I sleep a Sleeping Beauty sleep, and when I wake up I am reborn. 

I speculate that today will be a day full of wet feet. I have exactly one application of KT tape left for my ankle. I know it doesn’t stay well in water, but there’s no choice but to apply it now. I tape it and rub it hard, trying to secure it as much as possible.

I need you to last two more days I whisper. There’s gonna be a lot of water. I say this to myself fast, as if I am apologizing.

We set out early, picking our way through wide open forest separately. The trail is gloriously clear and then it is nothing. There is no scenery to orient to, no topographical change to guide us in the distance. I feel like I am going to die in the forest, walking around and around in circles forever. When I do make it back to the line that is the trail, it is reflected by absolutely nothing on the ground. This is the way of the MRT from beginning to end. An enigma, a mystery, a gesture, an idea.

I walk towards Carrot who is caw caw-ing for me in the distance and when I find her I sit down and grump my way through a granola bar. I am fucking irritated.

We continue cross country. We have lots of options today: the track Brett and Tree made, an alternate discovered by another hiker, a deviation Carrot is interested in exploring, a recommendation from the postmaster. Ultimately, we go with Brett and Tree’s line, we know it’s doable because a couple of other MRT hikers did it a couple of days ago, in the freezing rain no less. Carrot says if she doesn’t try it, she’ll always wonder.

We drop down into our first canyon of the day, Auger canyon. The canyon is wide and rocky, and dotted at first with shallow scuzzy pools and then with pools deeper and deeper, embedded in slick rock. It’s slow going and peaceful down there and very, very warm. We are considerably lower in elevation now (just 4500 feet when we’ve recently been anywhere from 7000-9000) and sweat drips down, braiding trails down my back.

As the pools get deeper and wider we debate whether or not we should try to avoid them. As a test, we climb up a canyon wall, then way down on an animal trail, to avoid the first one that looks deeper than is fun. I am sweaty and winded by the effort and it’s clear: avoiding wet feet is absolutely not worth it. Tacking on elevation gain and time to stay dry just isn’t in the cards.

We have our lunch at a pair of cabin ruins, one just a facade in the wash, sloughed away by the elements and one very obviously used and maintained. Inside we find mouse traps,  a pantry fully stocked with canned food, dish soap, wet wipes, dishes. We eat lunch outside, lazily shoving chocolate and chips into our mouths and marveling at all the different ways people can have a home. Carrot and I have lived together for the past six months, and we’ve decided it’s not ideal anymore. We are both very much in search of a home now, and we think about what we might like often. I don’t want a cabin in the wash, but I’d love something like this right in Tucson. Maybe in the backyard of some friends.

“I hate all of this food” I say— and I really do, too. 35 days of this and all I want is a vegetable. Okay, okay- also maybe a donut.

After lunch, we find a cairn marking where our trail picks up again and cut cross country up and over into a new canyon, this one a confluence of Dutch Blue Creek and Ash Creek. This canyon winds narrowly, pools of water unavoidable but pleasant enough. We’re walking almost completely in water, now. My KT tape is in tatters, but I am crossing my fingers. My ankle is either fine or not fine, and I don’t have much choice about whether or not to walk on it either way.

Thunder crashes and lightening rings out. Carrot and I chat back and forth over the roar. Should we be scared? We don’t really know. We decide not to be, the rain is light and a flash flood seems almost impossible.

Still, I toggle back and forth between enjoying the drama of the thunder and lightening and letting it freak me out. I have never seen anything like this in person, these secret canyon walls with their pools and their algae and their slick rock. The ground beneath the water is slippery and I try to glide my feet up the creek, going with the instability instead of working against it. I love this canyon. I hate this canyon. It’s beautiful! It’s never going to end.

We hike for 12 hours. We go 12 miles. An entire day of one mile an hour terrain— something I haven’t experienced before.

Tomorrow is our last day on the MRT. After that I’m going to sleep forever and ever and ever.

—

The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

We wake up groggy.

It’s six AM. We are 2.5 miles away from the Blue post office. The Blue post office opens at nine. This morning, for the first time in a long while, there’s really no point in rushing.

