Leap Day

                                                                           

            The weather during the last week of February had been brutal.  By that, I mean it had been truly beautiful.  That is to say, the weather had been so beautiful for February as to be brutal to one's state of mind.  Spring fever was running rampant everywhere.  It seemed to affect everyone and by no means did it avoid me.  I truly believe any February day the high temperature exceeds seventy-nine degrees should be a work holiday.  Needless to say, very few employers agree, not excluding my own. 

            I was operating under this state of protracted distress when it suddenly occurred to me that the globe and its community of men were approaching leap day; that extra day occurring but once every four years as a correction to the error of the ancient designers of our modern western calendar.  Bestowed with all the opportunity an extra day might offer, I resolved to spend it engaged in activity that could be construed by no one as remotely constructive, industrious or useful.

            I chose, with the aforementioned goal (or rather non-goal, as a goal implies constructive, industrial or useful intent), to go to the desert and do whatever struck me as being completely without purpose.  Or rather, without any purpose other than being purposeless of other than itself.  Essentially, I was going to do something, so that if a stranger had witnessed me thus engaged would immediately say to himself, "What is he doing?"  And the reply would of course be, "Nothing!”  Rarely has such effort been applied in the name of non-achievement.

            Armed thus with noble non-intent, I struck forth for the desert.  And I arrived at a place, so colorfully inviting on the map, named Painted Gorge.  Now this gorge is quite an interesting geological phenomenon.  My guess would be that it ran about a mile in its serpentine length.  It was a good sixty to seventy feet from floor to cliff top, the walls being quite sheer.  The coloring of the walls was extremely uniform in three distinct layers of earth:  The bottom layer rusty red, indicating a high iron content; the middle layer pale and chalky, suggesting limestone; and finally, the uppermost dark brownish gray, as if laid there by some ancient volcano.  All in all, it gave one the impression he was walking through a trough recently scooped out of a carton of Neapolitan ice cream!

            As I approached the closed end of this image from a dream of the non-committal, I noted that it was shaped unlike most ordinary gorges (or what I in my limited experience purported to be ordinary, for certainly I have not seen every gorge, nor would I believe I have seen a majority of the gorges, quite clearly I am sure that I have seen only a few of the gorges of the world, and this makes my opinion quite unremarkable, but I am the author of this story, so...)  Rather than continually narrowing, as most gorges do (No, we're not going to go through that again!), this Painted Gorge opened into a roughly circular shape of perhaps forty yards in diameter.  And even stranger, is that the closed end of the gorge was of a completely different geological type; this was sandstone and uniformly tan in color (to perfect the analogy, English Toffee ice cream).

            At the southern point of this circle was a waterfall; dry of course.  But this fall was at least sixty feet in height and came from the sandstone side of the terrain.  At the foot of the fall, the seasonal water had created a bowl approximately twelve feet in diameter and five feet deep.  The bottom two thirds of this bowl was still mud from the recent rains.  The water had undercut the cliff that made up the fall so that this bowl (or, if it had been full of water, pool) was half covered by a roof of sandstone.

            As I stood under this roof, I wondered, "What idiot had thrown those large rocks into the mud bowl?", and more importantly," Why?"  After some time, because I like to give questions of such great import abundant consideration, I realized that these rocks had not been thrown into the mud, but had simply been following Sir Isaac's laws regarding the tendency of bodies to attract one another.  It was upon this foundation of thought that I built my second hypothesis considering this phenomenon, "This is not a good place for me, or anyone else had they been present, to stand."  So I moved.

            It then occurred to me that there was not much else to do there in Painted Gorge.  But still I was yearning for adventure, not yet satisfied with the amount of nothing I had thus far achieved.  So I determined, in a rather tentative way, that I would like to see this (dry) waterfall from the top.  Now it happened that there were large boulders arranged on top of each other just to the right of the fall, as I was facing it, which seemed from my vantage to lead to the top of the cliff.  And it appeared to me that a skilled man might climb these boulders until he reached the top.  I decided to try it anyway.

            If you have ever poured butter toffee peanuts from one jar into another, you will have noticed that the smaller peanuts and pieces end up on the bottom, while the larger pieces stay on top.  That is, quite obviously, because the smaller pieces sift through the spaces left when the larger pieces find resting places against one another.  The same is true of boulders, whether in a jar or not.  Therefore, as you climb higher, you begin to note that the distance from the top of one boulder to the next increases proportionately with your distance from the base of the pile.  You also find that the relative steepness of the boulders is increasing as well.  After you have hoisted yourself up several boulders now averaging a diameter greater than your own height, you begin to realize that you will not return to the floor of the gorge by the same route.  Not at a safe and reasonable velocity, anyway.

            I was now standing atop the narrow edge of a boulder, narrow defined as three inches.  The edges of my Vibram soled boots were clinging to the clear desert air no matter which direction I turned my feet.  To one side, the up side was a large rock with a wide flat perpendicular face about four and one-half feet in height.  The top of this rock was broad, flat and extremely inviting.  And I could see from here that the next effort in attaining the top of the cliff would be an easy one from there.  On the other side, the down side was a relatively sheer drop of about fifteen feet.  So sheer that I would hardly have skinned knee or elbow en route my broken back.  I had three choices:  One was scaling that boulder, with no toe holds, on the way to the top; two was retracing my path back to the valley; three was hoping that whoever found my skeleton stuck in one of these crevices would appreciate the .45 pistol I had left them and make up a damned exciting story about my death that would someday become legend.  Not being one to give much countenance to legends, I chose to go up.

