MY LAST FEW blog posts have been fairly serious, so here’s a light-hearted story to balance them out. It’s one of my favorite trail stories, as well as one of the unlikeliest and most wonderful moments I’ve ever experienced.
It took place in spring 2000 as I was plodding north up the Continental Divide in the United States, attempting to trek from the Mexican border to the Canadian, before continuing the following year through Canada and Alaska to Denali National Park.
And why was I doing such a thing? Well, because why not? Long walks were what I did.
I began on April first, a date deliberately chosen to poke fun at myself, unaware of just how appropriate the label ‘fool’ was. As a Brit used to green places I was pretty damn green myself when it came to the task I’d begun. This was my first visit to America and the American Southwest, and my first time desert walking, and the gear I carried demonstrated my inexperience. Because I saw the Continental Divide Trail as a mountain walk I’d packed accordingly. My rucksack was huge – overstuffed with gear for high peaks. I carried crampons and an ice axe for the big mountains of Colorado that I knew lay down the trail, and I wore hefty leather boots because that was what I’d always worn on big walks. Predictably, I paid for it in blisters, bruises, and sweat. There in arid New Mexico, suffering along beneath a ridiculous load, I looked comically out of place.
I swear I heard the desert coyotes laughing.
For much of the first six weeks I thought about water more than I’d ever thought about it before. Unlike during previous walks back in Europe, water wasn’t readily available. Because of it I was perpetually parched, seldom had enough to drink during the day or cook with in camp in the evenings, and the weight of it on my back when I had to carry it for long stretches crushed my shoulders. Basically, water dominated my days and dictated my route. I plotted my path around finding it, navigating to water sources marked on my 1:100,000 map, leapfrogging onwards from isolated wind pumps to stock tanks to wells. Occasionally, it came from ranches and towns, but because my goal was a ‘wilderness walk’ where I stayed as far from civilization as I could, such sources were rarely within reach. Mostly, I relied on remote sources… except they weren’t always as reliable as I’d have liked.
Five weeks into the journey, late on a searing-hot afternoon, I came to one such unreliable source. The day had been particularly long and especially taxing, most of it spent on monotonous dirt roads, hard on the feet and harder on the wilderness soul. I hadn’t found a usable water source since the previous morning and I’d become desperate to reach the next one: two wells prominently marked on my map. To reach them I pushed on hard through late afternoon heat when I’d have far preferred to collapse into some tiny patch of shade. But with the white sun beating down I slogged onwards, trusting the map, keenly anticipating the water I’d soon find.
Tragically, however, both wells were catastrophically dry.
The next guaranteed water source lay thirteen miles further in a small town, Cuba, an intimidating distance with twenty miles already on the clock. To reach Cuba I faced three miles on a dirt road, then ten along the shoulder of a paved highway. For a number of reasons, walking along it wasn’t an attractive proposition. For one thing, I loathed walking on paved roads even at the best of times, which this definitely wasn’t. For another, I was already painfully footsore, horribly dehydrated, and dismayingly weary. But most of all, I balked at the task because it was Friday evening and I’d been warned by a rare passing motorist the day before not to do exactly what I was now contemplating.
“The folks up there drink hard on Fridays, then cruise the highway looking for sport,” The motorist had said. He’d looked at me appraisingly, taking in my skinny frame, thoroughly out-of-place appearance, and quaint English demeanor. “Yep, looking for sport. I reckon you’d qualify.”
Naturally, the ominous words had caught my attention. I’d planned to heed them. But now, with the wells dry, what else could I do? I needed water. I was too dehydrated to camp a night without it. I had little choice.
I walked on, Cuba and the highway in my sights.
I followed the dirt road onwards through the empty landscape and down into a shallow sandstone canyon, severely reprimanding myself for my questionable life choices. Just WHAT was I thinking? Why am I here? Why am I walking? I felt profoundly foolish.
