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This is what happens
to your mind and body when you take a month-long trek through the
desert with nothing but your wits, a knife, and a little water.
Willis Canyon, South
of Utah ... somewhere east of Zion Park. One of our guides, Breck,
scoops out a cup of muddy water from the creek. He drinks deeply and
goes for another. "Your first lesson," he says as he wipes
his beard and shoves his two-foot long machete into his belt, "is
your stomach is the best canteen you got. Drink up."
It has only been 10 minutes
since the van that brought us here vanished in a cloud of dust, leaving
our group of seven men, three women and guides Breck and Greg 300
miles from our final destination, somewhere on the other side of the
Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument in Utah's Great Basin
desert.
We have 27 days to walk
the distance and learn the basic skills of living off the land. There
are no people, no stores, no help between here and the end. The guides
have no way to contact anyone in an emergency, we're told. For the
first four or five days, the "Impact" phase, we will have
no water bottles, food or maps. This is to acclimate us to the desert.
If anyone quits, they must find their own way out.
And just a word or two
about dying: we signed contracts stating that if we are killed by
snake bite, scorpion bite, lightning, disease, bear or lion attack,
starvation, dehydration or anything else, our guides, the Boulder
Outdoor Survival School (BOSS), can't be sued.
Someone asks, "Tell
me again why were doing this?" A ripple of nervous laughter passes
through the group. I can't think of any place I'd rather be than right
here.
Here's what we can take.
Each of us has a fanny pack full of the basics: baking soda for brushing
our teeth, long underwear, a light weight fleece, a wool cap, a pair
of long pants, an extra pair of socks, a long sleeve shirt, a compass,
a journal, a first-aid kit, water purification drops, a small enamel
drinking cup and a 4-inch knife. Later we will get maps, a blanket
and rain poncho.
Breck, our guide, is outfitted
in sandals, shorts and a straw hat that never comes off. He carries
three bags on his back, including a full trauma kit. He has a scraggly
red beard that goes well with his clear blue eyes and high energy.
The trail rules: no sex, it will get in the way of group dynamics.
Wipe your ass with sand and sage, it will keep away rashes. If you
become blocked, find a stick and pull the feces from your ass, otherwise
you can go into shock and die. If you kill something, you must eat
it, and most importantly, never leave someone behind. The signalling
system on the trail is simple: one loud hoot is a locator -- When
you hear it, hoot back until the missing party is found. Two hoots
is a full stop. Three's an emergency. Breck points a finger at us.
"If you hoot three times, I expect to find a rattlesnake hanging
off your jugular vein. Anything short of this and I'll kill you myself."
So begins our journey.
We walk down a slot canyon, no wider than my arm span, that leads
into the heart of the Basin desert.
Soon it is night, moonless
and completely black. We get to know one another as we walk. One man
is a corporate lawyer. One woman a physical therapist. Another a gardener.
Another a masseuse. There are a handful of college students. I slip
to the back of the line, away from the giddy chatter. I feel far from
my life of phones and faxes.
Day 2
Red dawn. There's a rumble in my stomach, the first pangs of hunger.
I've hiked the Andes and the Himalayas, survived a war, stumbled across
the deserts in Israel and Egypt, but I have never purposely walked
into the desert with no supplies for 27 days. I'm also unsure about
our random assembly of people -- I wonder about their breaking points.
A friend in Tucson told
me about this trip. By the end I will know how to trap animals, make
fire from sticks, identify plants to eat. I trained for more than
a month, running six miles a day on mountain trails. I fasted and
then bulked up on protein. I put maps of the southwest on my wall.
I wanted to experience surviving on the merit of my own skills and
instincts.
The sun is rising over
the canyon walls. No time to think. Time to move. Ahead of us lies
the 1.5 million acres of the Grand Staircase-Escalante park. By midday,
the heat is overwhelming. To survive, a person needs a gallon of water
a day. We haven't had any water in some 18 hours, when we climbed
out of the canyon to pine covered sandstone mesas.
Everyone is keeping up
except Eric, a 21-year-old lumbering type from New Jersey who can't
stop asking questions like: "Are we almost to water? When do
we get food? How many more miles?" For most of the trip he will
be heard somewhere around the last bend desperately hooting three
times. Without missing a stride, Breck will invariably yell, "We
are not breaking, Eric."
The day passes with no
sign of water and we camp under a canopy of juniper trees. Already
I feel subtle changes in my body. The hunger is gnawing at my gut,
my throat is parched. All I want is to sleep and forget the dehydration.
As I lay down, two scorpions
squirm their way underneath a pile of brush I gathered for a pillow.
