Two Gals & a Tripod: Isolating Outdoors

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?"

"That depends a good deal on where you want to get to."

"I don't much care where –"

"Then it doesn't matter which way you go.”

― Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

Opt Outside

The interesting thing about being told you can't go out...is that the rebel in you wants to leave just because you know you can't. Technically, hiking means staying away from people for the most part, so it felt like a reasonable loophole—we could be socially distant (which is a phrase that had no meaning prior to 2020) but not inside. Or maybe it was more that we were trying to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation—you know, making lemonade.

Originally, we had a plan to try to hike once a week since we could no longer do our regular gym/workout class routines. The COVID-19 pandemic had begun to hit full-blast throughout the US and everything was shutting down.

I was at the beginning of what seemed like a bleak job search and my friend Jana was required to take a certain number of PTO days per month, so as to not affect her salary with all the craziness surrounding Covid.

It started as a small idea at first—let’s try to hike once a week while we both have the time.

By the end, it morphed into something else entirely—unexpected, but beautiful, powerful, and cathartic.

So after it was all over, I decided to catalog and recount how one of my best friends (Jana) and I hiked 11 different trails in 10 weeks during the first round of quarantining between the months of April and June in 2020.

This is that story told in parts with featured photos taken by the talented (and lovely) Jana Bergelin.

Chiricahua National Monument: Hike #1

Our first hike was our longest drive of all. We drove four hours and some change (252 miles) to Chiricahua National Monument. Jana had checked online to make sure that the hikes were still open, but what the website didn’t say was that the entrance to the park was closed. Once we got there, we quickly realized that we would have to hoof it to the closest trailhead, which was at least one or two miles away—and our preferred trail was three miles from where we stood.

As we parked the car at the entrance, a group of motorcyclists that looked a little like Hell’s Angels approached the closed gate and we almost considered asking to hop on one of their bikes if they decided to cruise through the park, but they turned around and headed in the opposite direction. So, Jana and I made our way down the middle of the road hoping we’d find our way easily enough.

It felt a little like the end of the world or post-apocalypse as we walked separately in the two lanes separated by dashes of yellow. In a way, it was liberating and felt a little dangerous. We encountered no cars and very few people. As we stopped at the restroom to make a pit stop before heading on to our trail we ran into a little bit of luck. The ranger or maintenance guy just happened to be going around to lock up the bathrooms, so Jana was able to go inside before he clicked the lock. Those would be the only bathrooms that were open during the rest of our hikes.

We consulted a map outside the restrooms and decided to head to the ranger station where we could get our own physical copy of a map and make sure we ended up on the right trail. When we were approaching the ranger station, a woman in a white truck pulled up beside us, rolled down her window, and asked, “Excuse me, are you two forest rangers?” To which we replied a “sorry, no we are just hikers.”

It tickled us a little that we could be mistaken for forest rangers even though we clearly weren’t wearing a uniform of any kind or t-shirt stating our association with the park. It also made us realize that there was a way to drive into the park...we just hadn't found it. But we had already walked this far, so we shrugged our shoulders and kept going.

As promised online, the ranger station was closed but the maps were on a table outside and free to take. Then we stumbled upon an actual ranger in plain clothes who recommended a hike and directed us to the Upper Rhyolite, which was a decent three-mile out-and-back hike. There were ways to do a loop, but since we had to walk the three miles back to the car after hiking, we decided an out-and-back was our best option.

The trail itself was well-maintained and the difficulty wasn’t too bad. The rock formations were pretty incredible; to me, they looked like rows of giant rock cairns and I had never hiked so far south in Arizona. The terrain was totally different than what I’d hiked before in the Grand Canyon State and other places like Colorado, Utah, or even abroad.

At what we deemed “the top”—even though the hike was out and back—we had a snack, posed for a few pictures with Jana’s newly purchased tripod, and cheers-ed with some Whiteclaws to commemorate our success. We were just happy we drove four hours and were actually able to hike. Our long trip hadn’t been in vain.

We admittedly got a little lost on the way back even though we had the paper map, but we didn't have a zoomed-in view of the trails on AllTrails; it was then we realized the importance of downloading the trails on our phones before we lost WiFi. But I managed to navigate without it and we clomped up and down some small hills to make it back to the trail–only suffering some small scrapes and bruises to our shins and ankles.

Back on the paved road and during the last mile or so back to the car, my hip started to hurt. I hadn’t walked that far in a while and we hadn’t planned for a nine-mile trek for our first hike. But this was another lesson in things not going according to plan and trying to make the best of it, so I hobbled along as well as I could.

That first hike showed us both that even if we planned and tried to assess the outcome, sometimes life or the trail has other plans and you just have to roll with it or hobble along. But it also left us both feeling accomplished because we had wandered into unknown territory and come out on the other side unscathed minus some sore muscles.

In the car, after stopping to get some much-deserved Wendy’s, we decided that for future hikes we had only two rules:

1. All of our hikes had to be within the state of Arizona

2. No hike shall be hiked twice

We unknowingly established some rituals on that first hike that we'd come to miss if we didn't fulfill them--almost like giving our blessing to each hike we completed. Our trip to Chiricahua revived our love of being outside and getting away even if it was just for one day and it made us excited for the hikes to come.

~~~

HIKE RATING & REVIEW:

1. Chiricahua National Monument: Difficulty: 3/5; Scenery: 5/5

Comments After the Hike:

Jana: I have a thing for rock formations.

Becca: Cool rocks--they look like giant cairns. Ow, my hip hurts. 3 miles to the car.