And so we don’t. We meander through breakfast, take our time packing up. Our campsite is glorious and we take a few moments and appreciate it extra.

This morning just isn’t one for going fast.

Which is a good thing. I am exhausted. I am exhausted physically and mentally. I am finding it very hard to make myself go under the circumstances, even though we are walking a gentle dirt road, some of the easiest tread on the whole MRT.

We are three days from being done and I can feel every bit of the 450 miles aching through me. Some of it is in my joints, some scratches on my skin, and some deep in my muscles. There aren’t any words for it really. I’m just kind of…done.

The Blue post office is great. It’s tiny, fits no more than just Carrot and I in the whole dang thing. Mona, the postmaster knows Debbie and Aaron, our ride to the trailhead yesterday, and she was just waiting for us to arrive. She knows the Eastern end of the MRT well, rides it on horses. She tells us secrets of the land.

Once we’ve sorted all of our food (some into bags, some right back into the box to feed Mona’s chickens) we continue our road walk. I’d hoped the few hours of easy terrain would buoy me, but I am heavy and solemn, plodding along as I go. During lunch I shove salt and pepper kettle chips in my face and wonder what’s wrong with me. Maybe all the weird gluten I’m eating. Maybe not enough sleep last night. Maybe, again, I have PMS.

Our post lunch hike can be summed up in two words: a climb. We climb 2000 feet in 5 miles. Sometimes our climb is gentle forest, sometimes it’s exposed ridges. The trail, mercifully, is well maintained and I turn my brain off and just let my body do what it needs to do, so long as we still get the job done. I climb slowly. I climb taking a lot of breaks, sometimes with Carrot and sometimes without. I climb without paying a lick of attention to the scenery around me. I don’t have to feel good to climb up this hill I tell myself. And it’s true, I really don’t.

At the ten mile mark, I hit a saddle— and just like that, we’re going down. At first the trail is rocky and technical, but almost immediately it turns into a gentle pine needle covered downward slope. Storm clouds and deep thunder threaten, I stop and repack my gear into trash compactor bags before sealing it in my pack, and just as I cinch it closed, the sky opens up and thick rain pelts me. I’m two miles from camp and as soon as I’m wet I find it in me to pick up the pace for the rest of the way.

I never, ever hike faster than when I’m uncomfortable.

We were hoping to camp at mile 12.9 of section seven, but when I arrive there are five men and all of their horses in our spot. They have a rip roaring campfire before the sun has even gone down and loud country music playing. “I think that’s a lady!” one of them whisper yells as I pass and I want to gut him like a fish. Women hike, my dude. It isn’t so shocking.

Carrot is setting up the shelter, chatting merrily as she does, tolerating my sullen mood with nice jokes and compliments. I feel very close to Carrot, almost closer than we are in our regular at home lives, and I say so. She says she feels the same way, we agree that we’re so lucky to have hiked all this time together, to have become one another’s nature companions.

At last, my dark mood shifts. I feel warm and happy eating my transcendent pile of greasy noodles out here in the nature. Today, I didn’t feel like hiking, but probably tomorrow I will….right?

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

Debbie and Aaron saw us in the general store. They saw us write a note asking for a ride 30 miles south right back to where we bailed to get food. We said we’d pay 40$.

Debbie and Aaron are hiking types, so when we left, they discussed it and found us down the road. “We will give you a ride!” they said. “Keep your money!”

We’re so lucky to have found Debbie and Aaron. The next day at seven AM they drive us to our spot and tell us everything we could need to know about the area. They LOVE this little section between the Black and Blue rivers so much, they know it like the back of their hands. Debbie is a writer and tells us about the book she’s working on. We all debate the merits of self publishing vs. traditional publishing, the sky is blue and gold outside, and I am happy.

My pack is full with a lot of food and all of my new layers and I’m happy about that too. I’d been so cold and stressed last week, and just like that, I took care of business and fixed the problem. It’s very, very easy as a thru hiker to talk oneself out of getting the things that you need. Every single item for comfort is weight on your pack, so one is constantly debating NEED vs. want. But you know what? Fuck it. I’m almost 40 days into this hike. My back is strong. I can have an extra fleece.