I move to another tree and lie in a state of desert paranoia. Every
squiggly on my leg becomes a poisonous critter out to inject me with
deadly toxin. The temperature has dropped 40 degrees. Sleeping on
the ground with my scant protection becomes a tired routine of shifting
positions to get blood flowing to my arm while my hip falls asleep
and so on. For consolation I listen to others as they also spend the
night shifting positions.
Day 3
Tips for finding water in the desert: Follow the butterflies, follow
the birds, always look for Navajo white sandstone.
By midday we find a group
of swallows circling at the base of a formation of white sandstone.
There is a spring here -- the only water for 20 miles. It is of desperate
consequence: without it most of us would pass out by nightfall.
The second water lesson:
if there is nothing alive in the water, no mater how clear it is,
don't drink it. Most likely it is arsenic and poisonous. Breck gives
us the nod and we fall to it.
I give up trying to dip
my cup around the swimming mosquito larvae and green algae and gulp
down my second cup of water. To my right sits Brandon, a 21-year-old
from San Luis Obispo, California, who is the group jester. Pouring
water over his head, he says, "I think I read the wrong goddamn
brochure. I'm supposed to be on the trip that isn't trying to kill
me. Where's the fucking food?" I ask him how he can afford this
trip. "Got a trust fund," he says. "Go to Vegas sometimes,
drink expensive tequila, you know, have a good time." I nod my
head. I wonder if he will make it.
Day 4
Hunger is a strange thing. At times the need is paralyzing. At other
times you forget you ever needed food. The only food I've had in four
days is a bite of prickly pear cactus.
We reach a round water
trough for cattle just before noon. We dash to it and dip our cups
into the clear, cold water. "Wait," says Johnny, the lawyer.
A dead mouse floats on top of the algae water. We look at Breck. "Drowned.
Couldn't find a way out after jumping in," he says. I drink greedily.
A small shelter of sticks
and bark sits next to the tank. Inside are blankets, water bottles
and ponchos and food, all compliments of BOSS.
We eat our first meal.
The first taste is like the exploration of a woman. Supple potatoes,
dark lentils, succulent carrots, ripe onions and juicy bullion. After
dinner we divvy up the supplies for the next six days. Lentils, carrots,
potatoes, corn meal, millet, onion, garlic, rock salt, powdered milk,
pepper and a small bag of peanuts and raisins. We decide we have enough
for 900 to 1,000 calories per day.
Finally, a blanket to keep
me warm, food in my stomach, and an endless water supply.
Day 5
It's 125 degrees on the rocks -- a record heat in Utah. The landscape
has become an endless stretch of sand, gullies and sage brush.
Johnny, the 38-year-old
corporate lawyer, was laid off from his six-figure salary job a couple
of weeks before the trip. He lives in a five-bedroom house back East.
He has a wife and son, vacations in France, owns a Porsche and a Harley
and runs a marathon once a year. I like him. He speaks his mind and
has little patience for whiners. Today he and Lizette, a 26-year-old
landscaper from Colorado, are our designated leaders. Neither of them
have had any trouble with the physical demands. In fact, they seem
under-challenged. Their job is to lead us to a spring 15 miles northeast
of here.
We huddle under the shade
on the side of the hill. Eric sidles up to me. His lips have turned
a light shade of black. His pupils are twitching from lack of water.
"So you've done this
a few times," he says, inching closer to my water bottles. He's
out of water and it's not even noon. "you probably don't need
all that water, do you?"
"Sorry, you never
know what's ahead," I say while crawling on my hands and knees
to another shady spot, afraid to catch another glimpse of his large,
desperate eyes.
Back on the hike, Lucy,
a 25-year-old sports therapist at a Georgia college, begins to lose
pace. She's been vomiting -- it turned to dry heaves hours ago --
yet she never complains. Walking with her is Arnold, a stout 21-year-old
from Colorado with a big smile, big hands, and big tattoos. He's been
on academic probation for a year and has spent his time kayaking and
learning about outdoor living.
Something has happened
to our bodies. My urine is the color of a blood orange. My shoulders
ache, my feet hurt, I have no spit or sweat. The moisture in my eye
sockets has dried up. Our brains, cooked by the sun, have started
to make rash decisions. Our tempers are short. There is no more talking.
The only option is to walk.
The only life out here is water.
In a barely audible voice,
Lucy asks me for a sip of water. I have two, maybe three sips left
in my bottle. Thinking Eric has disappeared over the hill, I hand
her my bottle, and raise my finger. One sip only. Eric turns around
and sees Lucy wipe her cracked lips as she hands it back.
The sun went down 30 minutes
ago, but we are running up the mountain trying to get over the pass.
