Highway 35 leads me through wide open ranch land broken only by red rock boulders. Massive, rounded things protruding form the the ground like a zit ready to pop. I imagine a peaceful life here with long slow days of moving cattle, mending fences, or just surveying the land. It seems nice. Then almost immediately a wall of pine trees. Standing straight and tall like soldiers on guard. The road cuts deep into the forest; a roofless green corridor without visible end.
Eventually I come out of the woods high above Bear Canyon Lake. Longer than it is wide and surrounded by steep grassy hills. The trees sparse but constant. It’s a post card image. Memories of past family vacations when life was simpler and nothing could possibly better than a day at or on the lake.
I stop in the town of Gila today to pick up some boxes from my Mom. Dried food stuffs, snacks, even some candy. I lucked out pretty hard on the whole Parents front. Also in the box was my renewed driver license. The old one was set to expire on my birthday. So now I’m good till 2020.
So far the best choice I've made is not using my GPS to get from one place to the next. I’m enjoying immensely, the meanderings in between. These back roads are magical. They differ in only style and scope of magnificence. Rolling hills as far as the eye can see set on a backdrop of forest laden mountain sides. It’d be tough to be in a bad mood if you can just go out side and look at all this. Highway 180.
I consult my map to find my next destination and stumble upon the Baldera Volcano and Ice Cave. Fire and ice. Two extremes, sounds cool. Plus I’ve never seen a volcano or and ice cave, let’s do this. I hike a mile or so up the trail that winds around the outside to the volcano. Active 10,000 years ago, now the whole area is covered with porous lava rock called cinders. I get to the top and look down into the crater. 1400 feet wide and 800 feet deep it’s humbling. I shake my head in awe. Imagine the power, enough to blow off the top of an entire mountain! Incredible. The ice cave is a little bit of a let down, probably because I was spoiled by the Carlsbad Caverns. You can’t venture into the cave itself, it’s inaccessible. A wooden staircase leads to a viewing platform above the mouth of the cave. It’s shaped sort of like an amphitheater so I can see all the way to the back of it from here. What makes it interesting is the cave floor. Its made entirely of ice and covered in algae. The way the sunlight refracts through the ice gives the cave floor a neon green hue. I’ve never seen anything like it.
In the little visitors center where I pay my small fee. Janice and her husband tell me they own the surrounding 4000 acres. 15 volcanos on their property, 29 total in the area. A slender but hardened women, in her 60’s I’m guessing. She tells me that her great grandpa built the first school here in town. He bought the land and it was eventually inherited by her grandmother. Grandma’s husband tried to sell some of the land by forging her signature. When she got word of this she sweet talked a neighbor for a ride to her lawyer. He tells her that what her husband is trying to do is illegal so she swiftly returned home and kick the man out.
Another story follows about a distant cousin. As a young boy her cousin was kidnapped by the Navajo Indians and later traded to the Apache. He lived with them for years, grew up within their tribe. They accepted him as their own, he even had an Apache foster mother. One night the Apache kidnapped a young girl and brought her to the tribe. Janice’s cousin snuck out with a horse and returned the girl to her parents. He stayed in town too but would always venture back to the tribe to visit his Apache mother.
When her grandma died Janice’s parents inherited the land. They were attending Arizona University at the time and low on funds for tuition. They decided to move up here to the volcano and open it up to tourists. They started with a saloon and dance hall. Then they built a few cabins for the overindulgent to sleep it off or families to spend the weekend. Eventually the saloon was turned into a house, additions were added and now Janice and her husband run it as a visitors center and curio shop. What a family!
I’ve spent a week in the Gila National Forest now, hiking around to all the cliff dwellings and pictograph sites. Over and around rolling hills and deep into cliff lined valleys. Pine forests cover most of the area, tall and slender. Their branches don't really fill out till further up the trunk so passing through is relatively easy. All over I see signs of past fires. Acres of dead trees, burnt to black, crumbling ash. I’ve heard about forest fires TV in the past but they're always in some far away place. Being face to face, surrounded by the aftermath, is unsettling. The land looks devastated. Beyond repair. But in reality they release nutrients into the ground and clear space for new trees and grasses to grow. It can take years for an area to fully recover but in the long run the fires are actually beneficial.
This thought makes the sight of all those black, haunted stumps slightly more tolerable as I emerge from the woods and back onto the main road the runs through the park. The jeep is parked a mile or 2 up the road so I start off in that direction. I’ve taken less then 10 paces when an SUV stops next to me. The driver leans out and asks whats it like back there pointing in to the woods I've been hiking through. I turn around to look back into them and think for a moment. I turn back to the driver and smile. Peaceful I tell her We get to talking and she offers me a ride back to the jeep. Her name is Terri and she extremely apologetic about the state of her car. In truth it doesn’t look all that bad to me considering what my jeep looks like at the moment. Turns out she's doing something similar to me. Living out of her car, piloting it to beautiful places taking it all in. She can only get away for a few weeks at a time but she does it whenever she gets a chance. We exchange a few stories of life on the road. She's headed to some of the places I’ve just been so I tell her about my favorite spots so far and she tells me of Abiquiu, New Mexico.
