Her face has a genuine look of concern on it.
I’m moving as fast as I possibly can, but it feels like I might as well be crawling. I can barely see anything due to the sweat dripping into my eyes and burning them shut. That same sweat is making my eyes water so much that my nose is also running. There is a thick, distinct salt layer to everything I’m wearing and I’m sure I smell something like death.
She is a Park Ranger stopped on the apex of a switchback. The look doesn’t go away and she asks, “Sir, how are you doing?” My brain struggles to comprehend the concern, the question, but muscle memory blurts out, “I’m good, thanks for asking.” It’s a split second of clarity as I make the turn and then delve back into the blurriness of the pain cave and see how much deeper I can spelunk.
This all started a couple weeks prior. The Planner and I had been invited to join a private trip down the Grand Canyon. Neither of us were able to swing a full 18 days off work to be able to float the entire canyon on such short notice. However, 8 days was not out of the question and we both took a rain check on work and dropped into the wonderland of the canyon.
Doing only the first 3/8 of the trip meant we would have to somehow get our sorry asses from the bottom of the ditch to the top. Most people hike up the South Rim as it is shorter, but that is a much longer drive back to SG. Seeing that we had wrangled Mama and Papa Brinkerhoff to come and get us, we thought it would be best to make it as easy as possible for them. And to be honest, neither of us had been up the North Rim so it had the allure of being longer, taller, harder. I think you get the point.
We could have just hiked out, but it was the draw of long backcountry trails that got us into running and this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to start at the bottom and be able to attempt just half of the Rim to Rim. So we decided to run the 14 miles and almost 6000 feet of gain that is the North Kaibab Trail.
Ready. Set. Run.
I can’t see.
I haven’t been able to open my eyes completely since we left the Manzanita Rest Area where I rinsed my face/head with water. This happened to coincide with when my body decided it was done. Walking felt like resting. I pulled my jug of water out of my pack and walked and drank and walked and drank. Up until this point, I had felt pretty good and was having fun. I had now entered Death March territory. It was a long way to the top still.
I chugged down about half of my water. Walking felt good and I began to feel like I was coming back around. I packed the water back into my daypack and began running the flatter stuff. The sweat I had washed off at Manzanita was quick to return. It dripped into my eyes and no wiping could keep it out. My eyes burned. They watered. They burned and watered and the tears dripped down my face with a salty taste to them. All this water running from my eyes made my nose run. I was a hot mess.
My body began screaming something about laying down to die. I knew the only thing I could possibly do was to keep putting one foot in front of the other. I felt like I was trying to run up an escalator the wrong direction. I knew I was moving forward but it didn’t feel like it. The trail was strangely void of hikers for what felt like an hour or so giving me no indication of how slow or fast I was going. My only measurement for progress was the top of the canyon and it never seemed to get any closer. Sometime during this dream state, I convinced myself that the top that I could see was in no way the top at all and there was another layer above it because that’s what this canyon does. It just keeps going.
A group of day hikers in front of me sees me coming. They stepped out of the way mentioning running. I’m a little confused and say I’m just walking now. Their reply, “That’s quite a pace.”
This interaction does nothing to encourage me. It just confused me even more. I felt like my head was being pushed into the ground by my body. Two separate entities in epic battle. The one knowing that I had to keep going. The other desperately screaming that it was time to stop. The farther up the trail I went, the more this separation felt like reality.
The sweat pouring into my eyes reinforced this context to the point that my skin became a dressing that was slowly trying to suffocate my brain, to force it to stop. The battle raged with such ferociousness that there were no other thoughts. I did not fantasize about food. I had zero idea if I was stumbling back and forth, it kinda felt like I was. Beside the fact that when I did see people, I would catch them and then pass them and then never see them again, I was convinced I wasn’t moving.
As I passed people, there was a deliberate suppression of the desire to ask how much fucking farther is it? I mean, who wants to be that guy.
Just one more step in front of the other.
Somewhere in this state of complete disconnect, my third eye opened. Some would say I had a vision. Others that I found Jesus (he really needs to stop getting lost). And others that I had an out of body experience. There was a clarity that came in the depths of this pain cave I had chosen to subject myself. A reasoning beyond just getting out of the canyon, a higher purpose, if you will.
The pain, the sweat, the effort, none of it disappeared. The last mile or so, my context changed. I began to recognize the trail. The Chacon-Pratt group had accompanied us down this before and I could see things that I knew were close to the top. I started to feel like my legs had strength in them directed by my newly find clarity.
I now knew what I could see was the top. I pushed forward knowing there were people waiting for me. The last section felt like a rebirth. I didn’t hike out of the Grand Canyon. I emerged from its depths a different Moose.
P. L. and R.
