March 8: Santa Ritas

Day 7: Snow

I wasn’t surprised that the rain had turned to snow, but I didn’t expect the colors.

 I opened the tent flap to see snow all around me. Great gobs of white on top of the rust red of the rocks and grey green of the juniper and pine. The clouds were thick and gray in the canyon below me, but with hints of white, pink and yellow where the sun was starting to peak through. I was warm and happy with coffee, cereal and the tangerines Mom had brought me the day before.

Everything was dusted with a confectioners sprinkle of snow. Only the trail itself stayed warm and dry. After two hours of hiking in a gradually warming morning, the first drop of melting snow hit the trail in front of me. The drops turned to clumps that fell from the trees, and soon the forest around me filled with the sound of falling water. By the time I got to Bear Spring, the creek was running higher than anything I had seen.

 I made great time – hiking downhill helped. Soon I was zooming along through mining country and grasslands at 5000 feet. No hikers, but saw more Border Patrol than I’d ever seen before. Some hikers had spotted 10 refugees on the trail the night before, and the agents were trying to track them down. I saw or heard at least a half dozen Border Patrol SUV’s searching. Finally a BP helicopter flew about 500 feet over my head and hovered over the rim of one of the canyons.

 The final miles were easy: through rolling hills, grassland and mining country. Today it was beautiful. A hundred years earlier the countryside was covered with mines. They used hydraulic mining – blasting hillsides with pressurized water and sifting the resulting detritus for gold and silver. The rusted pipes, mine entrances and dams were still there.

At 4pm, sun still in the sky but low, I walked into Kentucky Camp. A group of old mining buildings: one of which I stayed in. A caretaker who couldn’t hear (I had to get 5 feet away for him to hear me) gave me the correct combo and told me the nuns in the abbey down the road were singing at 5pm if I wanted to join him. Sounded good but I needed to dry my tent, make some dinner and get some rest.