We descend into Raspberry Creek first thing. The terrain is significantly easier today, maybe because it’s warm, maybe because this side of the trailhead is better maintained, maybe because I’ve had time to rest. We stroll casually on pine needle covered path and I zone out. It’s mother’s day, which is a hard day for me because my mom and I do not have a relationship. I wish I didn’t mind, it’s honestly much better for me to autonomously care for myself, but Mother’s Day always feels like a painful barb from the universe. Everyone posts their nice mom pictures and says their nice mom things. I, meanwhile, sit and stew. I remember how hurt I was by my mom. How much shit I’ll probably always have to work through because of it.

But today I’m free! I have no service, I don’t see a single person’s social media. Once we hit the creek, we find a mess of overgrown thorns and blowdowns, with the instructions to make our way down, whatever way provides the path of least resistance. We do just that, making an imaginary trail where there is none. It’s slow going, 1.5 mile an hour terrain and we are scratched, poked, grabbed and prodded by the flora as usual. I slip a lot. I feel clumsy but also like it could be so much worse. It HAS been so much worse. This is like a 3 on the MRT pain scale. It’s slow and it’s fine.

Just after lunch we climb steeply up above the creek, then descend steeply to where the creek opens up and meets the Blue River. All around are sandy plateaus, open rock fields, sage brush. The Blue River is very calm and clear and warm and low. We cross it a few times, and it is fine. Compared to the Black River, the Blue River is a kiddie pool.

Above the Blue, we hit a dirt road. A wide flat thing for easy walking, with perhaps some of the most stunning views we’ve seen since Sedona. Red rock spires! Storm clouds reflecting golden light! Secret caves! Rocks of unbelievable mass!

I eat snacks and I feel high off of all of it. The trail. My love. This fucked up country with its beautiful nature. The universe. So many things.

We’re tired! Our bodies feel ok, we could go farther tonight, but our resupply boxes are to be picked up from the town of Blue in the morning, and the post office doesn’t open until nine. The post office is on trail, and just a few miles away. We decide to camp early, to boil our water for instant refried beans in the sun light and marvel at all we’ve done and how little we have left.

52 more MRT miles ’til dogs. I cannot wait.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

We have a very strange night.

The zippers of the tent won’t zip all the way.

Three mosquitos buzz inside our tent and if the zippers won’t zip that means…we’ll die? A slow irritating death of zzzzzzz right by our ears, accompanied by many small inconvenient bites? Ew. No! Carrot frantically sews one half of the tent door with dental floss and then the other side won’t come to meet it. We lube the zippers. We clean them with a wet wipe. Eventually, we give up.

A cow’s scream pierces through the night. Imagine if you will, a cow saying MOOOOOO. now, in the same dopey voice, take the pitch up six octaves and imagine AHHHHH AHHHH AHHHHH ringing out through the pitch black of night again and again. A comrade joins the screamer, huffing and grunting and kicking rocks. We are afraid the cows will charge us, and so shaking, we exit the tent, clap our hands. Carrot yells “BACK OFF COWS” into the night. Eventually, they lapse into silence.

It rains. It rains a little at first and then, the rest of the night it pounds intense fists of water upon us, never ceasing. We rouse at six, long past the first light, and both of us have hardly slept. My body hurts everywhere, from my sinuses to my thumbs, which have both cracked and split. I am caked in mud and the entire world around me is very wet.

And still, it’s time to hike.

We pack slowly and are ready to go by 7:50. The rain has subsided and we have just eight miles to the trailhead where we’ll hitch to alpine. We have a little food, and we’re hoping the hitch is quick. I hate the idea of running out of food, just the thought of it. I’m already hungry and it makes me feel feral.

We hike down off our saddle and into a jungle. It looks nothing like Arizona here! It’s like Washington in October, like Kauai in August. It’s wet and lush and beautiful. There’s a small longing inside of me burning to appreciate the jungle, but every bit of my life force is just gone from deep fatigue and hunger and moisture and anxiety. I have no effort left to give even my enthusiasm, which feels dark, man. Where’d I go?