There is a spring on the other side. The guide stops us: the ridge
is too dangerous to navigate in the dark.
Eric and Lucy are vomiting.
Laying prostrate in the creek bed, Sally sobs quietly. She's had a
piece of cottonwood bark stuck between her legs for the last two days
because of her untimely period. She's a 40-year-old massage therapist
who did this same trip 15 years ago.
"I signed up with
my boyfriend," she told me earlier.
"And?"
"He quit three days in and I finished."
"And how did that turn out?"
"We broke up two years later. One of the issues was that he could
never live down that he never finished and I did."
We hunker into our blankets
and wrap the ponchos around us. On cue, the crickets begin their nightly
chorus, the owls hoot and the bats divebomb my head. A coward to the
heat, I now shiver against the chill. I am broken. Crying is not an
option -- it would take bodily fluid.
Day 6
We climb out of the desert through a hailstorm, to 8,000 feet.
Here we learn to trap squirrels,
rabbits and deer. We build primitive shelters from pine needles, telling
stories, laughing and filling our stomachs with a cupful of rationed
potatoes, lentils, carrots and onions seasoned with pepper and vegetable
bullion.
Late in the afternoon of
the first day, the guides instruct us to sit in a circle. They pick
out a "talking stick." Whoever has the stick can say anything
they want and everyone else musty listen, no interruptions, no exceptions.
One by one the others tell
how they are learning to get along. It all seems a little too predictable,
a little too much like a group hug. Besides, I really don't want to
show any of these
people who I am, not yet anyhow.
Day 8
I wake up at dawn in the middle of a mint green sea of sagebrush.
It smells like rain. I sit up, mud in my hair. The sun sneaks up over
a 1,000-foot mesa called Death Ridge. The pioneer poets must have
had a hoot naming this area with descriptive phrases such as Short
Neck, Devil's Garden, Sadie's Nipple, Rod's Crotch, Mollie's Nipple,
Stink Flat, and Box-Death Hollow.
We'd been on a sunset-to-sunrise
hike, but I'd begun hallucinating about coyotes and rattlers barring
my way. At some point, I'd collapsed and fallen asleep here. I pick
myself up, still stumbling and dizzy, and walk another two hours until
I find the others asleep under an overhang protected from the approaching
monsoon rains.
I walk of to an area shrouded
in sage bush and squat to take a shit, the first in eight days. I
hunker over and sweat out water I can't spare. I drift back to the
beginning of the trip, at the creek, when our spirits were high and
we were full of good feelings and confidence. I remember Breck's words:
"Look around for a stick with a hook on the end. Take it and
gently shove it in the rectum and pull it out again." I can't
find a stick with a hook. I can't see. I want to scream. I am panting
now; the pain is intense. The thought of the others finding me on
my back with a turtle head sticking out of my ass is too much. For
the next hour I use my fingers to undo the plug.
Leaving a small stack of
dry crumbling briquettes behind, I stagger out of the bushes bleeding.
I'm grateful for the smallest of things. I lay on my side and fall
asleep.
Day 15
At times this trip seems pointless. It's hard to imagine we paid $3,000
to walk in the desert for four weeks. Most of us have developed horrendous
blisters, and any extra meat on our bodies is disappearing.
The mood is tense. People
have started to yell at each other and break into micro groups. I
hang with Andrew, Lucy and Sally. The younger guys hang together.
The solo stage could not
have come at a better time. Each of us will be left alone in a canyon
with no food and no human contact for five nights and six days.
The first thing I do as
I disappear down the banks of the Escalante River is get naked. The
area I choose is bordered by the river. I build a shelter of fallen
limbs between two trees and cover it with bushes and cottonwood bark.
This takes most of the first day.
It is time to make a fire.
There are three instruments
needed to create a fire: a bow, a spindle and a fireboard. I make
these out of cut-down branches. I start spinning the spindle on the
fireboard - trying to make friction to create a burning ember. There
is smoke. This is the pivotal moment. I look down and see a small
piece of red coal. Carefully, I move it onto a leaf and lay it in
the kindling I've prepared. The fire starts.
Day 18
The only person who died on one of these survival trips trapped a
squirrel for dinner. The squirrel's fleas bit him, giving him the
bubonic plague. The plague and the fatal Hantavirus are alive in these
canyons. A man can live without food for two months as long as he
has water, so I decide not to trap or eat the local critters.
I can't stop thinking
about a thick steak and a cold beer.
Day 19
I spend my days watching birds, swimming in the river, covering myself
in mud to keep away the biting horse flies. Life has become a simple
exercise of basics. I am here, I am in the living.
