Last Sunday we went to the back half to hike the 10K trail. G's work and games buddy K joined us. When I arrived at G's, they were huddled around the table, looking over the expansion for King of Tokyo, the new game of choice. K is a tall medium build 30-ish man with a chin strap beard, quizzical eyes, and baseball cap. Laconic but not off-putting. He continued to focus on the game while I changed into walking shoes. I was so proud that I had remembered hat and water bottles, but G brought out his spare camelback, complete with iced water.
He takes such good care of me.
En route, we were listening to Beck, a new experience for me. I am so unhip. About halfway up the Sandia Peak road, I said, "This is dangerously close to rap." And that's all I'll say about Beck. G was driving, so I was not about to kvetch about the music that kept him focused and happy.
The 10K trail doubles as a cross-country ski trail in winter, so the trees were marked with blue diamonds, 12 feet up. It's a deceptively simple trail, paralleling the road for a bit and then circling the mountain to the east, going up and down, so the net elevation gain was minimal. G picked it because we would be in trees for most of the hike, and thus cooler. The promised reward was a nice overlook.
Within 5 minutes I discovered a bonus reward: wildflowers!
I didn't just use the flowers as an excuse to get my breath back and reduce my cardio rate, but they sure helped. I recognized violets and columbine and G identified the clematis, but the rest need to be researched. Maybe.
Meanwhile, the trail went up, the trail went down. I absorbed the dusty smell of the trail, the spicy smell of the pines, the clicking, trilling, melodic calls of birds. K was forging ahead, not fast, but faster than I. G kept waiting for me, and I kept saying, I'll catch you up. At every stop I sucked on the camelback nozzle, hyperventilating while my heart pounded in my throat. Note to self: wait until you get your breath back before drinking. I was a slow learner.
We entered into a tree graveyard, fallen grey logs covering the ground between trees: they took up so much space there was no room for much undergrowth. I was reminded of the tree graveyard above V's house on Cascade Head: different vegetation, but the same sense of age and destruction. Whenever I hiked the trail behind her house, I always looked for the huge silvery snag standing out in the woods, about 2 miles up the trail. I never hiked to it, it was off the trail. It was a landmark. It had another tree growing in the thick moss of an out-flung branch, which was big enough to be its own trunk. The nursing tree was at least 12 feet tall, it's host probably 50. One day, I realized the snag was gone. We clambered through the forest, to find it sprawled on the ground, stretching out endlessly amidst a silver-grey landscape of fallen trees. Windstorm.
This Sandia tree graveyard was the result of bark beetle and some other parasite, the name of which escapes me.
Shortly past that, I said, "That would appear to be a woodpecker." G and I stopped to listen and watch. Rat-a-tat-a-tat, the rapid drilling sound echoed through the trees, the light filtered down, but we never saw the bird. It was there when we came back, but again, hidden in the treetops.
There were the obligatory dog sightings, my favorite being the stag hound. I've heard of them, but never seen one. It was like a greyhound in shape and size, but the fur was rough and reddish. It looked like a stag. I would love to see it run.
A half mile from the peak, we entered upon a relentless uphill. I clambered over rocks, I paused at each little leveling out, each little turn (you couldn't call them switchbacks). At one point there was a meadow with scattered aspen, blue irises at their feet. That was good for a 2-minute photo op. Then I saw some more clematis, this time seemingly growing out of a fern. I commented on it, and G said, "You know, it's a vine." I said, "duh, for a smart woman I say stupid things." He declined the gambit.
I remember a hike years ago with my brother and my Dad. I must have been in my thirties, Dad recently retired. He and Mom came for the annual summer visit and my brother took us to a favorite trail in the Gorge. Mom stayed at the car, but Dad was a trouper and, with the promise of an extravagant waterfall just half a mile up, started out with us. The switchbacks came with inexorable regularity. Because of the dense undergrowth, you didn't know what was around the corner until you got there. Trudging up, you hoped in vain that at this one there would be the end, or at least a leveling off. Instead, the trail stretched upwards to another switchback. I still remember Dad gasping at each turn, "Oh my god." I can't remember if the waterfall was worth the trek.
I was channeling him on this last bit. Except my gasps were wordless, a long hoarse sigh, starting high, ending low.
G promised me a jaw-dropping vista of aspen in their new green, and that, plus pride kept me going. And the overlook was totally worth it. We looked to the west: while we couldn't see the plumes of the forest fire, we could not see much on the horizon but haze. But the aspen were lovely, and we looked at nautilus style fossils in the rocks and munched on nuts.
G turned on his GPS for the return trip: over 5 miles all told.
We're going out again tomorrow, and that'll be it for the season. But next year I'll go to the Pecos meadows and really see some wildflowers.
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