adventure

Waylaid by Beauty

AN INTIMATE TALE OF EL CAMINO DEL DIABLO Text by Bill Broyles Photographs by David Elms Jr.

You can't see anything from a car; you've got to get out of the contraption and walk, better yet crawl, on hands and knees, over sandstone and through the thornbush and cactus.

When traces of blood begin to mark your trail you'll see something, maybe.

The bus pulled away, and its taillights quickly disappeared into the Arizona night. I scrambled across the freeway, climbed the fence, and headed south on the Devil's Road, El Camino del Diablo, a storied trail to Arizona's past through the deep desert. Although this pioneer route is now somewhat drivable by jeep, it remains a mere track linking two frontier towns - Yuma, Arizona, and Sonoita, across the border in Mexico. For 300 years of recorded history and millennia before that, it has been walked by ancient hunters and gatherers, ridden by priests and outlaws, and driven by scientists and sightseers. A few lingered; none stayed. They were just passing through. I thought I'd follow their footsteps and brave the jagged lava, shifting sands, and parched ground which refused them rest and drove them back to the outposts of civilization. My previous visits by jeep had dared me to return. So, now afoot, I was determined to test myself against the country, to learn how fast a mediocre marathoner could coax himself to cover the 130 miles. Zany? Sure. Challenging? You bet. Fame and glory? Only on a private level. Genuine runners could make the whole trip in less than a day; I just hoped to finish. Caches of water, Gatorade, and candy bars lay stashed ahead. A fanny pack held spare eyeglasses and socks. And so on a raw February night I was ready and I went. The modern route starts on a Yuma subdivision street named, appropriately, El Camino del Diablo, but after a couple of miles I left behind the dazzling security lights and barking dogs, and I trotted like a coyote toward trail's end. At first the road proved sandy and easily followed without a flashlight, but then several rocky sections forced me to slow to a walk. I struggled to keep my mind on the trail; shapes and shadows tugged at my sense of wonder. The night gallery hung artful cliffs on the starlit sky. Silhouettes of ocotillos and low scudding clouds framed the scene. Dimly I began to realize that all my training and advanced calculations had failed to predict the trip's true conflict: the drive to succeed versus the urge to enjoy. The goal to say "I did it" versus a lure to linger, to see, to touch, to know. One voice said, "Scurry on";the other, "Sit beside the creosote and marvel." I was prepared to endure, to ache, to bleed; I was not prepared to be waylaid by beauty in a desert.

At night the sinuous road is a pure line. Paloverdes and ocotillos waved at me as if I were in a parade. The trilling call of a nighthawk filled the silence. Motion itself felt good. The first of my caches was surprisingly easy to locate and filled me, but the ragged ruins of an old mining camp at Fortuna and its folds of black rock marbled with white left the more lasting impression.

Through a wash and mountain pass, the sense of progress began to grow, as did my confidence. A pack of coyotes howled and yipped up a side canyon, friendlier than the growl of the town dogs I'd left behind. I envied the coyote and tried again to emulate its durable lope.

By now I realized that my progress, though invigorating, was slack. Blaming the drowsiness induced by working all day and traveling half the night, I quit fighting and looked for a place to sleep. Without cot or bag, I stopped in the next wash, checked the ground for stickers and stingers, and lay down in the fabled "Tucson bedroll."

First I spread out my pride for the mattress. Then I fluffed up a cloud for the pillow and slid between the silky sheets of the night zephyr. Finally I tugged at that warm comforter of stars and tucked it around my neck. What a bed! Actually it was a revelation. I slept soundly for 25 minutes before the chill roused me. Rested, I popped up and resumed walking. As a friend loves to chide, if you can't sleep on the ground, you haven't walked far enough.

The quiet literally rang. Orion passed into the west, and the dipper swung its course. The coolness was brisk and energizing. My mind wandered, freed by repetitive motion. Deliciously, it was a time of cool air spilling over warm skin, of dew raising the sweet smell of earth, of the sound of life's own breath. The morning star led a coy moon, and the silhouetted trees twirled a gray kaleidoscope. Twice more before the sun rose, I napped fitfully.

Onward. The road suddenly veered directly toward the rising sun, which gloriously lit distant ridges. Black-rock ships sailed on golden dunes. Backlit ridges loomed like castles on the vast, desolate plain of sand. I admired those long-past travelers who trudged this path and risked their all. I remembered reading about one lost soul who, fevered by death's dementia, imagined that pincushioned balls of cholla cactus were crystal goblets winking with tiny rainbows.

But my pace was slowing. Optimistic pretensions made at home in an easy chair eroded in the rigor of physical reality and, more so, the growing unity with the land. Sunrise found me incorrigibly behind schedule.... and I struggled to care. Mysterious side canyons, secret rock niches, seductively perfumed flowers - all enticed me to linger. Reluctantly I declined their invitations and continued. Ulysses resisted the Sirens; I began to understand that I couldn't have.

The sandy road was alive with fossil-like shapes of lizards. Where each one had nestled into its sandy bedroll for warmth last night, there remained the strict outline of its body and tail, replete with claw marks. In a wash, I knelt down to pet a torpid spiny lizard taking his night's slumber. His mouth curved in a smile, and a slight bend in his tail suggested a reveler who had not quite made it home from the party last night. Later, pawed tracks showed where a hungry coyote had rousted one late sleeper.

