3/5/98 Carrizo Creek South
First morning. Camped near an abandoned corral and weird mini-Quonset hut looking thing made from a giant half drainage pipe, entirely rusted of course, as is everything metal around here - barbed wire, nails, obscure pieces of scrap. I guess somebody lived there at one time. The Quail are calling, the doves, all kinds of little birds. There's water nearby and extensive thickets in the moist creek bottom areas. Heard some coyotes a ways off.
Took photos of hills with yellow flowers in front. (see top of page)
Yesterday, driving out here, the power steering went out coming over the washboard road on Carrizo Creek - pump housing bolt holding it to the engine broke off - from vibration and over tightening I suppose. Took the belt out and drove the rest of the way with manual steering. When I got to the creek proper there was water and mud, so I stopped and hiked up about a mile to see what the situation looked like. The road cut north from the creek bed after a couple miles, so I went ahead and drove it.
Sunny calm morning.
The other excitement yesterday was on the way back from a walk with Rowan the dog in the evening, near sunset. I spotted a little rabbit and chased after it a bit for her benefit, she being new to the desert and camping and all. I wanted her to have some fun. A Cholla cactus grabbed her as she ran through a stand of them, so I spent the next hour holding her down extracting the clump and the spines. The sun was going down and here we were out in "the middle of nowhere", and she was not being entirely cooperative. But I had to get them out. All I had was the little penknife attached to my keys. The spines have little backwards pointing barbs that make them really stick in the skin. I discovered you can't just pull them slowly, you have to do it fast, in one motion, otherwise they pull the skin too much and she feels it.
It was pretty funny actually, in the sense that the "experiment" was successful: I had deliberately chosen to walk through the Cholla patch, to see how she'd do. Then I saw the rabbit and started running. Bright move. Well, now we both have a Cholla-in-the-dog experience out of the way. Like I always say, make as many mistakes as soon and as fast as you can!
Read Roger Mill's book, Sanity Insanity and Common Sense until 1 in the morning. Thought of a title for a book or essay: "The Simplicity of Happiness".
3/6/98 (back at home, recounting experiences of day before)
Yesterday the dog woke me at 5am with nuzzling and excitement and would not let me fall back asleep. I guess she liked being out there. She was so excited she was shivering. I thought what the heck, I'm not going back to sleep, it's starting to get light, I might as well get up.
It was still cold out, there was an orange-yellow glow on the dark blue horizon as I made tea; the stove's gas cylinder turned out to be on its last legs, so as it whimpered along trying to heat a cup of water, I put the camera on the tripod and slogged up the hill of the amphitheater-shaped area we were camped in and set up the camera for an early morning shot.
Went back down, and after what seemed like a long time sitting in the cold, was in the middle of having oatmeal and tea when suddenly the sun was up. I ran up the loose dirt and rocks, stiff from the cold and took some photos from a couple of vantage points, including one shot of the badlands with yellow flowers in front.
A while later , after a peanut butter sandwich and packing up camp a bit and shedding of clothes and changing into shorts as it got warmer, the dog and I took off on a hike towards the badlands to the North.
I saw some lovely and interesting flowers on the way such as Desert Lilies in the wash, with their twisted leaves and bluish-green colorations and white flowers trumpeting the early morning sun. We hiked up on top of some mud hills with a lot of slippery rocks and broken down sediments, and had a nice view of the area to the south. Photographed some unusual flowers - small clumps, close to the ground, growing on the exposed tops of the mud hills.
The sun was bright and hot, there was no wind and no shade, and the dog was panting quite a bit. I was concerned she might need water soon, so I headed back to camp. We had fun running down the soft purplish colored dried mud hill that formed the ridge of a badlands hill - I'd spotted some mini sand dunes below and so down we went. Sand had blown and concentrated below the steep mud hills, and had the classic sand dune shapes and ridges, and tracks of insects and small animals. Flowers were growing there in a little desert garden (white desert primrose?).
Back at the truck (easy to find because the huge gum tree growing incongruously nearby, out in the middle of nowhere, planted by the former tenants of this strange place no doubt), I gave the dog water and she slurped and drank heartily and then laid down in the shadow of the truck. After a short rest, I mixed some Gookinaid and we went for a another hike, this time to the West to check out an old dark brown-black wooden structure I'd spotted from the top of the amphitheater.
It turned out to be what I believe was the old Carrizo Stage Station. Parts of it were built from old Cholla branches, odd planks. There was a living room, exposed to the desert, with a rock fireplace, an outhouse, a small shower building. A ways off there was the eerie remains of an old rusted tractor, with the cylinder holes pointed at the sky like some weird mechanical skeleton, telling of the futility of ..something...pretending this is the East Coast farmland and not the desert perhaps. The ground was white - a coating of salts on the soil from evaporation.