We gather water from picturesque creeks flowing into gentle spouts created by leaves and sticks. We climb down eroded trail, up no trail at all. Down rocks, up pine needle path. Down and up and down and up and down and up. I grow deeply winded on the uphill and deeply angry on the down. We’re just going to go back up again!!!!! Why descend!?

Food. I need food. I have only a pack of gluten free graham crackers in my hip belt and we’re climbing. It’s impossible to eat something so dry when climbing up a steep hill and so I wait until we go back down (because of course we will). By the time we make it, I am shaky. I trip over my feet. “I gotta eat but I can’t walk this fast while I do” I say. Carrot urges me ahead of her, asks me to set the pace. I’m stumbling as I eat and when I’m done I feel a little better. Don’t let your blood sugar get that low I tell myself. You know better.

And I do! But on this hike I have to eat more regularly then I would have guessed. It still surprises me just how much I need to eat. And how to eat enough while also worried about running out of food? That’s a riddle that I just can’t answer.

As we go up and down, the rain intensifies. The terrain levels up, turning to dog shit mud AKA the kind of mud that builds up and sticks to your shoes, making them grow heavy. I trip on a branch and despite myself, I hurl a scream and sob. Rain, exhaustion, constantly getting pinched and prodded and hurt and poked for almost five weeks. Not enough food, PMS, cold. This is my hiking edge. I’ve found it.

But we can’t stop. It’s raining hard, we’re less than two miles from our hitch spot, if we sit still we risk hypothermia. We each have one dinner left and we promise ourselves we’ll make them as soon as we get to the trailhead. I sob while I walk, refusing to stop going. Carrot is kind, but I am in a cave of despair, a wounded animal. I’m so angry. For our last two miles, I have tunnel vision.

We make it. At the trailhead we run to the vault toilet to shelter us. I make ramen and dried kale and I add spoonful after spoonful of peanut butter, low key disgusted to be eating next to a pit toilet. But still I eat. I eat my thick noodles silently. I make a cup of tea. Finally, we start what we assume will be hours and hours of attempting to hitch.

Instead, it takes just one hour, maybe not even that. We are picked up by a nice guy in a big truck, playing Christian radio on his stereo. He drives five hours to work Monday-Friday in a copper mine, which he likes just enough to make it worth it. He lives on the reservation, has all his life. He hardly talks at all, but seems deeply amused with us, very smily. It is a perfect hitch in every way, he drops us on a block with a lodge, a grocery store, a laundermat and a restaurant.

All we could ever need.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

My toes are cold until 1 AM. First numb, then pins and needles again, then just plain chilly. My entire body is finally warm, but my cold toes persist. Why?

I pull my hat over my eyes, make it dark to avoid the sunrise. A conscious choice to sleep in, something I almost never do. It’s just so cold. I want to stay in my quilt forever. When we finally rise, it’s 5:40 AM.

We wake up to a frosty wonderland. The tent is covered in a thick layer of ice, our water bottles are frozen. Our shoes are thick bricks, unwearable. I feel like the ice princess from candyland except very dirty and very gay. I am an ice princess whomst smells like an armpit.

We’re going to run out of food before we finish this section, both of us. Our hiker hunger is severe, all we want is endless donuts and Thai food and hot pots of steaming vegetables and protein and rice. I’d also like a salad bar and an Indian buffet and iced coffee with almond milk and homemade pumpkin bread, fresh from the oven.

Instead, we have chip crumbs and cookie crumbs and bars. Most of my calories are dust at this point, but I try to consume even the most crushed food, because I know I need it. Tomorrow we will hitch into Alpine, an early resupply. Alpine is 32 miles away from our trailhead and it is said to have about one car per hour of traffic, no guarantee of a pickup. But really— what choice do we have?! Without enough food, there is no thru hike.

We are determined that the hitch will be okay, we’ll make it work. We take turns folding and stuffing our ice crusted tent into its sack. It burns our hands and toggling back and forth is the only option. I put the tent into my pack, it’s my day to carry it, and it feels like it weighs twice as much as usual. Wow!

