Fall Break Mystery Adventure

Way back mid September, two of my friends took a mid-week backpacking trip.  I hiked in one afternoon after school to say hi and see the scenery.  As we sat by their fire, we started scheming a trip when all three of us could go--which meant we needed to wait for my next long break from school, more than a month away.  Knowing our opportunity for adventure would be in mid October, we tentatively planned to head south to warmer mountains.

After that, there was very little about this trip that I planned.  I am usually a planner-type-person, I pack seven kinds of jackets and decide a week in advance what day I will pack.  This trip got out of my hands, and I found myself in the uncomfortable position of being a week away from leaving and not knowing which day we were starting our trip, what day we were coming back, who was coming, or even where we were going.  Trying not to imply that I didn't trust their planning and endeavoring not to be annoying, I would casually ask my friends, as if it didn't really matter to me at all, when we were leaving and where we would going.  Every time I asked I got a different answer.  Once they told me that one other friend was coming, then two, then four, maybe more.  We were going to Zion, maybe the Grand Canyon, maybe some backwoods places not really close to anything I'd heard of.  We were all driving together, then my two close friends were going to stay a few extra days, then they were going to stay for two weeks, then they were going to leave two days early, too.

When Monday came, I was becoming increasingly apprehensive.  This trip was sounding awfully vague, which in my experience often meant badly prepared for and not as fun as it could be if it had actually been plan.  Then, all of the plans changed again that day.  My friends decided not to stay in the woods for weeks, so suddenly we could drive together again.  Brian had our campsites, mileage, and water needs planned from personal experience gained while spending two entire months camping in the area he wanted to take us to.  Then, all of the other people dropped out, and it ended up being just the three of us, just like we had originally planned.  I must admit, I seriously underestimated the planning habits of my camping companions.  We stayed up late getting things ready Tuesday night (about 2 a.m.), and when I headed to school Wednesday morning, I was not only exhausted but worried.  Things were a mess.  Our stuff was piled in random stacks and bags and grocery sacks and paper bags.  Dishes were set out on random countertops between two different apartments, things still needed to be purchased, and I was feeling panicked.  How was all that going to be resolved when I was away teaching all day?  The guys were supposed to pick me up from school that day and we'd take off from there.  I would have no time for last minute packing and reorganizing.  I would just have to trust them to work all morning to magically organize and plan and pack everything.  I was skeptical, I was doubtful, I was downright unhappy as I put the finishing touches on my sub plans for Monday and entered grades.

I have to hand it to them: the boys pulled through.  They picked me up from school with a car packed full of meticulously organized bags of food and supplies, extra things packed for just in case, and all of it arranged with Tetris-esque precision in the car.  We drove off into the sunset, and I relaxed and just let the guys handle the trip.  Seriously, they handled everything.  When we pulled up to a campsite in southern Utah that night at midnight, they had a fire built and dinner cooking without any help from me.  I didn't even know where things were packed.  So I set up the tent and got the bags ready, and just kicked back.  That first night we stayed up late, really really late.  We looked at the stars, we built a big fire, we ate cheesy pasta, we sang songs, we watched the moon rise.  We saw dawn start to lighten the eastern sky.

This is only one of the about two dozen fire pictures I took.

Did I mention it was 5 a.m.?
Did I mention we'd stayed up until 2 a.m. the night before packing?

Then we finally went to bed.  Since I get up at 5:30 everyday, I woke up long before Brian and Will, who both work evenings at a restaurant and hotel.  So I explored around our camp.  We were camping in a juniper forest, which opened up into the strangest woods I'd ever seen only a hundred yards from our camp.  It was a deadwood forest.  A fire had killed, but not burnt the trees years before.  It was almost spooky, despite the cheerful daylight.

What my waking up before everyone else looks like.  

When the boys got up and we finally ate breakfast/lunch, we started gathering wood, an easy task with the deadwood forest so close.  We were headed into the real desert after this campsite, and there would be no gathering wood for the rest of the trip.  So we compiled an impressive stock of the some of the best firewood I've ever seen and the guys lashed it to the top of the car.

"I'm gonna wrangle this wood and take it the market." 

The ability to break down trees sort of went to his head.

