Camping, Wicked Style

First off, I would just like to say that the squirrels in Bandelier park do not look like the squirrels in the picture I posted on Wednesday. There are no cute evening gowns or jewelry or boy squirrels wearing fedoras. There are, however, Abert squirrels, which look like this:

Fetching little fellow, isn't he? And if you say "Abert" like you're French instead of an Appalachian hilbilly, it sounds way more sophisticated and downtown. You could almost imagine encountering this squirrel on your way to the theatre in New York. The Abert squirrels are very busy from their long days of begging for food and often have to throw themselves down for little rests:


Poor things.

This camping trip was another raging success, with nothing more severe than bug bites and sunburns as souvenirs. This was almost not true, however, and that is the story I would like to tell you about today--my venture down the Trail of Near Death Experiences.

Hiking is my friend, and I was looking forward to spending some quality time with it. I went on a short expedition to see the ruins of the Ancestral Pueblo homes. The people here lived both in condo caves along the canyon wall and manufactured housing such as this:


This was a lovely sightseeing tour, but I ached to do more. The best hike that I could find in the brochure was a 3-mile roundtrip hike into the canyon to see a couple of waterfalls. Sounded lovely and just about the right length, too. So while my camping partner propped herself up in a shady spot with her notebook and camera, I trotted on down the lane for my hike. The sign at the trailhead gave a beautiful description of what I could expect, including highly motivational pictures. The sign mentioned that if I went just one more mile down the trail, I could march right down to the Rio Grande. My heart skipped a beat--the Rio Grande! I could walk to the Rio Grande! This sounded romantic and hazy and like something you would read in a Spanish novel, and I wanted to be the person who walked to the Rio Grande. Never mind that I could drive 7 miles from my house and walk right up to it there. That's not the point. I figured that adding on a couple of miles to the trip wouldn't do too much damage to my timeline if I hustled. So off I went.

The first part of the hike was soft and luscious and shaded. I encountered a few hot, sweaty, nearly dead people coming back up the trail, but I dismissed them as lowlander weaklings. I was superior to them and could probably do this whole trail backwards on roller skates. Not wanting to seem snobbish, though, I smiled nicely and made pleasant comments about the trail and the weather. They didn't respond, but maybe that was because they were so busy gasping for air.

Now, we could go on like this for a while because it really was a lovely trail. Let's fast forward a bit, though. Because it was a canyon trail, the hike out was all downhill. I prefer to do my uphill work first and reap my downhill reward later, but a girl can't be choosy when it comes to Mother Nature. In the back of my mind was the awareness that the trip back would require a little more cooperation from my cardiac and respiratory systems, but I delicately put that bit of information into my personal Bin of Denial and just kept on truckin'.

At some point the trail transitioned from soft earth covered in pine needles to something like the trail that Frodo and Sam took on their way to return the ring to the lava pit. And, because I had started the trail at 11:30, there was lots and lots of sun. Another niggling thought poked me in the back of the head, and it was the realization that I would be coming back uphill in direct sunlight. Without a hat, because it was sitting in my closet at home. And without sunscreeen, because it was sitting in my bag in the car. (Sometimes I can be just the tiniest bit impetuous.)

So down I go, down, down, down, and the payoff here was two very beautiful and splashy waterfalls. They could only be viewed from a distance, but the psychological influence of being near such cool water dropped my internal temperature a few degrees. And what did I care anyway, I was still going downhill!

Having seen the second waterfall, I knew I was just a mile away from the Rio Grande. Hustling as fast as I could over rocks and scratchy bushes, I finally caught my first glimpse of the river:

Oh, so lovely, so lovely! I made my way down to the bank and took a few minutes to bask in its magnificence and to give thanks for the abundance of water rushing through it. It was a sight to behold, indeed.

Giving a deep sigh of satisfaction, I turned to start my return trip. This was the view I encountered:


Oh, dear. I would like to remark here that those trees are dead. Dead, dead, dead, and it gave me this really funny sensation in the pit of my belly like maybe nobody ever made it out of this place alive and they were all buried under those trees. Then the Wizard of Oz flying monkey song started playing in my head and I was reminded of how very nice it would be if I could turn the soundtrack to my life OFF sometimes. However, I armed myself with a Good Attitude and began a brisk walk uphill. La dee da, la dee da, mind over matter, mind over matter--everything was going well and, happily, the monkey song started fading out.

As I took a curve in the path, I heard a sudden sound in the brush below my feet. In that nanosecond before the eyes connect with the brain and knowledge ensues, I was puzzled because something was on my path and moving and that didn't seem right. Then the connect happened and I let out a loud gasp as my head grocked to it--SNAKE!!! BIG SNAKE!! BIG 14-FOOT LONG PINK SNAKE WITH 4 INCH FANGS! My fight or fright instinct kicked in and I froze in place (other people have fight or flight--I've got fight or fright. My ability to flee a scary scene, whether real or dream, is nil. I'll just stand there while death takes me.) Fortunately, the saying that we scare snakes more than they scare us was true in this instance. That bugger took off into the brush without so much as a backward glance or an, "I'll get you next time, missy, and your little dog, too!" Now I really wanted to run the trail back, but was caught in the dilemma of speed vs. the element of surprise. I did not want to surprise any more snakes on the trail, so I started singing and coughing and whistling and reciting poetry as I speed-walked up the hill.

Before long I encountered a family on the trail. They were headed to the river, so I apprised them of the snake situation and urged them to be careful. This was the conversation we had:

Me: "Just so you know, I saw a snake on the path down there so be careful."

Man (looking remarkably undisturbed by my revelation): "Oh, yeah, what did it look like?"

Me, in my head: IT WAS 14 FEET LONG AND PINK AND SLITHERY AND HAD 4 INCH LONG FANGS AND IT CALLED ME BY NAME!! AAAAGGGGHHH!!!

Me, out loud: "Oh, it was 4 or 5 feet long."

Man: "Brown?"

Me: "Well, um...yeah." Or pink.

Man: "It was probably a bull snake, then. They're not dangerous. I was down here last week and saw three rattlers on the trail."

You know, the only thing worse than nearly being kilt by a snake is having your near-death experience poo-pooed by a man in stupid ugly shorts and then having him one up you with his "I saw three rattlers" story. Whatever, ass biscuit, if you need to be the bigger outdoorsman then go ahead. When that bull snake wraps around your testicles and yanks, don't come running to me for help.

So I continued my uphill trudge with disappointment in my heart that I hadn't actually almost died from the snake attack. Before long I had returned to the rocky stretch of Mordor and realized now that I was going to have the pleasure of scaling it in the full sun. And even though I could see the lovely waterfalls, I couldn't reach them and it is at this point where I believe the delusions started. I can no longer tell you for sure what happened, but I can tell you that it was very, very hot and very, very uphill. Also, I learned that you should never play chicken with a couple of rabid squirrels on a hiking trail. You will lose. And if you hear strange bird screams echoing off the canyon walls, assume it is a portent of death and scoot on down the trail as fast as your hands and knees will carry you.

By the end I had lost about half my body weight from the sweating. As I crawled the last few steps to the end of the trail, I experienced a vision, a vision of a giant-sized cup of ice water. I thought, If this is death, then death looks pretty good and I'll take it. And so I wiped they salty sweat from my eyes and when I looked again, I saw that it was indeed true and there was an air-conditioned car waiting for me and I knew that I would live.

And I did. And so ends the saga of the Trail of Near Death Experiences.