

Still up for a hike?

In one of these shots you can see a trail. That is the Peralta trail as it climbs to Fremont Saddle, named after John C. Fremont. The shot was taken from high up on the Bluff Spring Trail before the ankle-busting descent of the stretch of trail known to the locals (on the ascent) as Heart Attack hill. I actually prefer going up this sucker, taxing the ticker but saving the knees, but for the Heraclitean hiker possessed of the requisite equanimity, the way up and the way down are the same. (Fragment 60)

You think you're a tough guy? Check this out. Hat tip: Dennis M.

What we need are mens sana in corpore sano endurance events, combined physical-mental events. I have a nice hiking route in mind for anyone willing to accept my challenge: it's a 7-8 hour circumperambulation of Weaver's Needle in the Superstition Wilderness with 2850 feet of elevation gain. We follow that up with a four hour chess match consisting of two G/60 games. We then repair to a local Mexican dive, Tres Banderas, perhaps, for cheap chow and a generous cerveza con tequila libation.

When I hike and backpack, I almost always go alone. As Thoreau says somewhere in his journal, “I have no walks to throw away on company.” Sounds rather unfriendly, doesn’t it? But look at it this way. Nature is modest, and won’t expose her charms to just anyone, least of all to the merely social animal with his endless yap, yap, yapping, about noth, noth, nothing. I have hiked with guys who, if you hike for five hours, will talk for five hours, and if for ten hours, then for ten hours.

Apparently, such loquacious individuals apperceive nature as mere backdrop to the social. Nature for them is but a stage upon which they play their parts and instantiate their social roles, roles into which they quite delusively empty their very being. A strange kenosis, this self-emptying into the social role. I will have none of it.

What do they have in common? I thought about them near the end of Friday morning's hike. I am an uphill specialist. I love the upgrade, the pull, gravity's testing of legs and lungs, the depth of breath, the honest sweat. The downclimb is less to my liking. Fearing a fall, I am too cautious to go with the flow.

So my mind turned to Till Eulenspiegel, described by Theodor Reik as follows:

German folklore tells many tales of the peculiar behavior of the foolish yet clever lad Till Eulenspiegel. This rogue used to feel dejected on his wanderings whenever he walked downhill striding easily, but he seemed very cheerful when he had to climb uphill laboriously. His explanation of his behavior was that in going downhill he could not help thinking of the effort and toil involved in climbing the next hill. While engaged in the toil of climbing he anticipated and enjoyed in his imagination the approach of his downhill stroll.

The "foolish yet clever lad" put me in mind of Heraclitus the Obscure of Ephesus. Philosophically considered, it matters not at all whether one is climbing or descending. "The way up and the way down are the same."

There is the beauty, the silence, the peace, the nonsocial reality of nature, but there is also the shift away from the mind back to the sweating, toiling body on earth. Exercise in an artificial environment is not the same, nor is 'windshield tourism.' You should take your Nature straight, not mediated through glass.

I arrived a little before sunrise and signed the hiker's log. In the metal box in which it is kept, someone had left a message:

If I see any of you bottomfeeders on the trail leaving trash or cigarette butts, I'll break your fingers one by one. Now have a nice day!

My sentiments exactly, except perhaps for the inapt 'bottomfeeder' metaphor. Said sentiments expressed more elegantly in Pack It In/Pack It Out.

All in all, an excellent leisurely six hour, ten mile hike commencing at sunrise and ending a little shy of high noon. The trails were overgrown, so my bare legs got bloodied a bit by the catclaw and other flora, but that is part of the wilderness 'experience.' Best of all, I saw not one varmint of the two-legged kind. But I did spy a Sonoran horny toad and spent some time marvelling at his detailed camouflage -- his color was almost exactly that of the adjoining rock and soil -- and how he held himself completely motionless even as I gently prodded him with my walking stick. As I retreated, he remained motionless and did not scurry off, probably in part because of the ants he was eyeing for his lunch.

"The way up and the way down are the same." This Heraclitean affront to the discursive intellect points to the truth beyond duality.

There are old mountaineers and bold mountaineers. But there are no old bold mountaineers.

This morning I hiked for five and a half hours through rugged country verifying once again that the strenuous life is best by test.

As a 'Zone Man,' I am well aware of the dangers of dehydration and heat stroke especially when out for an infernal hike. Although a U.S. gallon of water weighs 8 1/3 lbs, those are pounds I don't leave home without. Some will be surprised to learn that even with water there can be too much of a good thing. Thales take note. See here. The danger is increased if you drink pure water. Since my reverse osmosis water purifier delivers water that is around 95% pure, I add electrolyte replacements such as Gookinaid, the thinking man's drink, to my water.

It began at 5:20 AM at first light, that phase of dawn at which one can just make out the trail and its hazards. Sunrise was about forty minutes off. If one hopes to survive a desert hike in August, especially in environs as rugged and unforgiving as the Superstition Wilderness, one does well to start at first light and be finished by high noon. I once finished such a hike around two or three in the afternoon with the distinct impression that I had pushed the envelope about as far as possible.

It is a curious sensation to feel oneself being slowly roasted in five different ways.

There is first of all the air temperature. Today's for example was 112 degrees Fahrenheit at its high. At any temperature above 90 the human body starts to absorb heat through the skin.

Then there is conduction. One gains heat by contact with the ground, rocks, ledges, anything one touches while hiking or climbing if the object is hotter than 90 degrees.

In third place comes convection. Hot air blows against the skin and imparts heat to the body. Even a slight breeze at 112 degrees has quite an effect.

Fourth, there is solar radiation. Once up, Old Sol beats down unmercifully, which is why I wear a long-sleeved white shirt and a broad-brimmed hat. My legs remain exposed, though, since hiking in long pants is unbearably confining.

Finally, there is metabolism. The internal organs and the muscles at work generate body heat.

I finished at 11:10 with the day's high of 112 degrees Fahrnheit fast approaching. I was well-roasted and dehydrated, but very satisfied with the five hours and fifty minutes I spent hiking over washed-out, overgrown, ankle-busting trails.

I concur with Colin Fletcher: Hiking is "a delectable madness, very good for sanity, and I recommend it with passion." (The Complete Walker III, p. 3)

. . . the Sierra should be called not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years spent in the heart of it, rejoicing and wondering, bathing in its glorious floods of light, seeing the sunbursts of morning among the icy peaks, the noonday radiance on the trees and rocks and snow, the flush of the alpenglow, and a thousand dashing waterfalls with their marvelous abundance of irised spray, it still seems to me above all others the Range of Light, the most divinely beautiful of all the mountain-chains I have ever seen.

The High Sierra . . . is the best place in the world for the practice of mountains. By the practice of mountains, I am referring to to hiking, cross-country rambling, peak bagging, rock climbing, ice climbing and ski touring.

One of my goals in life is to go around the world three times and visit every mountain range twice. But whenever I have wandered other mountains, I have been homesick for the High Sierra. I am a hopeless romantic, and therefore my opinions cannot be regarded as objective. But how can I be objective while discussing the mountains that I love? (p. 9)