Week six overflows with adventure

So much has happened in the past week that I'm not certain that I will be able to give each piece its due without forgetting the others. Friday found me, Brenna and Morgan climbing Urraca Mesa. For those unfamiliar with it, Urraca is an almost magical place, forsaken by all but ghosts and people. The top of the mesa appears on maps as a flawless skull, tilted slightly to one side. Philmont legends speak of strange happenings on top, mostly associated with the solitary eye of the skull. Using a detailed map and a GPS unit, we plotted the coordinates of the eye and set out.

The trail itself was hot and dry, but it took us no time at all to reach Urraca camp, the closest camp to the mesa. By now we had gotten used to indifferent or busy backcountry staff acknowledging us and then leaving us alone, but before we had even approached the porch, this staff was calling to us. They offered us a seat and almost begged us to stay for lunch. They teased and played with us as if they had known us for years, though they only vaguely knew us by association. Never have I received such a welcome before, and as we regretfully walked away from the cabin on the way to our goal, we talked about finding the time to come back just to hang out.

The top of the mesa was as advertised and remembered: almost unnaturally quiet, flat and beautiful. Red rocks, green trees and blue skies made the scene look like a child's drawing on a restaurant menu, the colors perfect and unblending. We had lunch just past the weather station, then willfully got lost seeking the eye with its portal to another world. On the way back down we stopped by Inspiration Point; a well named place indeed.

Saturday was the rafting trip, and though I have little to say about it, it was exactly what we needed it to be. We got in boats and floated down a decently choppy river. From time to time we got out of the raft and into the river for a quick swim. The girls flirted with river guides, the boys splashed the girls with their paddles, and as hundreds of gallons of the Rio Grande river flowed past, it carried with it all the tension of the two biggest weeks of the summer.

This week I have eight ropers (8-10 year old girls). They are playful and excitable and their favorite games are mafia and penguin tag. We have one drama queen (of course) who craves attention constantly and doesn't mind slowing the group hikes to get it, but all in all it isn't a bad group. Today we hiked Cathedral Rock, and despite my firm beliefs, we made it to the top in less than two hours (no mean feat, especially for an eight year old). That was when the adventure began. Two of the girls climbed to the top of a large rock to have their lunch and on the way back down, one of them slipped and put her hand down hard on a barrel cactus. As cacti go, the barrel cactus is relatively benign, but its spines are long and hard and they were obviously driven in with some force. I got out the first aid kit, but for most of the spines, the easiest method was simply to grab on hard and pull fast. Of course the girl screamed every time, but these cries simply fell on the backdrop of the rest of her screams, so I carried on.

With only two spines remaining - the deepest two, of course, the tragedy compounded. The second deepest spine broke off in her finger, leaving it too short to grab with my hand. The tweezers handled this, but it took longer and greatened the poor girl's pain. Then, when I pulled out the final spine, it brought with it a small torrent of blood. We cleaned it all up and stopped the bleeding and, as I suspected, the girl stopped crying completely after two minutes. After all that, we simply had to get the exhausted girls off the mountain.


One of the difficulties of keeping a blog is in keeping it honest. It would be easy enough to make up magical adventures and post them as if they were real, but no one would believe them. This is not what I'm referring to. This blog is my way of telling anyone interested what is happening in my life, and I have thus far omitted the most important event of the week. The question is: would it be honest to skip that which embarrasses me? The answer is yes, it is honest because I would not be likely to discuss it anyway. Unfortunately, this particular entry concerns someone who is certainly going to read it, and she should probably know that this is important to me.

An old friend came to visit this week. I'm sure I wasn't the only reason for her coming two thousand miles to the world's largest youth camp, but I can dare to hope that I may have been a factor. When I first saw her standing under an apple tree in East Tent City, I honestly thought that I was hallucinating. When it turned out she was real, I could barely speak. She was exactly as I remembered her, right down to the fact that she always wanted me to tell stories- which, of course, I was utterly incapable of at that moment due to a partially paralyzed brain. Somehow we managed to talk for an hour and a half and I let her go at the entrance to the opening program bowl. The whole time, my pulse was going at marathon speed.

I guess there are some people you never really get over.