Yes, Honey Ah, a three-day weekend! And not your average three-day weekend, either. There will be two football games to decide who will be in the Super Bowl, and my Eagles are looking good. I have all of the wood and materials I need to make the little ceiling over the bottom deck so my dog can stay outside when it rains, and I can get it done before Monday when rain is forecast. Just a nice, relaxing weekend. And now Grandma calls and says she wants to take the kids to her house at the beach for the weekend. I’m in heaven. Or am I? My wife is on the phone with Grandma making the arrangements, and now I see that little glow start on her face. Uh-oh! I see my weekend flashing before my eyes. It’s like your life flashing before your eyes, except shorter, and it’s stuff that hasn’t happened yet. As soon as the kids were out of the mix, I knew my weekend was doomed. Once she tracked me down, she said, “Since the kids are going to my mom’s house, do you want to go backpacking in Joshua Tree this weekend?” Suddenly football, hot dogs, chips, cokes, beers, sawing, painting, nailing—they’re all flashing before my eyes. I try to grasp for an acceptable excuse and can’t. I try not to whimper as I’m saying those two magic words, “Yes, honey.” As a certain pastor friend of mine, who will remain nameless, told me once, “You learn to use those two little words, your life becomes a whole lot easier.” Of course, he’s right, darn it. But you have to understand—my wife is seven years younger than me and weighs less than half of what I do. Every other day she runs from three to five miles of grueling hills at 5,000-feet elevation. She does this for fun, and she does it fast. So Saturday morning we’re in Joshua Tree National Park at a place called Rattlesnake Canyon, which is one of the most beautiful desert spots on this planet—the centerpiece of the Wonderland of Rocks. We were starting a loop through the canyon, then up to a plateau, and then back down to my car. The canyon part is four miles, and the plateau and downhill part at the end are eight miles. It took 11 hours to make the four miles through the canyon; it took less than four hours to walk the other eight miles. You know you’re in a rough place when the only signs of animals are bighorn sheep droppings. On backpacking trips, my wife has dragged me up Mt. Whitney, Convict Canyon in the eastern Sierra and up Mt. San Gorgonio, but this was the toughest hike ever. In those first 11 hours, we climbed thousands of boulders with full packs. In many places we had to drop the packs and scout out routes where we could make it through without either falling to our deaths or getting trapped. In many places we had to push and pull the packs up the rocks, then climb without them. Many times, we had to just turn around and go back. A map was of little use in this terrain. We knew we had to keep heading in a southwesterly direction, so we had to use a compass for navigation. My hands, arms and legs are bruised and cut, I can barely walk, I have microscopic cactus spines in my hand that I can’t find to remove, I split my pants from the knee all the way up the front and back, and I have this big bump sticking out of my right shoulder and can’t tell whether it is a bone, cartilage or a large knot of muscle—we’ll let the doctor decide. But I’m glad I did use the two magic words, “Yes, honey.” It certainly didn’t make my life a whole lot easier physically, but it was the most strenuous exercise I’ve had in years, and I probably lost 10 pounds. Best of all, I think she actually suffered as badly as I did for once on a backpacking trip, so we really bonded. I said to her that this was the roughest hike we’ve ever done. She corrected me, “No, this is the roughest hike we’ll ever do, that is unless we decide to climb Everest or something.” One great thing about living in Crestline is our proximity to the desert. We have spent a lot of time there since moving here. Everyone, every once in a while, needs to get far out into the desert and get close to it. Always go in the late fall, winter or very early spring to avoid the heat. We have found places in the desert that would amaze anyone with preconceived ideas about what a desert is. We have been turned back by deep snow and ice at more than 10,000 feet in the middle of Death Valley National Park, if you can believe that. In another place down low in Death Valley we hiked to a 40-foot waterfall that dropped into a pool big enough for swimming. Last weekend, we could have ice skated on a frozen pond in Joshua Tree called Willow Hole. We have visited the place they call the Trona Pinnacles. This place is so otherworldly that they used it as the setting for the 2001 movie, “The Planet of the Apes.” It was once under a 400-foot deep sea. This weekend, Rattlesnake Canyon, which is usually dry, was alive with streams, some of which were iced over. Never underestimate the desert. We stayed the night in Rattlesnake Canyon and the temperature dropped to the high 20s. By morning there was ice on our tent and our water was frozen. Always bring plenty of water and extra clothes. The high desert is a little like the Moon or Mars—you can be burning up in the sun, but just walk into the shade and stay for a few minutes and you’ll be freezing. The Eagles lost, and it never rained on Monday, so I’m glad I made the correct choice. I still think my wife gets into this backpacking thing a little too much. One of her favorite books is from the memoirs of a resident of the San Bernardino Mountains, Edna Caulkins-Price. Called Burro Bill and Me, it is the story of Edna and her eccentric husband, Bill, who quit their jobs during the Great Depression and began what would be a 10-year odyssey around the Southwestern deserts with their burros and scant belongings. When we were getting to end of our hike, I saw my car about 500 yards away, and said, “Boy it’s going to feel good to sit down in the car and head home.” Quoting from the book—jokingly, I think—my wife replies, “The soft life rots a man.” What can I say but, “Yes, honey.”
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