“Abiquiu is where you go when you die” she says. “If heaven is half as beautiful as Abiquiu I’ll be very content there.” Ghost Ranch and Christ in the Desert Monastary are the only details I can recall later, while I’m scribbling about my day in a notebook but I do remember Terri’s passion. The love I hear in her voice when she’s speaking of these places is enough for me to want to see them.
Lightfeather Hot Springs are the only ones in the area that I have yet to visit. I decide to hike the few miles to them and spend the night out there somewhere. An early morning soak might be a nice thing to wake up for. At the trailhead I hoist everything I need onto my back and set off into the canyon. It’s late afternoon, the sun and the temperature have both started their nightly decent. Less than a half mile in and I’m forced to ford the Gila River. It’s wide and slow moving so there is very little danger aside from getting my pack wet. At its deepest the water comes up to the middle of my calves and by the time I step out on to the opposite bank my feet actually hurt from the glacial water. I have to stop for a moment to flex my toes and get the blood pumping again before I can put my boots back on and continue hiking. I cross the river three more times and before long, I’m sure I've passed the hot springs somewhere along the way. They’re only supposed to be a mile and a half or so from the trailhead and I’ve already hiked twice that far. The sun is nearing the horizon so I find a sandy spot on the river bank and set up camp. I dig a small fire pit slightly lower than my tent in hopes of catching the rising heat while I sleep and also not setting my tent on fire. With camp set, fire cracking, socks drying I take my camera and walk down onto the rocks in the rivers floodplain.
My little camp on one side of the river, a forested hill gently climbs behind it and shelters me from the wind. Across the river the rock face is straight up and nearly bare. I watch the boulders and ledges for any movement; this is mountain lion territory. But for now all is still. The only sound is nature. The wind whistles from deeper in the canyon, the river gurgles by, my fire crackles into the night and I think to myself, “I like this.”
No animal encounters in the night but not long after I break camp and begin the hike back I come across some tracks. They are either wolf or lion...something with claws, I can’t tell which but it’s in the soft mud in the middle of the trail. If it was here when I hiked past yesterday, I would have noticed it, it’s too obvious. Now i’m grateful I made the effort to keep the fire going through the night. It may have changed the minds of some would-be visitors.
I run into Lightfeather hot springs on the way back. I try... and fail,,, to explain how I missed it on the way in. I chalk it up to a glitch in the matrix Where the water first emerges from the rock it’s hot enough to burn flesh. I have to go a few yards down river before the temperature is even tolerable. I stand here and warm my feet but decide against dropping my pack and putting on my bathing suit for a full soak. Once my feet are warmed sufficiently to cross the river the last few times I’m on my way back to the jeep. Then out of the Gila National Forest and back on the road heading nowhere in particular.
I stop in the town of Gila today to pick up some boxes from my Mom. Dried food stuffs, snacks, even some candy. I lucked out pretty hard on the whole Parents front. Also in the box was my renewed driver license. The old one was set to expire on my birthday. So now I’m good till 2020.
So far the best choice I've made is not using my GPS to get from one place to the next. I’m enjoying immensely, the meanderings in between. These back roads are magical. They differ in only style and scope of magnificence. Rolling hills as far as the eye can see set on a backdrop of forest laden mountain sides. It’d be tough to be in a bad mood if you can just go out side and look at all this. Highway 180.
I consult my map to find my next destination and stumble upon the Baldera Volcano and Ice Cave. Fire and ice. Two extremes, sounds cool. Plus I’ve never seen a volcano or and ice cave, let’s do this. I hike a mile or so up the trail that winds around the outside to the volcano. Active 10,000 years ago, now the whole area is covered with porous lava rock called cinders. I get to the top and look down into the crater. 1400 feet wide and 800 feet deep it’s humbling. I shake my head in awe. Imagine the power, enough to blow off the top of an entire mountain! Incredible. The ice cave is a little bit of a let down, probably because I was spoiled by the Carlsbad Caverns. You can’t venture into the cave itself, it’s inaccessible. A wooden staircase leads to a viewing platform above the mouth of the cave. It’s shaped sort of like an amphitheater so I can see all the way to the back of it from here. What makes it interesting is the cave floor. Its made entirely of ice and covered in algae. The way the sunlight refracts through the ice gives the cave floor a neon green hue. I’ve never seen anything like it. 