Day 20
I crave the company of people, of the others in the group. I
thrive on their differences, their imperfections, their laughter and
secrets.
All I want is an ice-cream
cone.
Day 21
After we complete our solo days, the guides leave us. We have to travel
the last 75 miles in six days alone. We have the compass, the topo
maps, some food. The men and women are split into two separate groups.
Without the women and guides
around to smooth out the edges, it does not take long for things to
fall apart. The younger guys revert to asking inane questions. The
only surprise is Eric.
It happens near Moki Canyon
on a disturbingly hot day. I had gotten lost. Expecting Eric to be
out of water and too tired to make up the lost time, I try to explain
how I screwed up.
"No problem. We turn
around and get back on track," Eric says.
Johnny and I stare at him in amazement. "You okay?"
"Fine. Let's just do it together for once."
Later he tells us how
a life of Ritalin and therapy has screwed him up. He is tired of trying
to please his parents, and that's why he took this trip.
"I know I can be an
asshole sometimes, but I think I learned something out here."
"What's that," I asked.
"I can make it on my own if I have to."
Day 22
Johnny and I
take over the duties of leadership. We start the fires, navigate,
cook and make camp. I realize how age can work to one's advantage.
Johnny and I are older -- I'm 32, he is 38. Old enough to have been
through various tests in life. The younger guys, ranging from 18 to
22, are physically stronger than us, but have been showing signs of
cracking emotionally.
Day 26
We chance into the women at Steep Creek. I'm scouting a place to cross
the creek when I spot them. My first instinct is to run -- and I do
-- but it is too late. They've seen me. The reunion is awkward. Us:
we are haggard, divided and bitter toward one another. Them: They
are glowing with joy to have done it together.
It is clear all of us
males have become small bubbles of ego -- everyday was a competition,
each one trying to prove we could make it, and do it alone if we had
to.
As we walk together again
as a group, the tribe starts to heal. The women make small talk and
we tell our stories of adversity. Not much changes even in the wild.
Day 27
We arrive at Bear Creek -- the guides are there with a pot of venison
stew. We devour it.
To end the journey, we
sit in a circle and pass the talking stick.
"I have to say Eric
grew on this trip, but the other three young guys, you are the biggest
wimps I've ever met," says Johnny. I vent and say the same thing.
The anger and resentment
pours out through the stick and into the circle. I am called too controlling
and thanked for taking control. The younger guys regret having bitched
for most of the trip.
"If we were the last
10 people on earth I wouldn't sleep with any one of you. You are all
pathetic," says Lucy.
Breck seems to relish the
idea of people being pushed to the edge. To him success means everyone
got their buttons pushed. And everyone here has been pushed to the
edge in some way.
The stick goes around four
or five times. Everyone speaks their peace and a truce is declared.
Lucy retracts her statement, saying, maybe, maybe, she'd do
one of us for the sake of the tribe.
People hug and shake hands
and joke about the hardships.... I have lost 21 pounds in 27 days,
yet I feel stronger than I ever have. ... No one has died and no one
killed another. We survived a month in the outback of America where
most people, if left alone, would die in a few days.
I'm going to get ice cream.
Wake up in the middle
of the night to see moonlight streak through the branches. To
my right, a faint glow, maybe a star. I stare into the darkness trying
to make out my campground. Near the tree, not too far from my head,
rests a wood plank with four wood legs to support it. On top sits
a large black box with red lit numbers. Then a new noise. It's a motor.
I look again at my surroundings. I'm back in Provo, Utah, at a Travelodge
motel. The room is strewn with red dirt and reeks of body odor. I
have been sleeping on the floor at the foot of the bed. Later I spend
several hours on the toilet paying the price of the ice cream.
The next day, I sip a beer
while waiting for the bus to Salt Lake. I try and remember why I came
on this trip. Some say they go to the desert to find God. I didn't
see a god out there. I saw naked earth. It is raw and unforgiving,
and it doesn't care if you live or die or that I ever existed.
Epilogue
Lucy quit her job and now is a guide intern at BOSS. Johnny went home,
got divorced and moved to San Francisco. Brandon went back home after
deserting the trip. He has lunch with his parents and from time to
time flies to Vegas and the Caribbean to gamble. Eric got out of therapy.
Last I heard Chuck was still on the road. Sally decided she wouldn't
be doing the trip again. Arnold is back in school and looking for
more extreme adventures. Breck is planning a two-year walk through
Mongolia and Siberia. Greg is guiding kayak trips near the San Juan
islands. I'm still living in the desert and carving a talking stick.
How to sign up:
Boss runs trips all year, but the majority are in the summer and sell
out in advance. Call (800) 335-7404 or fax (303) 442-7425.
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