Two old broads on the Widforss Trail

My friend Cheryl and I hiked the Widforss Trail on Friday. Before anyone gets excited about me hiking ten miles, let me just say that Cheryl is 77. As in seventy-seven. Years old. I know!

She was here almost two weeks and left for home this morning. I'm going to miss her. Last night she and I and another friend who works here met for dinner, where Cheryl said we are an inspiration to her. The other friend and I looked at each other with our jaws hitting the floor and told Cheryl that she's the one who's the inspiration. It's true. I've been asking myself, way back in the recesses of my mind, how long I'll be able to do the lifestyle I'm so enjoying now, and across the table from me sat my answer.

We took our time on the trail. It took us about eight hours, less a half-hour to stop to talk to a Preventive Search and Rescue (PSAR) ranger who was on patrol, another half-hour to talk to a German couple who gave a roll of the eyes when I mentioned George Bush (apologies to the Bushies out there, but ain't America great that we can say things like that?), and another half-hour or so for lunch, but even so, at that rate we moved at a mosey. It was fine.

This trail was high on my list because I read somewhere that there are a lot of wildflowers there; it did not disappoint.

Not a dozen steps onto the trail and we found this cute rodent. Chipmunk? No, a ground squirrel. I'd never heard of ground squirrels until I got to Arizona. That's how travel is educational.

There are full, lush stands of ferns, mostly full-fledged, but some still have emerging fronds.

And so it begins - uphill. Why does everything seem uphill around here?

The Widforss flirts with the canyon rim, curving inland more often than offering views of the canyon. Some people give a waggle of the hand when asked how they like this hike because they prefer spectacular views all along the way. I compare it to living in the Pacific Northwest: yes, it rains a lot, but when the sun and mountains come out, you can't imagine a more beautiful place to be.

I've noticed this cross-hatching on tree stumps and wonder if it has anything to do with encouraging faster decomposition. A hiker before us, though, took it as an invitation to set up a game.

I checked out a wildflower identification book from the park library and think I've discovered a half-dozen new species because I can't find most of the flowers I've come across, but this one is in it. It's a bristly hiddenflower, from the borage family. It's a perennial, growing about three feet tall, and has large flower clusters at the top of the stem and smaller ones at stem/leaf junctions. The flowers themselves are less than 1/2 inch across.

The trail skirted the canyon again, here giving a look at the Transept Canyon.

Who could not enjoy a walk in the woods when it's like this?

This silver-blue feather was just a couple of inches long. Maybe from a Stellers jay or a western bluebird? The electric blue at the tip makes me think jay.

The sinuous elbow of ponderosa pine made me think of my sister, who'd love to have it for her woodworking. Beautiful lines.

More canyon.

I would say this is perennial cranesbill/white geranium with its own personal pollinator, except the book's photo shows petals that are pointed rather than clipped like these, which you can't see, and there are ten stamens here as opposed to five in the book. Otherwise, it's identical!

 





















I was sure this was Solomon's Seal or false Solomon's Seal, but when checking online (because the book didn't have this either), these flowers don't look anything like it. These could be last year's flowers but if they were, they weren't brittle as they should have been.

Fire scars are on the trunks of these ponderosa pines. The one on the right is dead and has fractured into a huge splinter. Ponderosas can withstand fire better than some other trees because they have very thick bark and they self-prune - they shed branches that form several feet up the trunk which offers protection from ground fires.

This is a new pin needle cluster, just emerging from a sheath that encapsulates the needles. I need to find out more about this because I haven't seen a lot of this cottony stuff.

Here we were nearing the turn-around at Widforss Point, and lunch.

Thanks to a ranger for clearing the path.

I also need a reptile book. What great camoflage!

I was surprised to see prickly pear cacti at this elevation but here's proof.

The view from Widforss Point, well worth the hike.

Hiking compadres, ready for lunch and to sit for a while.

Someone left this message right next to the trail.

I have no idea but can't wait to see it in bloom. The bud is about four inches tall.

