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Looking for Water In A Dry Place

By Michael Wolcott

Found in: | Flatwater | Flatwater |

My buddy Fisher headed back to Montana the other day. Before climbing in his truck, he looked me straight in the eye and summed up this year's annual reunion in the desert. It had been, he said, "a little different from the others."

Fisher speaks cowboy, so I'll translate. What he meant was that just about everything has changed, and not for the better.

For eight years, our friendship has been conducted in the best wild places. We've shared camps all over the West - floating the Colorado River, mushing dogsled teams in the northern Rockies, dragging pack strings through Yellowstone country.

We have also developed an annual Southwestern ritual called Looking for Water. It goes something like this: drive on bad desert roads until you reach a dead-end or get stuck, load a pack with five days' food and 2 gallons of water, then walk uphill. Finally - and this is critical - do not carry a map.

This self-imposed hardship makes the wilderness much bigger; it's a game, but a serious one. Every year we find a new water hole or two and add those to our internal maps. But this year, we didn't go looking for water. Fisher's not up to it.

He's become a casualty of his own good luck. After spending a charmed youth in wilderness - riding and packing horses, running sled dogs, felling and planting trees, building trail, fighting fire, skiing and backpacking - my trail mate has developed several flattened and shredded lumbar discs.

"I'm 32," he said last summer, before his surgery, "but the doctors tell me I have the back of an 80-year-old. None of that beginners' shit for me! Ha-ha-ha." He began to weave elaborate fantasies involving legally prescribed opiates, sympathetic nurses and big disability checks.

At the time, pain had kept him out of work - and on the floor - for weeks. But the surgery would help, he figured. Now, five months after the operation, the jokes - like the pain - have gotten old. The doctors tell him to expect more surgeries as years go by.

He has also been advised to find a new line of work. (Like me, Fisher's a seasonal wilderness ranger for the Forest Service - the best gig ever invented by the federal government. The pay's not great, but the fringe benefits are off the charts: living for half the year atop the healthiest watersheds left in the Lower 48; no boss looking over your shoulder; and, best of all, every season ends with a layoff - and freedom.)

That freedom has allowed us to spend two or three weeks every winter scrambling over dry ground, looking for water.

Our favorite patch of desert is some hard country: two skeletal mountain ranges the colors of rotting teeth, one 30-mile valley full of creosote bush, a dozen corkscrew canyons. Its big-W wilderness, but the place's best defense is its thorns.

From a distance, the mountains appear to have survived a thermonuclear event. Up close, they are steep, crumbling and muy seco. The few trees are puny and offer little shade. No streams babble. Almost no one visits this place. You have to walk.

Last year at this time, I spent a week in those mountains with Fisher. By noon of the second day, we had investigated three promising drainages, all dry. Our packs were 10 pounds lighter, but this wasn't good news: our canteens were mostly empty. The day was warm.

We shuffled down yet another canyon. Small talk had tapered off to mumbled hopes: "Maybe up this wash," or "Maybe it will rain."

We found our tinaja in late afternoon: a 3-foot deep tank of old rainwater coated with green scum, buzzing with bees and squirming with small frantic swimming things. We laughed like idiots, splashed the dust off our faces and celebrated with Gatorade and coffee.

We knew ourselves to be luckier than most mortals, and talked about how good it would be next year. A few days later, we walked out.

Next year has become this year. Walking is a little bit different now. For Fisher, a light day hike now costs several days of serious pain. So this year, we car-camped.

With 14 gallons of water in the truck, we had no worries. We took little walks and talked about our lives. We're thinking about sailing in Baja next winter. It doesn't require a strong back to float on the Sea of Cortez, and you are surrounded by water.

Michael Wolcott is a Flagstaff writer, Forest Service wilderness ranger and former gifted child. He has the c..v. you would expect of a nature mystic with poetical leanings and an old Toyota truck.