Back at the camp I saw that there were some people - probably local retired folk - with folding chairs and baseball caps and coolers who'd come out in their dune buggies to have a picnic lunch under the gum tree. So much for our solitude. Since I was already packed and ready to go, we got in the truck and headed off, waving to them as I drove out.
I didn't know if I was following the exact same road as on the way in, but it didn't matter - we were headed west. I stopped near some interesting mud cliffs with a road heading up into them. We stopped and hiked up to investigate, the dog chasing a lizard into a Burrobush clump. It was a nice area- a possible place to camp in the future, with some sheltering cliffs and a view of the badlands to the East.
Back at the car, I continued driving out the Carrizo Creek road, waving to the locals as they passed on their way out. It became obvious that it was the same road I came in on, and soon we were driving through the marsh, with water flying up from the sides of the truck. The road broadened out into an expansive white wash, and I stopped after seeing a large stand of white and yellow flowers growing on some dunes. It was a lovely little environment, and I initiated a new roll of film in it's honor.
Soon the sign for the fork of the road that went through Canyon Sin Nombre appeared. What the heck I thought, it can't be that bad (I'd been concerned about the condition of the road in the canyon, as I'd never been through it, and the power steering was still out on the truck). Turned out to be a nice drive through an interesting area, with many tall mud cliffs and colorful formations. I stopped to have lunch in front of some big pillar-like cliffs , made a tuna sandwich, and said hello to a young couple apparently hiking down from the Carrizo Overlook area. They headed up the canyon between the cliffs near where I was parked.
After lunch and feeding the dog I packed water and camera and headed up the canyon myself. It turned out to be a slot canyon: narrow, twisted, very interesting, intriguing, striking. The dog had some trouble navigating up a couple of spots where there were boulders wedged in between the canyon walls (which were in places only 18 to 24 inches apart). She'd been an indoor dog before I'd adopted her not more than a week or two previously, and wasn't used to this sort of physical adventure.
At one such juncture, I tried to encourage her to climb up or jump up the rock, then decided to just go on ahead, thinking this would motivate her to follow me. Not long after I heard a sound that was like water or sand flowing. It started to sound more and more like an avalanche. Puzzled and concerned, I went back to investigate and discovered the dog had apparently panicked and tried to bypass the difficult rocks, gone a ways back down the slot and found a place to climb up the extremely steep slopes of the west bank of the canyon where it opened out a little, causing dirt and rocks to cascade down in an ever-increasing flow! I immediately yelled for her and she started back down, just as hurriedly as she'd gone up no doubt. But coming down she chose a path so steep it was nearly vertical! I was afraid she would break a leg and I'd have to carry her out (50 pounds dead weight). But she made it down unscathed, practically falling to the bottom of the slot in a cloud of dust. Whew!
Continuing up the canyon, it gave way to some pleasant little elevated washes with low hills to each side. The area had the feel of an elevated garden. I spotted the couple on the hill to the right. I climbed up the hill on the left and found a distinct trail leading along the top of the ridge, with a dramatic view down the left side (south) into the wash in Canyon Sin Nombre from whence we came). We continued up this trail - an interesting slow climb along a ridge with ever-increasing views of the desert to the north and northeast. Eventually we arrived at the top of a mountain where it was very windy but had a excellent view of the entrance to the canyon to the west (Carrizo overlook), and views to the north and east and down into the canyon below.
Since it was so windy we did not stay long, but headed back down, losing the trail at one point but finding it again by heading back towards the canyon side of the ridge. I then took a different route down the slot canyon, just to see what it was like, but it shortly joined the main canyon.
Back at the entrance to the canyon, met a nice but nervous middle aged man, obviously new to the desert who asked me many questions. "What's up there?" he said. "A slot canyon." I said, being helpful. "How is that formed? By water? Are these made by uplift?" I tried to rummage my knowledge bank - after a hike and being alone in the desert, it takes a while to be on the ball verbally. "Well, they're sedimentary, and the water shapes them.." I went on, trying to explain. I tried to encourage him to explore it, but he seemed afraid and gave some excuse. But who knows, maybe my friendly, fearless attitude and talking about how many interesting things there were to see will embolden him some day.
Waved to a motorcyclist heading down canyon who waved back. Took more pictures of flowers, looked for a lean-to made with Ocotillo whips and corrugated material in a canyon I'd spotted from the ridge trail. Up at the Carizzon Overlook, I helped an elderly man with wife in car who seemed lost and confused. I cheerfully showed him where to drive to get a nicer view. Maybe the desert will seem like less of a lonely, forbidding place to him now.
Eric Platt, 1998