            The next issue was how to gain the top of this rock I was leaning against.  I decided the safest approach was to turn my back to it, place my hands on its flat top and hoist my rear up until I was sitting on it.  In the first attempt, my canteen caught against the face of the rock greatly retarding my upward progress.  Now I love roller coasters, but being suspended in mid-air hoping your boots are able to find that narrow foothold again is a totally different thrill.  I determined that it would be necessary to remove my gun belt, thereby eliminating the impedance of the aforementioned canteen to accomplish this feat.  As I laid the belt on the top of this rock I thought, "If I fail at this, the guy who finds my skeleton will probably not find my gun and will never make up a damned exciting story about my death;" so much for legend.

            As I stood on the newly acquired height, I noticed that the view of Painted Gorge below was much more enjoyable from atop a broad flat platform.  Or maybe it was because I was now able to wipe the sweat from eyes and no longer had to fight off the effects of vertigo.  I buckled my gun belt and continued to the top of the cliff.  Life is better (or at least somewhat less anxious) at the top.

            The top of the cliff was much different than the floor of the gorge.  There was quite a bit of vegetation and a good deal of it bore blooming flowers.  The topography was just slightly rolling for several yards to the west and then broke further upward into rocky hills.  On the south side was a wall of approximately eight feet.  I would guess that this wall was carved out of the sandstone by water working its way downhill from the hills to the west.  For some reason the composition of this wall was more resilient than the ground upon which I was standing.  This formation would cause water to be diverted to the east forming the falls and Painted Gorge. I walked over to the top of the falls and looked down.  I determined that I was thankful at not being some flotsam riding a flash flood out of the hills.

            My attention now turned to the task of returning to Painted Gorge (that's where I left my truck... and lunch).  In that I was not going to scale the boulders, I started to search for another route.  I had noticed a trail breaking into the gorge from the north about halfway in.  I decided to move across country in a northerly direction in hopes of intersecting this trail.  To do this I had to zigzag back and forth through washes and ravines.  After about fifteen minutes I found the trail.  It was an easy walk back to the gorge.  I did note some other trails in the hills to my north that would be an interesting trip, in a jeep.

            Having finished lunch, I began examining a map of the area.  It showed an inviting dirt road that led to the north.  This road eventually turned into a jeep trail that continued north to intersect the Overland Stage Route.  I decided, still hoping to do more nothing, to drive up this road until it turned into jeep trail.  The map, however, did not show the myriad of false trails that          broke from this road.  And of course, not knowing which of these trails was true; I had to make a choice at each fork.  What do you think are the odds of choosing the wrong fork every time? Well, this experiment demonstrated a probability of near 100%.

            After an hour of testing road after road, and seeing much interesting scenery, I must have made at least three miles of true progress.  At this point the road (or maybe the jeep trail, for there are no signs to indicate the end of one and the beginning of another) began to switchback up a rather formidable mountain.  I determined that the road was still navigable by a truck like mine and began the climb.  As I negotiated the switchbacks, they became steeper, narrower and sharp to the point that I had to make the turns in two or more moves.  The composition of the road was changing from hard packed dirt to loose gravel.  I was pretty sure I had found the jeep trail.

            With the negotiation of each switchback, I considered the possibility of making the next one my turn around point.  But I had put a lot of effort into the nothing I had accomplished thus far and was determined to continue on.  Finally I reached a switchback so narrow, steep and gravelly that my truck would not continue up the trail.  I got out to examine the situation.  Dying of starvation sitting in the truck might have been the smarter course of action.

            The rear wheels were sitting in ruts nearly to the axle.  Behind the truck was about ten feet of road before a drop of several hundred feet.  The obvious choice was to proceed up the mountain.  My truck not being able to see the logic of the obvious could purchase the traction necessary to advance up the grade.  I was therefore faced with two options.  The first was to get that truck turned around and head back down the mountain.  The second was to walk out and seek help.  The only thing worse than walking out defeated is walking out defeated and then having some asshole laugh at you while negotiating the price for winching your truck out of a situation you should have been smart enough to avoid in the first place.  I guess I was born to the cavalry because I could not bring myself to walk out. 

            The effort involved in turning my truck is more than written words can describe.  You really need hand gestures.  But it involved moving the truck blindly backwards a few feet, shifting rocks around so I could get it going forward, and then repositioning the rocks so I could get it going backwards toward the precipice again.  Each time I moved backward I was aware that the slightest over application of throttle might result in a large insurance benefit... to my parents.  The tires were fighting for traction; sweat was running into my eyes, the smell of burning rubber almost made me forget the dryness of my mouth.  I wondered that great question asked by all pioneers, "Am I gonna get outta this alive?"

            As I stood there leaning against my truck (now pointed safely down the trail) emptying my over taxed bladder, I noticed how beautiful was the sunlit valley below. I was reminded of something I had read by Louis L'Amour, “Adventure is just a romantic name for trouble. It sounds swell when you write about it, but it’s hell when you meet it face to face in a dark and lonely place.”  Deciding I had finally accomplished nothing, I climbed into my truck and went home.