At four in the morning I lie watching Oscar wrestle out of his purple nylon body condom. He muffles a grunt, accidentally kicking sand on the camping gear at the foot of his tarp. The predawn stars promise another brilliant backlit day common to the desert Southwest.
None of the eight camped around us are stirring, but they soon will be. Rob, our ex-Marine instructor, has decreed a hike up the Honaker Trail to salute dawn's early light. This is day three of Outward Bound course #653: "Sportyaking on the San Juan River. Additional Activities: Rock Climbing & Rapelling, Hiking (Eight Days and Eighty-Five Miles)."
The late spring moon glides over the sawtooth shadows of the canyon rim, and the euphoric waters of the San Juan River push around our moored boats. In this silver-black calm, surrounded by nine males averaging half my age (all flexible and swift of foot), doubt again floods my mind. Hiking up desert canyons with a full backpack, rock climbing, rapelling and, of course, white-water boating offer risky ventures bordering on stupidity. Although I love the outdoors, my environmental boundaries have seldom stretched beyond an open canoe through placid waters.
After Oscar, second in command, shakes seven students and two instructors out of their sleeping bags, the 10 of us unite in a circle where Tom, the most junior instructor, directs a predawn exercise routine. Then, flashlights in hand and water bottles swinging at our sides, we cross the short sandy beach to the base of the trail. Initial portions of its serpentine length are vaguely visible as the black canyon walls reflect shades of gray. Here on this beach, where the route begins, the San Juan canyon is deepest. The river in this area loops in flat esses, cutting through the high desert plateau of southeastern Utah. It is called "The Goosenecks."
As I face the climb, my thoughts meander to pieces of Ann Zwinger's book, Wind in the Rock. The final chapter of her extraordinary tribute to the San Juan River basin describes the Honaker Trail. Blasted out of ancient bedrocks in 1904 to provide a path for the removal of gold ore, its two-and-a-half twisted miles proved too challenging for man or beast of burden. It was soon abandoned. Its permanent legacy, other than providing torture tests to arthritic knees, is to showcase a fossil-rich strata of geologic time.
Zwinger also describes her harrowing solo descent across narrow ledges and switchbacks, bearing a backpack that far outweighed the plastic water bottle swinging at my side. She suffered great anxiety and, at one narrow point of passage, became ill.
Beginning the climb myself, I can stir only marginal sympathy. The author at least had breakfast before starting out. It would be many hours before we tumbled back to camp for our first cup of cowboy coffee.
Our first full day had started with a minimarathon run and included 20 miles on the river. That voyage was interrupted by three hikes, one scrambling around a series of Indian cliff dwellings -- high-rise apartments with mysterious petroglyphs inscribed in the desert-varnished sandstone.
At midafternoon that same day we fought our way in body-blistering heat through a barrier of tangled tamarisk trees that border the river bank like brittle barbed wire. At our escape, Oscar blazed a path along a jagged ridge to a rock-tumbled break in the crest. Here, near the south rim of the river valley, we stumbled around Mule Ear diatreme, a remote spot containing crystalline rocks that were once at the bottom of a gigantic volcanic shaft.
Back on the water that day, hot gales of air sandblasted my unprotected, sunburnt skin and threatened to heft the boats upright. Ignoring the blisters that domed my fingers, I tightened the straps of my life jacket and wondered which direction the competing forces of nature -- wind and water -- would carry me if I tumbled overboard.
In my sleeping bag that night in camp, I made phantom plans to do a "drop-add" of my Outward Bound course. I would execute a quick exit at the village of Mexican Hat, the last piece of civilization we would encounter before floating into the deserted depths of the San Juan River canyons. But the next day was less arduous.
After an unhurried breakfast Tom told stories of his experiences as a river guide, Oscar checked out burns and blisters on bodies that a week earlier had sat in air-conditioned offices, and Rob talked about the history and philosophy of Outward Bound. He listed "compassion" as the program attribute he tried most to convey. (I searched the sand for a stone to give him some early student feedback, but found none large enough).
Later in the morning on windless water, we entered the canyon proper and twisted our way through the hairpin turns as the river narrowed and deepened. With the river still rising, we swept by Mexican Hatand I gave up my dram to desert. By midafternoon we'd navigated around most of the San Juan's Gooseneck landmarks -- Mendenhall Loop, The Tabernacle and Second Narrows.
The path winds gradually but steadily upward. The trail is seldom wider than six inches, and gray limestone chunks litter its narrow track. Prickly pear cacti dot the margins of the path and multiply at narrows and switchbacks.
Anxiety hits me as we stop two-thirds up the Honaker Trail at its primitive scenic overlook, Horn Point, a cliff that projects 50 feet straight out from the sheer canyon wall. Halfway across the ledge a three-foot-wide crevasse separates Horn Point. My classmates bound across the divide as if it were an asphalt crack on a neighbor's driveway.
Staggering back to lean against the canyon wall, I just miss stepping on a scorpion. It's larger than my fist, but it doesn't move -- a victim of someone's footstep. Its hairy size draws my companions back from the tip of the overhang and I claim the bare-handed kill.
The conversation then turned to an outline of course challenges still to come: the major rapids of the San Juan, backpacking many miles up one of the steep side canyons, an overnight solo camp, climbing a blind canyon wall, then later rappelling back into a cold deep pool. Still feeling moronic for getting trapped into this eight-day gambit, I asked: "By visiting these perils and taking these risks, what is the gain?" (Though tempted, I did not add the whining qualifier, "for a 55-year-old librarian.")
Rob's experience as an Outward Bound instructor showed immediately as he redirected the question to the assembled body. It found an eager respondent in Bill, a Chicago stockbrocker, who told of a climb he'd made with a friend in the Rockies the previous year.
He told how, near the top, they had to work their way around a rock obstacle. Bill figured that they'd have to turn back, but his friend showed him a simple maneuver that thwarted the barrier. Bill said he remembered thinking how the risk he perceived was so much greater than what he encountered. Others in the assembly talked about team work, personal growth and the expansion of physical and self-awareness. That evening in the enveloping darkness I became a bit less skeptical and self-critical within the circle of the camp by the Honaker Trail.
The warmth of the high plateau mixes with mutual congratulations. Rob gives us time to ourselves, and the group so tightly linked a few moments earlier breaks into 10 parts. Each seeks a spot to make journal notes or wanders along the rim to get better vision of the bright desert landscape, including the colossal buttes of Monument Valley in the distance.
Along the rim I find a comfortable perch and ponder the course of our darkening ascent as now defined in the morning's glory at the summit. Like the hiking and river challenges of the first days, the climb bears more dread in perception than danger in practice. Trails are not as impassable, rapids not as swift and hikes not as demanding as I'd initially estimated. More sobering challenges lie ahead, ventures that a short while ago I never imagined doing at any age, let alone from this vista in life. At this moment, at the top of Honaker Trail, I finally relax about the the hazards of the course both real and imagined.
In my office at home I have a sign: "If a thing is perceived to be true, then it is true in its consequences." I always took this maxim as a caution -- beware how things appear because others will act according to those appearances. But there is another interpretation of the assertion: An individual's own perception of a situation can directly influence how it will turn out. And now my confidence in the instruction and skills of Rob and Oscar and Tom, coupled with the concern and affection of my classmates, convince both me and my arthritic knees that I will survive and perhaps even enjoy the days remaining in the desert.