We ascend cross country in the ice as the sun spreads yellow across the drainage. I am hot and I am cold at the same time and my heart is pounding. Oh, to be a human! So many ways to feel alive.

Dropping into Schell Canyon is really the best we could ask for. We have an obvious pine needle covered trail, descending gently into a fully alive sun dappled forest. Dandelions dot the path and as we walk, we thaw.

It’s glorious! Except that I feel terrible. Almost hungover from yesterday, actually. I need to eat and sleep in a warm dark place for hours and hours and hours. It fucking sucks to have the threat of running out of food but I’m so grateful to have a day to get off trail and recalibrate. When we’re too tired to appreciate the beautiful stuff, what exactly are we doing?!

At lunch, we spread our things out to dry in the sun. As soon as we sit to eat, dark grey clouds float directly above us and seconds later, I feel rain drops. We set up the shelter, making a green house and pull everything inside. I eat my crushed chips from a ziplock with a spork and drink emergen-C and hot peppermint tea. I eat caffeinated jelly beans. I pump myself up. This section is hard, and we’re doing it anyway. How bout that?!

We pick our way out of the canyon, maneuvering around a slow motion obstacle course of blowdowns. Over, under and around downed trees we go. We are poked, prodded and scratched over and over and over again. It rains just a little but not a lot. I am bleeding from various spots but I count myself as lucky. I’m pretty dry.

Eventually, we’re out of Schell canyon and onto the rim. The trail becomes a morass of burn and blowdown, a mess that weaves steeply up and down, again and again and again. Once we make it through the rollercoaster, we’re cooked. We agree to go only as far as the next water source. That as soon as we have enough water to cook and drink and find a flat spot, we’ll rest.

We are blessed with one merciful road followed by another. We’re going fast, actually getting somewhere for the first time all day as the sun starts to set. After this, we have one more bit of trail to traverse, a downhill that descends almost 1500 feet. We meet at the trailhead and decide to climb down together.

Our tread is perfect at first. Gentle and soft and very direct. But nothing gold can stay, right? Perfect quickly gives way to intense erosion, leading me to slip every few feet or so. I lean so hard away from the drop off on the left side that I fear I may snap my pole.

Carrot finds water just by using her ears. She listens quietly for a half a beat and discovers A tiny trickle waterfall made just for cows. We climb above the trickle and find pool after pool after pool of fresh flowing water, not even on our maps. Carrot is a genius.

I am so grateful for her skill.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

We wake up at 5AM and I am energized from 10 hours of sleep. Today we ford the Black River, possibly a lot of times. Or do we ford the Black River? We really don’t know. The water could be too wild, or too high, and then we’ll have to take the alternate. Absolutely nothing can be known in section six right up until we get there. Each morning, I read the day’s data book dutifully, but I know I can’t count on absolutes anymore. I still hope for 20ish miles of hiking a day but….I also don’t hold my breath.

Carrot and I spend one anticipatory mile hiking along the dirt roads that frame the banks of the river. The water is rushing sometimes, and other times calm, which is encouraging. It is indeed black, beautiful dark water of indeterminate depth. We hear the rocks on the bottom are slippery.

We debate how we will do this. Shorts? Pants? Definitely shoes, as it’s too much effort to take them on and off nine times. It is very cold out, but eventually we decide to preserve our pants. We only have the tiniest pile to keep us warm, and we need to ensure that no matter how long the day goes, we have dry layers to retire to.

Carrot goes first, hooting and whistling through the cold. She’s so brave about cold, usually. Happy to jump into water I wouldn’t even consider on account of the temperature. I step into thigh high water, sliding my feet over slick mossy rock. I lean heavily on my poles, desperately hoping I don’t slip. I’m pretty clumsy. I almost think I probably will fall, at some point.

Halfway through the ford my toes turn to pins and needles, a thousand tiny pointed pains. Something inside of me says to cry, but what at? The cold? My feet? I am not sad, I’m just….confused. My body wants to burble up and release. What is happening and why?