A mile from the paved highway, a dented, rusted pickup pulled over. The driver leaned out the window, draping a large well-muscled arm over the door. The man wore a large cowboy hat, out of which long jet-black hair spilled. He had a deeply-tanned face, a strong jaw, a tough no-nonsense aura, but he wore a kind, peaceful, and thoroughly bemused expression.
“What the hell you doing all the way out here?” he asked slowly as though he’d never seen a backpacker before, which to be fair he might not have. CDT thru-hikers weren’t as common in 2000 as they are now.
I explained.
The man introduced himself: “Martinez, but call me Marty”. He was the first person I’d seen all day and I was happy to fall into conversation with him, about the desert, his life as a rancher, my life on the trail. I felt truly good to talk, to escape my own thoughts, especially my anxiety over the evening ahead, although, inevitably, my waterless predicament came up, along with my walking-to-Cuba solution. Martinez frowned at it, and when finally I said: “well, I suppose I’d better be getting along,” he held up a hand to stop me.
“Nope,” he said firmly. He shook his head, stared at me thoughtfully, then spoke again. “Here’s another idea. How about you camp here? I’ll fetch you water. I live fifteen miles off, no distance in a truck. So, take it easy. I’ll be back in an hour.”
It was an extraordinary offer, and one I couldn’t refuse. Over previous weeks (and previous years while out on foot on other long journeys) I’d received many spontaneous gifts of kindness from strangers, and here was another – unexpected, generous, with nothing gained in return; the best side of humanity revealed. Marty was a true trail angel and the offer true trail magic.
I set up camp 100 yards from the dirt road, pitching my tent in the shade of an umbrella-like piñón pine, then waited nervously. I still felt some doubt; would the man come back? The kindness seemed too good to be true. Thirty miles of driving, just to bring drinking water to a stranger? Time passed. I sipped what little water I had left, a mere mouthful, and it was so warm from the day’s heat I reckon I could have brewed tea in it. It tasted foul. The hour passed. Then another fifteen minutes. How long should I wait? Had stopping been a mistake?
But I needn’t have worried. Marty returned, as promised. I heard his vehicle before I saw it – a distant engine drone and metallic rattle growing nearer as the truck negotiated the washboard dirt road – and then it appeared around a corner of the canyon, trailing a cloud of dust. I stepped into sight and waved. The truck rumbled off the road, across the sandy canyon floor in my direction, and finally pulled up.
“Sorry it took so long,” Marty said, as he stepped from the cab. Something in his expression caught my attention: a slight smile, as though suppressing laughter, as though he knew something funny that I didn’t. “Here,” he continued, “water’s in the back.”
And indeed it was: five quarts of ice-cold water, more than I could ever drink.
But also, more than just fresh drinking water, far more: also, several five-gallon plastic bottles filled with piping hot bathwater, a large metal bath tub, a clean white towel and, to cap it all, a slab of new soap, still in its wrapper.
I stared at it all, utterly blown away.
Marty’s next line was a classic. “I’m not saying you stink or anything,” he said, grinning, “but here, have a bath!”
He laughed as I struggled for words.
“Well,” he continued, “I tried to think about what you might want. I’ve done my share of hiking and I love this tin bath after long trips. So, here, let’s lift it down.”
We eased the heavy bath from the truck and set it up close to my tent. Marty shrugged away my thanks as though his kindness was no big deal, something anyone or everyone would do.
“I’ll come by and collect the bath in the morning,” he said, before driving off.
Within a few minutes I was alone. Desert silence reigned. After a long swig of the sweetest water I’ve ever tasted I poured the hot water into the bath, stripped, climbed in, scrubbed myself clean in soft-scented soap, then lay back in water almost too hot to bear. I stared around in awe at the sandstone canyon as though seeing it for the first time, feasted upon the finest sunset of the trip so far… and absolutely roared and roared and roared with laughter at the improbable gift the trail had served up.
Walking across America didn’t get any better than this. This was why I was doing it.