Heading back on the trail, and why is it uphill? Wasn't it uphill coming in?

Another new species. At first I thought the petals had insect damage but not all five; they're just deeply lobed. Pretty, and not more than an inch across.

 

I thought this might be elderberry, a member of the honeysuckle family, but it's not tall enough. Elderberry is at least six feet tall and these are about three. Nice bugs, though.

The park brochure says to allow two hours for the five-mile round trip, which has to be a typo. Even four hours for the ten-mile hike would be moving fast. More and more, in so many aspects of my life, I'm learning the truth that it's not the destination, it's the journey that matters.

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Thought of the day:

Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wilderness is a necessity; that mountain parks and reservations are useful not only as fountains of timber and invigorating rivers, but as fountains of life. - John Muir

Drifting grace

I wrote some time ago that you can never judge how a person’s life is, who a person is, by the trappings that surround her. A lovely waterfront home means nothing. A long marriage that appears happy and compatible signifies nothing. Gifts of expensive anything are a weak substitute of things for meaningful time with and attention from someone.

Many years ago I worked with a woman who said everyone has a story. As time went by and more life happened to me, I saw with crystal clarity the truth of it. There is no veneer that can accurately predict the glory or the ashes of the book of someone’s life.

I met a woman here the other day, a sister hiker, and we hit it off immediately. How does that happen? How does it happen that sometimes there’s an immediate connection with a stranger, before any conversation much more than hello takes place? I don’t know if there’s a scientific answer but I attribute it to grace - a sifting of grace dust that drifts on life’s current to the two of you just at the moment of meeting. I can count on one hand the number of times it’s happened to me and the rarity and pleasure of it makes me wish for it and value it all the more.

We met just as I was leaving a trail and she was beginning one and we talked for half an hour. I invited her for dinner the next night, she and I met for dinner last night, and we are hiking the Widforss Trail, a 10-miler, on Friday. Over these couple of meetings we’ve been telling our stories to each other and retelling the stories of women we admire as well. There’s a commonality, a pattern, a silver streak of strength that threads itself from one woman to the next. We leave failures, disappointments, loss, betrayal, or abdicated dreams behind us and soldier on, knowing that what we have now, the lives we are making for ourselves now, is what is important. The past is called the past for a reason. They’re gone and over with, those memories touched with anger or wistfulness, bitterness or bittersweetness – they’re behind us, but that doesn’t mean they never happened.

My friend went through a painful divorce 35 or so years ago, has long been happily remarried, and told me she still has dreams of her ex-husband. Oh my. I still have dreams of mine, not often and not ever pleasant, and wondered if they would ever stop. Now that I’ve heard her say she still has them I can let go of the anxiety I have about mine. As she said, she had a life before the one she’s living now, and there’s nothing she can do to make it disappear. It’s obvious, isn’t it, yet I thought I was such a special case that it made it different for me. Of course I’m not special and now, recognizing that I’m not the only one who is sometimes subliminally haunted, I feel lighter and freer. It reminds me of a Patti Scialfa song, Romeo, where she reminisces about someone from her past: “You’re a part of me forever, like a troublesome tattoo.” That’s exactly it. I can never get rid of that past life; all I can do is cover it up, not feel the need to pick it apart for all of its flaws, nor fret about the bad choice I made when I got it.

Thought of the day:

Taken in Metropolis, IL while visiting my sister last fall, just to show I don't take myself too seriously.

One day she remembered that the only person that could make her happy was herself. So she took back her power, reclaimed her place in the world, and shined like never before. 

– Anna Taylor, with thanks to another woman I greatly admire who has her own success story, for sending it to me, and who also told me that some of the people I would meet in my new life would give me valuable help. How right she was, and always is.

