My friend Larry Scritchfield and I set our alarms for 5:30 a.m., ridiculously early for a 3.5-mile round trip hike down Cathedral Wash to the Colorado River and back. Historically, early starts were for more serious endeavors, like climbing the Chouinard-Beckey route on South Howser Tower in the Bugaboos, when a pre-dawn approach minimized our chances of getting whacked by enormous pieces of serac falling from a hanging glacier and gave us enough time to climb the 2000’ wall, descend the other side, and get back to our camp by dark.
Times (and climate) change, neither to be taken for granted.
We camped at Lee’s Ferry, Arizona in March during a record-breaking heat wave that sent temperatures into the 90s, 20 or more degrees above normal and not fun to hike in, especially under a blazing sun. Also, we were slowed by health problems. My left knee had painfully given up the ghost in December, leading to an agonizing wait for early February replacement surgery, during which I could barely walk, even with crutches. Nearly simultaneously, my right shoulder and left wrist announced semi-retirement thanks to osteoarthritis, requiring steroid shots, postponed until after knee surgery to minimize infection risk. At one point, I couldn’t even lift a coffee cup (thanks Ellen for feeding me my coffee!). More seriously, Larry has pulmonary fibrosis, a lung disease forcing him to carry an oxygen concentrator (in a daypack) on hikes, limiting his range and stamina.
Now less than two months out of surgery and dosed with steroids, I can walk a few miles and make my own coffee. Larry is participating in a drug trial that shows some evidence of mitigating his fibrosis. Despite these improvements, we called ourselves Elder Hostel canyoneers, even that moniker a little grandiose since the canyoneering in Cathedral Wash is minimal, rated 2A, meaning that there is a little scrambling and some “judicious route finding” according to the Park Service. Parents are advised to keep a close eye on their children in the canyon. We saw some children and were secretly proud, or at least relieved, when asked by their parents if we made it all the way to the river.
After our judicious hike, we returned to the shade of the van well before the heat set in, pleased with our accomplishment. I sipped a late-afternoon margarita, and Larry nursed a fizzy water while we both watched a pair of grackles eager to share our chips. On another day, we descended a less challenging (but hotter) canyon (Wiregrass) near Bigwater, where vacationers store houseboats close to the shrinking Lake Powell, itself dysfunctional in the midst of long-term Western drought.
Short canyon hikes that would have been trivial even a few months ago become touchstones encouraging recovery. Larry and I were grateful to be in the desert adventuring again, even in oppressive heat. As we get older, health setbacks are inevitable, some way more serious than joint failures, and I’m lucky to be as healthy as I am in my late-60s.
I'm not much of a poetry aficianado, but the dying Tony Hoagland, in his poem "Into the Mystery" acknowledged gratefulness for what might once have been taken for granted:
This life that rushes over everything
Like water or like wind, and wears it down until it shines.
Now you sit on the brick wall on a cloudy afternoon and swing
your legs,
happy because there has never been a word for this
as you continue moving through these days and years
where more and more the message is
not to measure anything.
I’m also not a country music fan, but the late singer Toby Keith, after asking the then 88-year-old Clint Eastwood how he kept going, put some of Clint's predictably feisty answer to music:
"And I knew all of my life
That someday it would end
Get up and go outside
Don’t let the old man in" --Toby Keith (Don’t Let the Old Man In)
