Zen & Ice Cream on the Arizona Trail

“It was the Wall itself that took his breath away. It loomed ahead, immense, glistening faintly in the half-light… It was too big, too cold, too implacable.” —George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

Part 1

The shuttle, The Wall, and Mt. Miller to Sunnyside Canyon

Our shuttler, who I will name Athena, didn’t look like a hiker. As it turned out, she wasn’t. She had stumbled across driving for thru-hikers when she Ubered someone from the Tucson airport, a young woman who was hiking the AZT.  Athena’s motherly instincts kicked in, and from that moment on she decided to take care of these people. Having a business where she was already a driver, she switched to driving hikers to and fro, and to delivering water to caches within a 200-ish mile range. Not all her driving is for hikers. She’s also a sort of long-distance Uber driver when the hiking season isn’t on, so shuttling was a natural retrofit to an already existing business.

Ice Cream and I, along with two Czechs, crammed into Athena’s small SUV. I rode bitch, being the shortest of all of us, and we all rode off into the morning dark towards the terminus.

We had casual conversation between us all, sort of mediated by me since I was sitting between everyone. One Czech had hiked to base camp at Annapurna, the second tallest peak in the Himalayas, as well as some of the 1000+ kilometer trails that ring the Czech Republic. Both Czechs were strong hikers, experienced, well researched and had quality gear.

Athena gave us the general rundown of the first few hundred miles, most of which we had already researched for ourselves, but she did ask us to list specifically how many gallons were in the roadside water caches on FarOut. This way she would know when to come to refill them again. All the water boxes were filled by trail angels. “Costco is probably getting tired of me buying all their water,” Athena told us. “But the hikers need it, so I get it.” She was sweet and mild mannered with a kind face.

She also told us that she prays each day for the death of Trump and Elon Musk. I told her that I had a couple of prayers already in line that were probably easier for God to answer, and that perhaps He would have time to help her with murder once He had finished granting my prayers.

She said, “Well, they don’t have to die. I just want them to leave the earth. Maybe they can fly away together on one of Musk’s rockets.”

After our brush with political discussion, which I avoid at all costs if possible, Athena announced that we were making a pitstop at a gas station. I was excited, having put myself on a coffee hiatus about a month prior. I allowed myself one this morning, and the gas station had those lovely bean grinder dispensers. As I dispensed my coffee, the Czechs approached wanting a picture, seeing as how strange American coffee is compared to European versions, which are essentially espressos. I made sure to pose my coffee well, being proud of our watery American brew. After a little shopping spree and restroom break we all crammed back in the SUV and headed out again.

Dawn was coming now, and we could see the landscape that we would be walking through for the first time, or at least since seeing it from the airport yesterday. Sparse, brown, dry, rocky. Another world compared to the Appalachian Trail, and far more rugged than the dry but gentle Meseta of the Camino Frances. I got the little bubble of excitement in my chest and gave Ice Cream and shoulder bump and a side eye. She grinned and put her head on my shoulder.

Athena began to describe various rock formations nearby. Not ones that we could see, but ones that could be found in the area. One she described as a baby elephant. Or, if you looked at it a different way, a pregnant hermaphrodite. At this point, we were getting close to the terminus, and we were going slower on winding roads. Athena was messing with her phone, trying to find pictures of these elephantine-hermaphroditic rock formations, and the car was weaving a little bit. I, having no seatbelt and sitting in the position which would launch me directly through the windshield should we crash, suggested that perhaps she could show us the pictures when we stopped. She found the picture, zoomed in and said, “There. There’s the penis.”

Indeed it was the penis, although smaller than I would have thought and definitely not circumcised. But what do I know about the penises of hermaphrodites. My contemplation of unusual combinations of human genetalia was interrupted by a familiar rumble in my bowels. “Are there restrooms at the trailhead?” I asked Athena.

“Oh, Good ones. Lots of room for a change of clothes inside.”

“Its not a change of clothes that I’m cooking,” I told her.

In answer, our little SUV climbed the last bit of the road to the parking lot and pulled in near the restrooms, which I visited with a little prayer of gratitude. When I came out everyone had finished unloading. Ice Cream was waiting by my pack while the Czechs were taking pictures of the sunrise. Athena handed me a fuel can, which she provided for a small fee, another one of her nice touches. We thanked her, and then she left again for Tucson to pick up another load of hikers. 

“Ready?” Ice Cream asked me. I shouldered my pack and we headed down to the wall together. Like Tyrion from Game of Thrones, I wanted to piss off of it, or at least piss on it. Not as a polical statement but as a life experience. 

The wall was less impressive than one might think. It seemed more a testament to photo ops than to national security. However, it was tall, twenty or thirty feet, made of rusty steel with gaps in it, not big enough for any but the thinnest imaginable human, if any, to pass through. But on either side of it, there was nothing but weak and wobbly barbed wire.

The AZT monument somehow found itself on Mexico’s side by a couple of feet. Naturally, since hikers want a different type of photo op, there is a hole in the barbed wire immediately next to the great wall where one can squeeze through, take their monument photos, and then head back up the trail until you find yourself back at the parking lot. Perhaps Mexicans don’t know about this little loophole, but it seems like it would be relativly easy to get some hiker gear and walk all the way to Utah without getting much attention from Border Patrol. 

From there, the hike begins in earnest, climbing steeply up Mt. Miller, which is six miles or so of strenuous hiking, somewhat reminiscent in grade to Mt. Lafayette in the Whites, but far more mild and without complex terrain.

The smart way to attack Miller would be to carry light water until the bathtub spring, which is named the Bathtub Spring because it is actually a bathtub. A real human-made bathtub. A mountain spring has been rigged to drip into a tub, which is full of clean, cold, mountain water. There is also ample space for hikers to camp around the spring.

Not being the kind of people who want to stick with the best plan, Ice Cream and I carried all the water we wanted from the beginning up the mountain and carried on all the way to Sunnyside Canyon, a little collection of tent pads and a fire ring under tree cover where we would camp for the night.

There were other hikers there, too. The Czechs, a triple crowner who would be a character in our hikes in the upcoming days, and a speedy-looking woman (you all know the look) who we would see in the logs a day or two ahead of us for weeks.

Our feet hurt when the sun went down, and sleep came easily. When we woke, it was cold. We later heard the bathtub spring had even grown a thin layer of ice that night. Ice Cream and I did our silly little pseudo-yoga stretches in the chill and headed off again toward Utah. 

All names in my blogs except my own and Ice Cream’s have been changed to preserve privacy unless I have been given explicit permission. Any resemblance to real people with these names or trail names is purely coincidental.