Days 6 & 7. Mar 6 & 7. Mile 73.3 to Mile 90.1, and Mile 90.1 to Mile 108.7 (Sahaurita Rd & Hway 83)

Days 6 & 7. Monday Mar 6 & Tuesday Mar 7. Mile 73.3 to Mile 90.1, and Mile 90.1 to Mile 108.7 (Sahaurita Rd & Hway 83). Monday walked 16.8 miles on trail (plus 2 miles on another accidental off-trail adventure), Tuesday walked 18.6 miles. 

Dear Trail Friends,

Monday I realized that my battery recharger was not charging my iPhone. I turned the phone off, intending to navigate by map and compass (since I had only a 50% charge left). 

Alas, I could not make sense of the maps and trail signs without help from my gps app. But I began a strict regime - no music, no photos, no turning off "airplane mode" (to search for coverage in order to access email, texts, phone calls), no blogging. I turned power to "low power mode" and only turned on gps when I absolutely needed help finding the trail. I revved up my plans (yet again) to arrive Tuesday instead of Wednesday. It worked - I was able to preserve the battery so I had gps support when I needed it - and also the trail was much more clearly marked and easy to follow in this section. 

The two almost photo-free days were exceptionally lovely. Being without music, photos and the chance to blog or connect electronically was both challenging and strangely pleasurable. When the beauty of the trail moved me, knowing I could not share it or remember it, I paused a moment to drink the beauty in. I was keenly aware of transience and solitude, and very moved by the moment of beauty. 

I did break down once today (Tuesday - when I could see I would make it safely to my next resupply) and take a photo. So I can't claim complete photo sobriety. I was loving today's hike - very much a desert hike with lots of cactus of different kinds, rolling hills, distant mountains. Photo 1 is that expansiveness. 

 

Photo 2  is from yesterday (Monday) morning. I was walking through the tall grass and noticing how it was illuminated by morning sun. And thinking, I suppose, of the journey from darkness into light. 

 

Yesterday, shortly after the recharging problem, I pinched my finger in a gate I was closing. I was astounded by the amount of blood and a little nonplussed trying to unpack my pack and get my emergency kit and find bandages while blood was pouring out. Once there was pressure on the wound, it was fine. Didn't even hurt. 

But it got me thinking about gates and their meaning as part of my pilgrimage. So many gates on this trail, so many different mechanisms to open and close them. Some of the mechanisms are easy, some difficult, some almost impossible. Always the need to both open the gate and close it behind me. 

Thinking of gates as thresholds between one place and another. And thinking about America now -  "the wall," borders, boundaries in general.

 I found myself recalling being a graduate student in microbiology and studying how simple one-cell organisms regulate what can come into the cell. I realized that cell boundaries - walls - were the prerequisite for life. That the cella needed to be selectively permeable - to let in what was nourishing to the cell, and keep out what was toxic. 

Cooperation came later - multicellular organisms, procreation and nurturance, families, communities. But the first step (what made life possible) was the cell membrane - the wall. The power to selectively include and exclude. All living organisms have to both include and exclude. 

Interestingly, in Ruth Benedict's report of the Ribbon Falls myth, the people from the fourth world of darkness who emerged into sunlight didn't have mouths or anuses. They could not take in and they could not expel, until they entered the sunlit world. 

I look at the cactuses and their amazing long needles and think how in this desperately dry desert world their succulent bodies would be quickly devoured by other thirsty creatures. Their ability to store water would be more a liability than an asset. 

I walk and meditate on those American people who want a wall - to keep out the illegal immigrants they see as toxic to their country and way of life - and the American people who want to offer hospitality to immigrants and refugees who they (we) see as vulnerable human beings - and also people who, like our own ancestors, have much to contribute. 

I think some of us want to protect fetuses (even at the expense of the mother, even with no one to care for them and not enough resources to go around) and some of us feel that way about immigrants and refugees. 

Somehow as I hike I feel more detached. Maybe accepting that life involves some failures of compassion and caring for others, some walls, some exclusions, some harm - whether that be the spiny needles of the cactus, the wall at the border, or abortion. 

And maybe accepting how hard it is for people on different sides of these issues to see and accept each other. 

Why is the refugee sacred to me, and the fetus to someone else? Why do I identify with the scarcity of resources to raise a child while someone else identifies with a vanishing way of life in which physical labor could earn a family a living (well, it still can in plumbing, electricity, carpentry, but let's face it, it is a vanishing way of life). When educated liberals say to workers who have lost their way of life "let them go back to school and learn IT" aren't we almost committing the mythical Marie Antoinette "let them eat cake" remark - demonstrating our inability to understand the context and meaning of their need?

Why is it that I can walk through desert under a hot sun and think about these things without the pressure to be sure I am right, or to fix the world if it is wrong. 

I hope these reflections are not offensive to you. We live in a nation and world so filled with pain and conflict. But when I walk in beauty and think about the suffering from the perspective of thewalking  among the cactuses and hills and mountains, the suffering and disagreements just seem like "what is." 

Like the long curved needles on some of the cactuses that lead me to think they are the ones called cat claws. 

Anyway I walked and made it to Hway 83. Trail angel Sandy's house guests Gerry and Deb picked me up and made me a wonderful pork and potato and cauliflower dinner. 

On the trail I met a man named Mike who had to helicoptered off the trail some years ago with an acute spinal issue. After surgery and rehab he is back on the trail. He had some nerve damage making walking and balance more difficult. And I thought I was pretty brave with my age-related diminishing balance to be negotiating some of these steep downhills with so many loose rocks. Human beings are truly amazing. 

If time (in the human sense) is winding down, I do want to pause and drink in the beauty. Not only of the natural world but of our complex, contradiction-riddled species. 

Enough. The trail was lovely and I am so happy to be here. Alone and with you. Tomorrow is a rest day.