Gravity works

So far I've been walking easy trails here at the north rim but have been eying the start of the North Kaibab trail with the hope of getting a permit to camp at the Cottonwood Campground down in the canyon. It's not all the way down, but it would be an accomplishment and I'd be happy with that. Until Sunday I hadn't gotten around to doing anything more toward that goal than walking over to the trailhead, peering down the trail, and becoming slightly alarmed watching people emerging from the depths, heaving for breath, red-faced, and sweaty. Yikes. 

On Saturday my HH and I met the husband of our next door neighbor. HH had already learned that she is a retired librarian/archivist and is working in the book store for the season. Her husband is also an archivist and he comes up from Phoenix on the weekend. They're both outdoorsy types and he told us he'd hiked the North Kaibab part way to the Supai Tunnel the day before, turning around before getting there because he wasn't sure how much farther it was. When I said it was on my list, we agreed to give it a go on Sunday. The trail guide says it's 3.8 miles round trip and how hard could that be?

What.an.idiot.

There is no such thing as level on this trail. On the way down, your every step is downhill, and I think you can see where I'm going.There ain't nothin' level going back up either.

Coconino Overlook is a stop on the way to Supai Tunnel, .7 miles from the trailhead. Great! That means it's only a little over a mile more to the tunnel. I was leading the way because my hiking partner wanted me to set the pace, and I was taking my time. I think it took about an hour from the top to the tunnel. There are a lot of rocks, loose sand, loose sand over rocks, tree roots, and mule poop to be careful around and I just went slowly.

Those are my hiking poles leaning against the rock and am I glad I took them. They make a big difference with stability in both directions.

There's not a lot to see on this part of the trail. It leads to a kind of slot canyon so there aren't wide, expansive views but what is here is predictably gorgeous.

Look closely at the bottom, almost center, of this next photo.There's a faint light bridge spanning the canyon. That's part of the trail and one I'd cross if I ever have enough nerve to hike to the campground.

We finally made it to the tunnel, which was blasted open by the CCC in the 1930s. Just to prove I made it that far I asked to have my picture taken; it's better that I had it taken then because later I wasn't in a peppy mood.

We went just beyond the tunnel to sit for a bit, take in the view, have something to eat, and get fortified for the trip back up. Even though I'd just come down that trail, I still didn't quite get how bad it is going in the other direction.

I meant to count the switchbacks going back up but after the third I was really too busy breathing and lost track. Here is a view going uphill, the trail on the left. It looks easy, doesn't it? It's a liar.

Having to have some excuse to stop other than saying if I don't stop I'll die (although in my defense, the elevation is around 8500 feet), I tried photographing wildflowers along the way. It wasn't overly successful because I was constantly sucking in air and my hands weren't particularly steady, but I managed to get a couple keepers.

After my saying about a thousand times that there's no prize for a quick exit, it took us an hour and three-quarters to hike back to the trailhead. I've considered myself in good shape but apparently have been sadly misinformed; I've never walked slower in my life, I've never had to stop as often or as long to catch my breath, and I've never in my life felt I was holding someone back, but there's a first time for everything. So I have a new goal. I'm going to hike to Coconino Overlook twice a week and work on fewer stops coming back up. When I'm better at it I'll think again about going down to the campground, and won't think twice about hiring a mule to carry my gear in and out. There's no prize for being a martyr, either. 

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Thought of the day:

Perseverance is the hard work you do after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did. - Newt Gingrich

Livin' the dream

When I thought about coming to the North Rim of the Grand Canyon to work for the summer, I asked about the internet. If you've followed me for a while, you may be familiar with my internet tribulations at Petrified Forest last summer when I used Sprint. I had to sit outside the post office to get online but my constant whining and complaining led the president of the Petrified Forest Museum Association, the friends' group, to put in a booster that eventually let me surf from the comfort of my own home. Then I switched to Verizon and had a decent signal without wifi.

I'm now at the Grand Canyon and can't get anything more than a weak trickle of internet even from our mobile hotspot with an antenna on the roof. I'm on roaming anywhere I go, but fortunately was given a password to the wifi at the Admin building, where I am right now. My HH and I hope to rectify this inconvenience with satellite internet, which is supposed to be installed this Friday. I have all fingers and toes crossed because my name is Kathy and I am an internet junkie. I need my fix on a frequent basis.