We exit the water and pick up our speed along the river again, lifting ourselves over blowdowns and doing our best to avoid the thousands of thorny plants that grab us as we go. My feet are hot now, burning with the contrast of the air (which couldn’t be more than 45 degrees) and the water (which is much colder than that).

We start to ford again, this time with a river much wider. Again, my toes go to pins and needles instantly and this time my calves seize. My legs feel like lead, heavy and hard to move, my feet disconnected from me. My instinct is to stop moving, curl in a ball to find warmth right in the middle of the water. It is in this moment that I know I won’t be doing the nine fords. Each one is said to get wider and deeper then the next and there’s an alternate route! Why not take the alternate route? This doesn’t feel safe.

We find the next Black River crossing. We need to look at the water, we have to know we aren’t giving up too soon. We arrive at the point where our river conflates with another and it’s roiling. Okay, okay, okay, we say. We’ll take the alternate.

We steeply cut cross country swaths up and up and up. It rains at first, and then the rain turns to snow. Thorns grab and tear at our exposed skin. I slip a little in the sleet. This is really the path to the alternate?! The eroded nothingness into the flurried heavens?! Yes. Yes it is.

We hit a road, a straightforward and gently graded dirt path that leads right to the next thing. I am grateful for this road all the way to lunch. We are good on actual trail and road, can walk “fast”, whatever that means. I listen to my book (Where the Crawdads Sing; it continues to be incredible) and the weather weaves. Sun then rain then sun then rain. We take a side trail into Fish Creek and set up the tent, just in case. No matter what, in here we’ll be dry.

We silently eat chips and cookies and bars. Outside, it rains. The rain turns to hail and I turn to Carrot, looking her square in the eye:

“If all else fails we could just stay in this tent, braid one another’s hair, listen to an audiobook, and wait to die” I say, and then we can’t stop laughing. This weather, man!!!! It’s trolling us.

Our break alarm goes off, we gather up two liters of water, and start another cross country climb away from the creek. There are downed trees, one thousand downed trees of all sizes to step over, move around, crawl under, and straddle. It’s steep going, eroded going, no trail at all going— once again. I grasp at burned tree branch and step on tussocks to make my way, and just like that, I’m at another road. A blessedly simple thing to walk.

My shoes have been wet all day, and my toes haven’t made it back to normal since the river crossings. I try to walk as fast as I can for warmth and it works everywhere except my feet. The straight forward nature of the dirt road makes me feel like I am flying, though. It turns out my toes can be numb and I can still walk.

Our road walk ends, and Carrot and I find one another before setting out on our final miles. Our plan is to traverse through another stretch of eroded blowdown trail, find a spot without too many dying trees, get some water and camp. We walk as fast as we can, wind roaring and burned trees creaking, threatening to fall. Eventually, we find a secret plateau, one tiny sliver of space where if a tree fell, it’d most likely miss us all together.

As soon as we set up our shelter and crawl inside, the sky releases and it pours. I eat my dinner beans from inside my quilt and burrow down as hard as I can.

Please universe I pray. Keep us dry in the tent tonight.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

My sleeping bag is the warmest thing in the world. My sleeping bag is the most perfect place on earth. My sleeping bag is heaven.

Outside, it is 4:45AM and the world is frosty. Below freezing, I feel sure of it. I pull the chord on the hood around my sleeping bag, cinch it tight. Just a few more minutes, I think, closing my eyes. Just a few more minutes of rest.

By 5:05, we’re moving. Morning chores as the sun starts to rise and I try to think warm thoughts. We have a cold front now, a deep chill that threatens rain for the next ten days. We may as well get used to it.

We’re hiking at 6:30. A mile away there is a shitter and we’re both holding out for it. My butt cheeks are clenched and I hike fast. Once we arrive and poop, we agree it was transcendent.

We walk flat trail across open meadow for six miles and I cannot get enough. It’s so beautiful here, up in the mountains of Arizona. It feels like we’re in a secret place, even though we intermittently see boat launches and trash cans and privys. Hardly any people are here, though. The icy morning is ours.