Nearing a water pocket, I threw off all claim to a speedy trip and followed Indian trails instead of the motor road. Small pottery shards and fragments of seashells lay broken where they fell from tired hands centuries ago. Then and now seemed to merge. Forward and backward didn't matter. I wouldn't have been startled to see a prehistoric clan camped around a fire, pioneers with ox-drawn carts rolling toward hope, or a column of armored conquistadores glinting in the sun. But I saw no one, save two local ravens. The lowest pool was the color of coffee, but I knew that come summer it would clear, revealing fairy shrimp and a myriad of toad tadpoles.

Reaching this water hole lent a sense of scale to the trip and buoyed my confidence. Ahead lay range after range. My push became the land's pull. I was a bee in a universe of sweet flowers.

The distinctive Cabeza Prieta Peak loomed across 20 miles of open desert. Patterned creosote flats brimmed with tracks of life on the move. Prints of kit foxes, Pinacate beetles, and pocket mice chronicled the comings and goings of a larger unseen community. Seldom even trying to run now, I settled for walking fast. My mind stopped thinking; only the swirl of sensations mattered. Everything, even the rocks and sky, spun alive.

The sun ran its course, and twilight softened the land. A well signaled midway. A windmill squeaked and chortled. A cozy cabin, shelter to many a traveler, didn't tempt me as much as the open sky, so I continued. The image of sunset was etched on my memory like film. Phainopeplas and quails provided the soundtrack. During one rest stop, I sat too close to a kangaroo rat's door, and it thrummed its tiny feet in disgust. An owl hooted up the wash. Maybe Thoreau was right: We're enriched by what we can live without. A night on the move, by starlight, is a night to be cherished, not dreaded. Funny, I had expected to think of luxurious beds, juicy steaks, and hot showers during these times of trudging. But I didn't. I was half a day behind, meaning another night out. Another night of luxury and freedom.

My pace was now a mechanical gait; running had ceased to be an option. Familiar places - lava buttes, stone markers, wide washes - became gauges of progress, but the notion of progress changed. Beauty had become the milepost. And starlight lit my way through the night. Another mountain, another gap between rugged ridges, another flat, another lava flow. These passed with regret. A heavy dew accentuated the cold of early morning, but even in the exhaustion of a full day's travel I did not question being here.

The morning star rose, then the moon and, shortly, dawn. Another cache, a nap, a walk made an easy cycle. Time became meaningless. I pocketed my watch. The orange line of sunrise found me reclining on a dune; I stroked the damp sand and delighted in its patterns. I finger painted geometric nothings, though by noon the wind would clean the quartz canvas. Tiny mites, beads of red velvet, ignored my art and shuffled their own designs on the sand.

In a dry lake bed, I found more fragments of broken pottery and water jars. As if trying to touch those ancients I felt but hadn't yet seen, I frittered an hour futilely searching for something whole, something held by the living hand that made it. In the country beyond, lava alternated with sand flats. Living in the moment, I piloted toward a tree, a rock, a ridge. I found myself dawdling. The tide called sun washed this land in light and warmth. At high noon, I dozed belly down on the black-rock pavement. No lizard was ever more serene.

Easterly now, low ridges dominated the view and inspired me to jog several miles for no purpose other than the joy of motion. Wild animal tracks, an unseen squad of javelinas, wandered ahead of me.

Reverie replaced guilt about the sluggish pace. The country had seduced my ambition, and I no longer cared. So what if my legs quivered when I rested, if my pace sagged, if the ground pummeled my feet? This was the place I wanted to be. From behind a steering wheel, I had never realized that the Arizona desert paints with so many hues of green, that a single yellow flower

can be seen from such a great distance, that progress only means thumbing pages in some grand book.

Another twilight, another sunset. Quail clucked as they vied for a roost deep in a mesquite thicket. Darkness caught me several miles west of Quitobaquito, a springfed desert pond that sequesters tiny pupfish. Like Brer Rabbit condemned to his briar patch, I was "doomed" to yet another night out. And I wasn't disappointed. In tune with the land, I could have happily stayed anywhere and enjoyed the scenery. I didn't want to leave.

I realized I wasn't a tireless coyote after all; I was just a bunny, all eyes and ears, content to tarry. The trip had become an athletic bust. Pace evaporated like fleeting desert dew on silvered threads of spider webs. The journey itself, not the arrival, became the point of it all.

Several wide washes with sandy bottoms and sheltered by overhanging trees crossed the trail. Each was like a railroad crossing signal clanging, "Stop. Look. Listen." I wished for an April afternoon, to lie in the sand under shading boughs and listen to bees in the mesquite, or simply to watch clouds drift. In one of these washes, I paused to search out a sublimely scented flower, subtle and inviting in its special mystery. Thirst didn't bother me, and food wasn't even a dream. Instead I wished for a camera, a microscope, a stronger nose, a more sensitive ear. And time to wallow on my belly eyeing things close up with my arms around the world.

At trail's end near Sonoita waited a ride home. My friend Al jumped from the car and pumped my hand. "You did it, Willie!" he exclaimed. I couldn't think of anything to say. I hadn't done what he thought. The reaching was everything, the arrival nothing. Times and distances? Mere excuses for the stroll. A failure? No, a finding of land and self. Trophies? A thousand common things seen new.

Author's Note: I was prepared for this trip. I knew the terrain and had located caches of water or Gatorade and food every 20 miles. The trip was made in moderate weather, late winter, with temperatures ranging from the high 30s to mid-70s (Fahrenheit). Anyone considering this hike should first preview the terrain via an automobile. I would recommend an accompanying support vehicle.

Tucson-based Bill Broyles teaches physical education in a public high school, which may explain his love of long solo hikes. He recently wrote a book on Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.

David Elms Jr. enjoys any opportunity to get out into the desert. He lives in Phoenix.