As has been my tradition for the past couple years, I took a week’s
vacation at the end of our program season to go visit Jack in the
backcountry. I was excited as this was an area of the park I had never
been to before, and I was not disappointed: emerging through the smoky
haze on the day I arrived at camp, their little tucked-away side canyon
truly was a slice of paradise.
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One of two bucks with massive racks that liked to browse on mule dung...
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With a lake above, a cascade running alongside the camp, forming pools
at bench after bench in all manner of breadth and depth, plenty of shade
trees, and a variety of wildlife and wildflowers, the spot really was a
treasure. Beyond it, gorgeous vistas cemented the deal. This may well
have won a place as my favorite (tied for favorite? hard to totally beat
out my long-time favorite) trail crew camp.
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A beautiful (but dry) cascade I passed along the hike in
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I wiled away the hours while Jack and the crew worked by reading “Beyond the Wall” by Edward Abbey, listening to “Anne of the Island” on audiobook, painting (just a little), assisting with random camp chores, and exploring the nooks and crannies of the place.
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Hard to see from this angle, but every bench of this cascade holds a pool of water, many big enough to be kiddie pools, some big enough to actually swim!
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I wandered up and down the stream, trying to catch fish (by hand) in remnant puddles and relocate them to still-active pools. I hiked over to the crew’s worksites to say ‘hello’, eat lunch, and generally just see what they were up to. I sat for long, drawn-out moments and pondered the passage of cloud and sunshine as monsoon weather drifted in and out of focus above the canyon walls.
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Getting up close & personal with some water flowing over a boulder
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The one thing I neglected to bring (and sorely missed) was a notebook of any kind. Maybe it was the Ed Abbey, maybe the poetical prose of L. G. Montgomery, maybe it was the setting, maybe it was the disconnect from work and media (social or otherwise), but my mind was overpopulated with colorful narration that was just dying to get onto a page. Alas, 98% of it did not. The 2% that did was distilled onto the back of a watercolor postcard that I sent to my mother with the outgoing mule train.
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Casey the Mule - she decided that she was going to take up the rear, no matter how much slower than her I was!
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On the weekend, when Jack and I finally had the better part of 48 hours to spend carefree, we hiked up to the lake (with the mules tagging along as far as the meadow below it) - an amazing thing geologically for the actual lake was shaped rather like a kidney bean with the cotyledon being a very nearly smooth shelf of rust-colored granite seldom more than 3-4 feet below the surface of the water. This meant that you could, by starting from the outside edge of this shelf, walk all the way to the center of the lake without getting wet above the belly button. Remarkable!
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Mother bear and cub (the latter of which actually tried to scare me - too cute!) on my hike out
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So much good food and good times were had, and I spent enough time close to the fire that when I washed my hair after returning home, the shower smelled of campfire! A sure sign that I have drunk my fullest of the backcountry summer scene. Hopefully I’ve soaked in enough to last me, as I’m now preparing to go on fire assignments and it will be good to have daydreams of alpine oases to retreat into when I need to fall asleep at the end of a long, 16-hour day.
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Forerunners of the afternoon monsoon
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Until next time!
