“Wilderness is not a luxury but a
necessity of the human spirit,” wrote Edward Abbey. I thought about that as I
finally drifted off to sleep, Monday night in my tent, in the Pine Top
primitive campground. I was backpacking in the Guadalupe
Mountains National
Park with Chad
and Cory and Clark. Our original plan was to
spend Monday night at Pine Top, do the nine-mile Bush
Mountain – Blue
Ridge loop on Tuesday, spend Tuesday night at Pine Top, and then
hike down Tejas Trail in the cool of the morning on Wednesday. But because of a
fire, most of those trails were closed, and the only place we could hike was Hunter Peak
and a small portion of The Bowl. It was a shame, but couldn’t be helped.
It took us a long time to hike up to
Pine Top. We arrived at the Pine
Springs Visitor
Center early enough, but
had to wait for them to open the doors, and then we had to wait in line through
lots of discussions about the forest fire and where we could hike and what we
could do. It was a bit of a shock to realize they’d been fighting the fire for
five days, yet this was the first any of us had heard about it.
We didn’t start up the trail until
10:00 AM. I had expected it would take us four hours at most to reach the ridge
line but the heat and altitude took its toll and demanded a full six hours. I
was so exhausted when I finally got the top and set up my tent that I took an
hour nap just to recover. I don’t think I’ve ever spent six hours on my legs
under a 60-lbs. pack (24 lbs. was nothing but water). I thought of a definition
I read somewhere: Backpacking is an extended form of hiking in which people
carry double the amount of gear they need for half the distance they planned to
go in twice the time it should take.
Later that night we all sat outside
and ate and talked theology and family and history until well past dark. In
fact, I didn’t finally go down to sleep until 11:30 PM.
Tuesday morning we took a leisurely
pace to meet at Chad’s camp to
eat his pancakes. We felt obligated to keep eating so he wouldn’t have to pack
the weight of pancake batter and syrup all the way back down the mountain. We
were doing him a favor, taking one for our brother, and all that.
With full bellies we started hiking
toward Hunter Peak, one of the only trails open to us,
where we spent about an hour on the summit rocks taking in the view and eating
trail mix and Fig Newtons and talking about life. The view from Hunter Peak
is one of the best mountain views anywhere. It is the 6th-highest point
in Texas, at 8,368’, and drops almost 3,000’ to a desert floor
that truly resembles the ancient Permian
Sea that it once was. And
to the south was a postcard-perfect view of Guadalupe Peak.
Using my 6x16 Audubon Monocular we could make out hikers on the Guadalupe Peak summit near the stainless steel
monument.
Looking at the Guadalupe Peak
massive I wondered what it was about mountains that speak directly into the
heart. Maybe it’s their size when viewed up close; maybe it’s their seemingly
indestructible presence in an ever-changing world; maybe it’s the physical
difficulty they cause when we try to climb them. Who knows? But sitting on the
flat limestone rocks at the top of Hunter Peak surrounded by the infinity of
the West Texas desert, talking about old favorite movies and rock-and-roll
bands becomes more than mere casual small talk. The shared effort to get to
that spot made us brothers of the trail, and the stories we shared made us
brothers of heart. It was a good day.
Since we’d exhausted the only trails
left open by the National Park Service, and since it was too hot to sit around
the camp all afternoon, we hiked down to the parking lot. We didn’t get started
down until 2:30 PM; we were on the wrong side of the temperature gradient this
entire trip. We unloaded our packs into Chad’s
pickup, sucked down ice-cold soft drinks from the visitor center vending
machine, and drove home to our waiting wives.
I wish we could’ve made the Bush Mountain
– Blue Ridge loop. I’m certain it is extra
green this year after a wet spring. Every time I do a solo hike through The
Bowl I wish I could show it off to more of my guys. And I wish we could’ve had
another night in camp to share more stories. But one of the attractions to
going outside into the mountains is the unpredictability of it. Nature dishes
out whatever it wants, whether rain or snow or lightening or fire, and the
hiker has to respond and adapt. The risk of last-minute plan changes is part of
the charm.
And another thing. I’ve been doing
this with the guys long enough to know I can’t evaluate an experience right
away. The true value of guys-outside-together may not show up for months or
even years. I’m OK with that. Men make friends outside, and the more often we
get outside together, the better we will be.
One of the glories of my present
life is that I am surrounded by good men; they are among the finest men I have
ever known. It was a privilege and honor to share the trail with three of my
best.
“I run in the path of Your
commands, for You have set my heart free.” Psalm 119:32
To learn more about Berry’s newest book, “Running
With God:” www.runningwithgodonline.com
Follow Berry on Twitter at @berrysimpson … Contact
Berry directly: berry@stonefoot.org
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