Written by Amanda Lanker
The zone at the base of Arizona’s Superstition Mountains is a special place for me. I spent a lot of solitary time there my first winter on the road two years ago: Convalescing when I threw my back out. Feeling lonely on New Year’s Eve alone in the back of my truck. Realizing that I’d been on guard against boyfriends like my father but that my dysfunctional romantic relationships were patterned after my terrible relationship with my mother. Etc. I called this all “cactus therapy” and it’s when I fell in love with the desert.
The Supes seemed like an obvious choice for the December backpacking trip adventure my companion Tim and I were planning. I wanted to show him why I return to Arizona each winter, knowing that his initial reaction upon arrival here was the desire to flee to a more familiar landscape. So, I planned a four-day route, talked to friends who’ve backpacked there, and called the ranger’s office to confirm the availability of water, and that no trails were closed. I was so excited to take him out there, and I wanted it to go smoothly.
Our First Steps in the Superstition Mountains
With bellies full of breakfast burritos and donuts, we hiked the first five miles quickly and easily. Then we entered the Woodbury Fire area and the pace dropped. The trail became overgrown with catclaw. And then it entirely disappeared. We discovered a malevolent thorny vine that wrapped around our limbs, pulled our skin, and made me pray for jumping cholla instead. Contrary to reports, not everything was flowing and we were running low on water. I was ready to drink puddles but Tim pressed on ahead of me to locate a better source as I waited in the brambles. “I found it! It’s creepy and scary,” he shouted to where I was pouting: neither of us expected a cave. We filled up and slept at the first viable campsite. We were exhausted despite having travelled less than eight miles in the Superstition Mountains.
In the morning I awoke to something dripping on my face. We hadn’t been able to stake the fly, and having spent 11 hours inside the tent, condensation had soaked everything.
“Did it rain?” asked Tim.
“No, it’s coming from inside. You breathe too much,” I kindly informed him.
“I breathe too much? I dreamt that I couldn’t breathe. It was weird, I realized that I was going to die and I accepted this and died. Then I woke up.”
“You get it. The desert.”
It wasn’t the right time to philosophize about mortality, so I didn’t explain myself. Already neither of us wanted to get up: it was cold and sharp outside and we were on the rock island of safety. We discussed turning around. We knew that it was unpleasant behind us. But the trail ahead could ease up, becoming less unpleasant. So, we chose to move forward. Tim and I made some headway before stopping for an hour-long breakfast. We gave up looking for the trail and walked along a wash. We had a lengthy lunch stop in the shade, followed almost immediately by another long break to dry our soggy gear in the diminishing sunlight.
Trudging Forward Through the Superstition Mountains
Many hours later, but only four miles away from the previous night’s campsite, we rerouted ourselves toward trails that people actually use. Along the way I found a greasy pool, described by Tim as “the worst water I’ve ever filtered.” We continued down the wash until we found a discernible trail again, and set up camp next to a creaking broken windmill before the rain started.
We woke up considerably less miserable to a stunning sky and the distinct smell of the desert after a full night of rain. We had discussed an alternate route through the Superstition Mountains to keep us out another night, but agreed to call it off over breakfast at the next trail intersection about an hour away. There Tim started boiling us water for coffee while I held my unopened freeze dried scramble and asked how he was feeling. He lives indoors these days. and said “When I’m home I just think about being out, and I’m already out here so maybe I should stay out.”
“I’m always out so it doesn’t matter to me.”
“But I can see the parking lot, is that my truck?”
“We were supposed to ignore the fact that the trailhead is 2.6 miles away. Anyhow, only ego is keeping me out.”
“Let’s go get Wendy’s.”
Heading Back to Civilization
The hike back was uneventful except for when Tim leapt into the air shrieking and waving his trekking poles like a maniac. He wasn’t impaled by cacti and I didn’t see a rattler. “I don’t like creepy crawly things,” he explained, indicating a venomous but unthreatening Arizona blond tarantula on the trail. I couldn’t help but laugh, and he joined me, just as we’d laughed while tangled up in seemingly spiteful flora and as we watched both of our water filters begin to fail.
It was not the adventure I had attempted to curate for Tim, but the desert always has a lesson for me. This time, I was reminded that her raw beauty cannot be revealed without also experiencing that everything within either stings, stabs, stinks, or sticks. Ancient prophets and modern mystics were drawn to the desert for the same reasons other people hate it: the stark openness of the desert presents an honest space with few distractions from ourselves, and our mortality.
Experiencing Extremes in the Desert
If this sounds like hyperbole, think of the mountains. There is no shortage of ways to perish in the high country. But it’s easy to feel cared for by the universe when one has access to clean snow melt water, the animals are cute, and the trees offer shade. The desert offers no such suggestion of comfort: the water is sporadic and murky, there are venomous critters, and the plants make you bleed.
So I keep coming back, because I find it life affirming to be reminded to stay scrappy, and to be as steadfast as the saguaro that will outlive us.
As for Tim: maybe he gets it, maybe he doesn’t, but he’s walking the Sonoran desert again with me in January.
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