We stop as we go to put on more and more layers. I add my raincoat over my puffy. I put my beanie over my day hat. We both put on our gloves. Usually, I’m peeling layers off within a mile or two of walking but the chill of today is persistent.

We eat our lunch thirteen miles in, lazily spreading peanut butter on Oreos, heating ramen with freeze dried peas and kale. Rain is threatening, the wind is whipping and so we pack up to go. Before we do, we make a special flag dance using our trash compactor bags as flags and we are exhausted from waving them around. We’re not used to using our arms, you see. We are just some lowly hikers.

We drop down toward Deer Creek and gently follow the river for a few miles. I LOVE not carrying water, having water everywhere we look. It’s peaceful and private down here, just us and the elk poop. If it were warm out, I’d have half a mind to go skinny dipping in the creek.

I twist my ankle again and cry exactly two tears. Turns out it’s fine. I put some more KT tape on it and it feels even better than fine, in fact.

The trail fades to nothing. We follow the water, hopping back and forth between the banks as one side or the other becomes too slow or narrow. We navigate under, over and around blowdowns caused by a great fire in the canyon that happened in 2011. There are knee high spiny bushes of indeterminate species and they grab at us like fake corpses on a haunted house floor. The terrain is slow going, but we do just that- go slowly. Eventually, we are done.

I am scared of tomorrow. Tomorrow we start fording the Black River, nine times within the first five miles, reportedly. The river may be too high to cross at all, and then we’ll have to find the alternate. We have to do the rest of this section with relative speed to make it to the post office in time before it closes for the weekend. There aren’t any services in our next town, so we may have to hitch 30ish miles away on a mostly unpopulated dirt road in order to charge our water purification systems, our external batteries, and our phones so we can finish. We’ve walked 21 miles today and I think of all of this just before I lay my head down to sleep.

—

📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest

I’ve laid in our bed in Greer for so long that I start to feel as if I am convalescing. We wake at 5AM because this is who we are now, but I don’t move. Golden light streams through cracked blinds as the sun rises. We should go, I think. We should really really go.

I shower one more time. I thaw the iced coffee I made, the cup that froze in the back of our mini fridge. We do a final sweep of the room, lock up the windows and doors and we leave. Finally.

Today we are starting section six! Section six is notorious. It is the second to last section of the Mogollon Rim Trail and both the creators and the small handful of people who’ve hiked it say it’s the hardest section of the route, which is really saying something to me because a lot of it has been hard. It’s long (which means heavier food bags), it’s remote (likely no reception the whole time) and it includes multiple river fords, if the river is passable at all- which it might not be. We have alternates in case it’s too sketchy, but we are very hopeful that we can do the main route.

First we climb. We climb 2.6 steep miles, miles that aren’t technically a part of our route at all, just miles to get to the beginning of the section. I am winded and thirsty and over full from breakfast. I stop frequently to catch my breath, my lungs aren’t cooperating. It’s all the time in bed!!!! I think. I’m no longer used to walking.

We hit our track and the day consists of two situations:

1) Upward climbs into ponderosa forest. The forest has blown down trees laying lifeless on the trail and big snow patches to intermittently walk through

And

2) wide open meadow expanse, with tussock style plants and ground completely saturated like a bog.

We go up into forest and then down into bog four times. We cross a relatively shallow but extremely icy river. There is SO MUCH water, fresh snow melt absolutely everywhere, and I have a sinking feeling: we’re probably not going to be able to cross the Black River again and again and again in a couple of days. It’s just….so cold. And maybe going to rain? Which could mean snow? Who knows.

We stop to camp early and discuss. We won’t know until we know, we probably shouldn’t assume either way. It might warm up, though the forecast says rain and rain and rain and more rain. We heat our pots of stew. We lay out our options clearly. We’ve done as much as we can do today. Either way there’s a plan for the river– we’ll try to ford and if we can’t, we’ll go the other way. No pressure at all.

Either way we’ll be fine.

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📍The Mogollon Rim trail is on Yavapai, Western Apache, Hopi and Hohokum land. I am a grateful guest