18.) The Tip Top of Texas.....Aortic Dissections Can Suck It.....

I get up early to make sure I have enough daylight. Don’t wanna be stuck up there in the dark. From the trailhead I can see several different peaks. I’m not sure which one my trail leads to, but none of them are close.  I’m sick of worrying about this hike and just plow ahead into the foothills of the Guadeloupe Mountains.

     After a half mile up the gravelly slope I’m already exhausted.  “Slow and steady” I think to myself and continue after a short rest.  The trail evolves from gravel to rocks and eventually to boulders but always climbing….always. I tire and rest often.  The trail clings to the edges of the mountain. I can touch a sheer rock face with my right hand and hang my left out over a growing abyss the path being only 3 or 4 feet wide in some places.

     I’m out of breath for nearly the entire hike never sure if i’m going to make it to the top. I push myself up along the switchbacks eventually climbing up out of sparse grassland and into a pine forest where snow still hides in the shadows.  Then I’m above the tree line on rocky wind scoured ridges.  The trail is clearly marked but I still come across a couple who has taken a wrong turn somewhere, obviously I’m still in Texas. Pressing forward I leave them behind and hoist myself to the top of another ridge where finally I see the metal pyramid marking the peak, 8,749 feet. 

     

     A feeling I can’t quite place rushes over me. It’s that tingle behind your eyes and in your sinuses, that ‘I need to sneeze 
but can’t’ sort of feeling.  Is it pride? Am I proud of myself?  I can’t be sure, I’m not familiar with the feeling but I DID just accomplish something I wasn’t sure I could do. I DID just climb a fucking mountain.  There were times in Texas when it was questionable if I would ever wake up again, if I would ever walk again, if I would have full use of my limbs again, and today I climbed a fucking mountain! Aortic dissections can suck it because I’m on the tip top of Texas right now and I feel unstoppable.  It’s a good feeling and I soak in as much of it as I can along with the incredible 360 degree views.  I’m above everything looking down even on El Capitan. I can see forever, my line of sight obstructed only by the curvature of the earth.  I take in the view from every possible direction and after a rest and a snack I head back down.

     Maybe I’m flying high from making it to the top or finding my third wind or something but down seems infinitely easier than up. You can’t even compare the two.  You do use different muscles though, and by the time I make it back to the trailhead all of me is sore.  It took me 4 hours to go up and 2.5 to come down.  Most of the rangers said this hike would take 6-8 hours and I'm happy to be towards the lower end of the spectrum.  All and all it was a pretty successful day and a sense of accomplishment is the best lullaby there is.

17.) The Shit Gets Really Close to the Fan......Close Encounters.....Climbing Out....

The next morning takes me around the Smith Spring loop trail.  The trail named for the spring and the spring named for the family who discovered it and settled the area.  The 3 mile trail leads me past three separate springs and a restored Smith homestead. Water.... I’ve already seen signs of its awesome destructive power.  Up rooted trees and boulders rubbed smooth.  But heres another. Giver of life, the source of everything. It really is incredible.  

After my hike I cruise down the highway a bit to find a place to make lunch.  The first sign I pass is for the charmingly named Rattlesnake Springs and Slaughter Canyon picnic area.  I take the exit while thinking someone in the marketing department should have gotten fired when they came up with that one.  I can see right away that this road leads nowhere for miles but I’m enjoying the wide openness of my surroundings too much to have any real reservations.  I press further down the dirt track deeper into the middle of Someplace.  It takes some time but eventually it snakes along the edge of a large fenced grove spotted with a few trees and picnic tables.  I continue passed, looking for a place to turn around when the road ends abruptly at an old, weather worn gate clearly posted with “GOV VEHICLES ONLY”.  Creepy.  I immediately think about how close I am to the New Mexico border then: New Mexico!?….Roswell!….Aliens!?…GOVT VEHICLES ONLY?!?!  Holy shit it’s some sort of cover up!  That’s why the place has such a horrible name! They don’t want anyone coming back here! What have I stumbled into!?

I turn around and drive back to the picnic tables.  The gate and sign are well out of sight from here but the low angle of light and the long shadows it creates, plus the stillness and eerie serenity of this place are all working together to freak me the fuck out.    

 
The crunch of tires on gravel makes me look up from my cooking just in time for an SUV to whip around a distant corner and into view.  It slows clumsily when I assume the driver has noticed me but never stops completely.  It crawls along….a snails pace…down the road and towards me.  I stir my dinner and pretend not to be watching the car. Now it’s close enough for me to see it has government plates.  Holy Shit! It’s going down! Right now! Some kinda crazy alien shit! You'll never be seen again! Prepare to become a statistic! All this in my head while I try to look not terrified.  My heart pounding.  I can see the driver now.  Dark sunglasses. Tight fitting, heavily starched uniform with official looking paraphernalia on the chest. My face hot, blood pumping with adrenaline.  He knows I’m looking at him and I get a single nod as I watch him slowly roll passed. Holding my breath.  A green stripe runs the length of the vehicles side. Underneath are printed the words ‘Border Patrol’. I let my breath out slowly and realize the South is worried about a different kinda aliens then I am.