We got here Tuesday and I started work Wednesday. My schedule isn't as flexible as it was at Petrified but it's still 32 hours a week with three days in a row off. At Petrified our parking spot gave us an expansive view to the northeast and I had a walking commute of less than five minutes. Here we're parked in the forest with an expansive view of it out our rear and kitchen windows. Our spot is about midway between the Grand Canyon Lodge and the administration complex where I work, maybe 15 to 20 minutes' walking each way. The Lodge sits on the rim of the canyon and gives access to spectacular views.

There are two overlook points below the Lodge; this is looking up from one of them. The bow window is a big open room with leather seating, and the framed view of the canyon through the windows is, of course, spectacular. There are two outdoor terraces, one on each side of the room, where people congregate to watch the changing light and color below.

We went to the Lodge for breakfast our first morning here. It was packed but almost immediately cleared out (after we were seated not at a window) when the buses pulled out. This is from another morning, early, when I went out before work and before most people were up and about.

The views from the trails that rim the canyon - well, what can I say? I'm out of superlatives and adjectives that can't, even so, begin to put into words just how grand, inspiring, humbling, and spiritual this place is.

The elevation here is about 8500 feet, so everything is blooming a little later than down below. I think it's great because that means I got here in time to see the full spectrum. I'm going to need a wildflower identification book.

Lupines are just starting; there are wide areas of them throughout the area I walk every day that will soon be blanketed in blue. This is their leaf cluster.

Tiny, tiny magenta flowers, not much more than a quarter inch across.

New growth at branch tips, bright green and vibrant against the dark of old growth.

Here is the building I work in, at least for now. Yesterday I had the doors wide open and two hummingbirds zipped in and out. A chipmunk wandered in, looked around, and left. When I was sitting on the porch at the admin building before work another hummingbird hovered about three feet in front of me, looking me over. I've seen two western tanagers, birds I've never seen before, and the world's cutest squirrel, the Kaibab squirrel, which has tufted ears, a bright white tail, and a dark body. People who want to spot one are told to look for a white handkerchief fluttering through the treetops. I haven't been quick enough to get photos of the tanagers or squirrels - yet.

I expect to be here until some time in September. There are miles of trails to hike, campsites to overnight at, a brilliant night sky to gaze at, and lots more people to meet. What a life.

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Thought of the day:

The biggest adventure you can take is to live the life of your dreams. - Oprah Winfrey

¡Olé!

It's a little late, but here are photos from a Cinco de Mayo celebration that took place on the plaza near the Visitor Center at the park on, well, May 5. [added May 25: I forgot to say the name of the group is Las Joyas del Desierto - Jewels of the Desert. Nice, isn't it?]

The youngest group went first and if I've ever seen anything cuter than these kids I don't know what it could be. All the girls wore their hair in a bun at the top of the head and two braids threaded with bright ribbon.

This was a second dance with the same group. It had something to do with taking turns waving their feet over the blue vase between them.

A more experienced group came in for the next few dances.

Waiting in the wings for their next performance, they couldn't resist swirling those gorgeous costumes.

The boys' moves were mostly clapping their hands under alternating legs. No twirly anything for them.

This child played to my camera like a pro. I had a couple of photos of her looking straight at me or from the corners of her eyes, but they weren't sharp enough to keep.

The teacher is in the background, in the red shirt. She announced the kids were invited to be in a parade at Disneyland and they were raising money for the trip. My HH chipped in and a couple of days later had his hair cut by this same lady. She said they'd nearly met their goal. Parents were responsible for getting their kids there and the fundraising was for park admission.

I took some videos which turned out pretty well, considering I'd never done it before, and tried uploading one here. I got the video but no audio; there's a way to do it but I haven't figured it out yet. It's really something to see them in motion. I'll keep trying.

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Thought of the day: