At
7.4 miles roundtrip, it is nowhere near the longest dayhike I’ve ever done (nearly
20 miles). At roughly 6,400 feet in
elevation, it pales in comparison to any of the Colorado 14ers that I’ve
climbed. And having grown up hiking and
camping in the Mojave Desert of Southern California, I’m sure I’ve hiked in
temperatures much hotter than the 93°F that was officially posted on the first of
July, a mere ten days after the summer solstice. Still, by the time I got back to the
trailhead I was pretty sure I had just completed the hardest hike of my
life. Even in the portable shade of my ventilated
palmetto sunhat, I could literally feel my brain baking as I trudged alone through
the sandy streambed that is Chaco Canyon, finally making it back to the
trailhead just as the sun reached its noontide zenith.
The
problem was not lack of water. I’ve
learned how to gauge fairly well the amount of water I’ll need on any given
hike, and I never return with water still sloshing around in my canteen. Clear
and copious: that’s my motto, and it was working pretty well for me when I stopped
to pee atop the sunbleached mesa for which these ruins are named. Finding a latrine, however, was the least of
my concerns by the time I got back to camp.
The
real problem was lack of shade on the bottom of the canyon. I didn’t care what Nietzsche might think of
me wimping out on a full dose of desert truth: I was desperately yearning for some
shady willow to cool the oven in my skull.
Unfortunately, Chaco Canyon offers scant few trees of any sort, and I’ve
really got to wonder just how many deserts Nietzsche hiked anyway. His Zarathustra may have been waxing
metaphorical.
The old prophet was right about one thing though: idols do loiter
in oases. All of the specimens of rock art that I saw at Chaco are located in spots where the artist could get some relief from the sun—for part of the day anyway. If revelation requires searing sunlight, reflection wants a bit of shade.
Just imagine how good those sunken stone kivas must have looked to the pilgrims who hiked across that hostile desert when Chacoan culture was at its height. Heck, by the time you got there, sitting around and listening to someone sermonize probably didn’t sound all that bad.
Just imagine how good those sunken stone kivas must have looked to the pilgrims who hiked across that hostile desert when Chacoan culture was at its height. Heck, by the time you got there, sitting around and listening to someone sermonize probably didn’t sound all that bad.
For myself though, next time I visit Chaco I think I’ll aim for the vernal equinox, or maybe early May. I hear the cactus blooms are spectacular, and there must be some truths yet to be found in that as well.
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