Disquieted. I've never been more nervous before an adventure. Sure, there were the normal stresses associated with trip logistics such as route planning, securing permits, and finding a place to leave my car, but for some reason I had a knot of anxiety regarding the whole trip sitting low in my stomach for weeks before I actually headed out. Despite my bravado whenever I talked to someone about what I could expect from seven days alone with my dogs in the New Mexican desert wilderness, I was undeniably on-edge. It became a sort of joke, me telling someone that I was heading into wolf/bear/cougar country alone. In the desert. With a limited water supply. For a whole week. Of course, being me, I laughed off everyone's concerns, including my own. I was prepared with the proper gear, know the desert very well (I live for the desert), and have more than enough skills and experience to do exactly what I had planned. Also being me, I left an itinerary with my husband and my dad, detailing where I expected to be each day, identified where I thought I'd camp, and spotted bail-out options if needed. A little note at the end mentioned that if they heard from me before a full seven days were up, then something was wrong. I did not have to mention that if they didn't hear from me on the seventh day, they needed to send a search party. That part was understood.
My drive to the Gila Wilderness in western New Mexico was perfect. Just me, Callie, Ghost, and the road. I visited Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument when I arrived in the area, because duh, then found the area to park my car, and got my gear together. My pack wasn't light; I had seven days worth of food, five liters of water, a bear canister, a change of clothes, water filter, navigation gear, camera equipment, and the end result of a twenty minute argument with my husband that I lost: a gun. I've carried all of it (aside from the gun, that was a first for me) before, but not so much at once, so my normally thirty-five pound pack was closer to forty-five pounds. And that was without any of the dogs' stuff. Fortunately, Ghost has a backpack of his own, and he carried all of the dog food and other necessities for him and Callie. Once loaded up, we were off!
The trail immediately put us into the Gila River. Did I mention Ghost hates water? I had to all but drag him into the river right from the start, but once he was actually in it, he picked up his feet and carried on. Callie, of course, was perfect and dove right in, though I am happy I kept the leash on her because she would have been swept downstream with the current if I hadn't. A couple of turns of the river and we were out of sight of the parking lot, and alone. We followed a meandering trail that crossed the river more times than I kept track of, and sometimes the river was the trail. We walked along a lush riparian zone, through grasses taller than my head, around bowing cottonwoods and slender willows. Less than a mile from the car we were deep within a broad canyon whose slopes climbed above the river to arid, sun-baked heights. Somewhere among those heights was our first campsite for the night, near a stock tank that was hopefully full of rain water.
Three miles from the parking lot, our trail turned us away from the river and headed up. We left the cool breeze that flowed just above the current, and it wasn't long before all three of us were panting and chugging water. The trail up was sandy and exposed, and we stopped often in the hot shade of juniper trees to pluck cactus needles out of shins and paws. Ghost seemed to have perfected the art of walking straight into the biggest patch of prickly pears on either side of the trail, and his blood was the first to smear the Gila dirt. Callie was a little bit better, perhaps because she's done this a time or two before, and avoided most of the cacti with practiced ease. Even I couldn't avoid them all, and soon the stinging needles were driving us all mad. The sun wasn't helping, with its blinding glare and headache-inducing heat. I began to question the wisdom of my planned trip, though I always do on the first day. First day is the worst, but by the end of the first night I remember why I love doing what I do. I just reminded myself of that fact as I followed the carins marking our trail up the sloping hills, winding deeper into the desert wilderness.
Somewhere between water breaks, around the time we topped a ridge and confronted sweeping views of the desert laid out around us, I realized it had been a while since I'd last seen a carin. Carins are piles of rocks, deliberately placed in pyramid-shaped configurations to attract attention, or else stacked rocks with larger ones at the base and smaller ones at the top. Either way, they are made to be hard to miss. This method of trail-marking is common in a lot of the western parks I've hiked, especially among rocky areas where a track can't be worn down to show the trail. The Gila had proven to be no different, up until the point where I could no longer find a carin. I wasn't too worried; I had my map out and had been following our trail as we snaked to the top of the ridge, and so headed in the direction I knew the trail should go, expecting to hit the stock tank within a mile or so where we would stop for the night. Except that after a mile and a half, there was no stock tank full of rain water. And we still hadn't struck the trail. We had less than an hour before sunset. Oh, and we had a half-liter of water left. I gave up, found a relatively flat place that wasn't really flat at all, and pitched my tent. There was no use in blundering around the desert at night, not when temperatures drop to the fortys and predators come out to play. Dinner was half a granola bar and a bit of jerky for me, and a proper meal for the dogs, but only a sip of water each, while I resolved to find the trail again in the morning, fill up our bottles at the stock tank, and put the worst day behind us for the rest of the trip. I couldn't help but wonder to myself as I tried to fall asleep, lying on too much of a slope that had the dogs and I crammed tightly against the wall of my tent, how it had all gone wrong on just the first day. Damn that gut feeling.
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