I wake up early the next morning at the rest stop.  I really fit pretty well in the back of the jeep and can get a decent nights rest sleeping back there.  As I fix breakfast I go over todays plan in my head.  Guadalupe Peak, the highest point in the state of Texas and my most challenging hike yet.  8.5 miles round trip with a 3000 foot elevation gain.  I came up with the plan a few days ago; had to warm up to the idea.  I’m still not sure if I can make it and the memory of that first hike fiasco is still fresh in my mind.  For two days, while wandering shorter, less demanding trails, Guadalupe Peak looms in the background, taunting me. I keep telling myself I’ll regret it if i don't give it a shot.  Plus it’d be a decent metaphor.  For the most part living in Texas was a low point for me.  The circumstances that put me here were not the best and the events that occurred while I was here were the worst of my life.  So what better way to move on from those events and this state than from it’s highest point.  To climb from the depths of the lowest lows and up to the highest point this place has to offer, then climb out. And don’t look back….or something like that…Anyway, the day of the hike is here and I’m no more convinced that I can I do it, but I will try.

16.) Breaking Borders...Supply Exceeds Demand....Desert Winds...

     Excitement levels returned to astronomical levels shortly after due to my very first real life tumble weed sighting.  It’s the perfect word..tumble.  That’s precisely what they do.  Up and down they flow along the rolling hills like a skiff on the waves.  From the drivers seat, they appear cartoonish.  Most likely because that’s the only place I’ve had experience with them; on Saturday mornings in Yosemite Sam cartoons.  It may seem mundane, but it’s another new experience added to the list.  Their novelty wears thin however, after a fourth one bounces off the hood of the jeep.  They quickly become a nuisance and I grow tired of them.  Fifteen minuets later the excitement returns in full force after I see a real good one…

I make a short stop at the McDonald Observatory. While the surrounding landscape is beautiful, the observatory itself is basically a kids museum featuring outer space and broken exhibits.  The scene strikes me as strangely appropriate. The stars are the limit but the budget is the reality.  It really is comical.  I need not exaggerate.  Film strips zip along on rickety projectors. Stress cracks are clearly visible in the screen. Buttons and levers are broken or missing all together.  “At least they’re trying!” I think, “But sometimes supply exceeds demand.”

Hilltop McDonald Observatory

    I cook a dinner of chicken and rice at a rest stop and study the map.  I look to the horizon in a direction I believe to be west and the mountains that separate land from sky.  “That’s the Guadalupe mountains right there. I’m getting close.” I look back to the map which names several other mountain ranges in the area.  The Baylor Mountains, the Delaware Mountains.  I realize I have no idea which ones I'm looking at and wonder who decides where one range ends and another begins.  Places on a map are so well defined.  Packaged up inside visible lines and established borders. The ending of THIS place, the beginning of THAT place.  In real life it’s a gradual change like the seasons, where one slowly melts into the next. A change is only apparent after the fact.  The place you are now looks and feels different than the place you used to be but the actual border was probably crossed a long time ago.  No use wasting time going back looking for it now, you’ve been there already.  Better to explore this new place, where you are now.  Borders are imaginary anyway and in nearly all cases, arbitrary….geographically speaking.

I have this experience the following morning as what MUST be the Guadalupe Mountains climbs out of the horizon in front of me.  Nothing but a strip of asphalt and endless desert in my rearview.  No borders in sight, but I’m definitely somewhere new.  I can see El Capitan in the distance. The world’s largest marine fossil reef.  Millions of years ago this whole area was a tropical sea.  Slowly the water evaporated leaving the reef free to be covered by sediment.  Eventually intense pressure and erosion uncovered the reef and forced it back to the earth’s surface leaving the massive rock formation that dominates the landscape.  From here it’s all sharp corners and jagged edges but the sides look flat and smooth as if it’s growing straight up out of the desert floor.

The visitors center is nestled in the foothills with the actual mountains as a not too distant backdrop. I’ve already been spoiled by the enormity of Big Bend.  This park appears tiny to me but beautiful nonetheless. I spend the rest of the day wandering the trails through the foothills.  The Pinery Trail takes me past the remnants of a stone wall that once was part of the Butterfield Stage Stop.  The Butterfield Overland Mail route predates the pony express and could get your letter from San Francisco to St. Louis in a short 25 days.  No internet? No texting? And people survived? Oh the horror!  

The one and only campground around is in the park and only 8 bucks a night.  Sounds pretty sweet but upon closer inspection your 8 dollars gets you a concrete slab to pitch your tent  on and a concrete picnic table.  In this wind the table would only serve as a platform for your belongings to blow away from so I opt to save my 8 bucks and crash at the rest stop up the road.   The rest stop building helps in abating some of the wind and each picnic table here has a light and it’s own wind break making cooking dinner here very agreeable.  The sky darkens to purple across the highway as I take a few more steps toward perfecting sleeping in the jeep.

View from my dinner table