Then we drove the rest of the day.  We camped that night in northern Arizona, far away from cell phone service and paved roads.  The next morning (Friday), we drove to the trailhead and hiked Mount Trumbull.  The trail wound through rocks and juniper into a forest of beautiful pine, tall, straight, and draped in perpetual late afternoon light.  The ground was carpeted with long needles, ranging in color from the orange of freshly fallen needles, to the gray-white of sun-bleached older layers.  On top of the needles were plentiful dark pine cones, making a beautiful contrast to the pale needle ground cover.

We reached the top, ate lots of trail mix (this trip involved the consumption of gallons worth of trail mix), and enjoyed the view and the sunshine.  Then, as we descended back into the forest, we stopped to play baseball.

Up to bat.

The pitcher.

After our hike we drove to a spot to see some rock art and got a bonus of a beautiful sunset on the hike out.

That night we drove to Tuweep/Toroweap, which is described like this,

If you’re a serious solitude seeker who doesn’t mind a little extra effort to achieve some peace and quite, then boy, do I have a spot for you! It is called Tuweep, and it lies on the north rim of the Grand Canyon on land known as the “Arizona Strip.” It is one of the most remote places in the United States, with one of the most spectacular views in the world. It takes an extra dose of adventurous spirit and the ability to put up with everything “primitive and rustic” to enjoy this adventure, but if you can make the effort the reward will be well worth the trip. For most adventurers, Tuweep can only be accessed by one of three bone jarring, tooth rattling dirt roads, the shortest of which is 60 miles, and the longest a wearying 90 miles of dusty, rutted, sometimes impassable dirt. For this reason, Tuweep experiences far fewer visitors per year than any other site on the canyon.

(http://www.swaviator.com/html/issueMA02/Tuweep3402.html).

We didn't see the view that night, though Brian assured us it would spectacular when we woke up.  By the time we got to Tuweep, it was well past dark, and the only part of the description we could testify to was the "primitive" road.  Although the campground had few amenities (no running water, garbage, check-in, cell-phone service, etc.), it did have a very clean and comparatively sweet-smelling pit toilet.  After two days of camping on BLM land, it seemed like like an incredible luxury.  Although we got there after dark, Will had been planning our dinner since Tuesday, when he stayed up late spicing steaks and packing them into individual bags to let them soak up the spices for days.  He had gathered special wood on Thursday to create better coals to cook over, and when we finally arrived at Tuweep on Friday night, he got down to business.  While we waited for the coals to be perfect, Brian and Will got to work on the hors d'oeuvres: Triscuits, summer sausage, and cheese roasted over the fire with a double sided grill Will and Brian jerry-rigged with twisty ties.  What did I do to help?  I read out loud to them, told them stories from Norse mythology, and pitched the tent.  I felt thoroughly spoiled on this trip.  Will even let me have the first steak.  It was fantastic.

The master chef crafts the perfect coals.

Appetizers

A serious stake over serious coals.  

In the morning, we woke up to this:

We packed up everything we needed for breakfast and hiked an easy fifteen minutes to the rim itself: a 3000 foot drop down to the Colorado River.  It was completely breathtaking.  I'd never seen the Grand Canyon before, but I had high expectations.  However, no expectation can really prepare you for the reality, complexity, enormity, and beauty of that canyon.  After goofing around taking pictures on the edge for a while, we cooked our oatmeal, Then we spent hours just laying in the sun on a cliff edge, alternating staring out at the canyon and up at the impossibly blue, completely cloudless sky.

Then Brian taught us to make walking sticks from a Yucca cactus, which led to hours of crafting, and then days of horseplay and sword fighting.  After hanging out at camp for a while, we packed up our pasta supplies and two different kinds of tea and headed back out to the rim to watch the starts come out over the canyon.  The stars were some of the most awesome (in the old-fashioned booming voice and quick intake of breath kind of way) I have seen in my life.  That led to more hours of laying on rocks watching the sky.

The next day, Sunday morning, we clambered around on the rocks at our campsite, and then moved on.  We drove several more hours on the "bone-rattling" roads to Whitmore Point, where even Brian had never been.

A trace of civilization.

One of the side roads we stopped by for a bathroom break.  

It ended up being one of the coolest places we went on our trip.  At some point in the last few million years, a lava flow cut over and through the sandstone of the canyon and actually dammed the Colorado River.  The dam lasted 20,000 years before breaking.  This makes Whitmore point a confusing and delightful mix of lava rock both porous and smooth, river and lake rocks, and the characteristic sedimentary rock of the canyon.  While exploring a side ravine we nick-named the Dragon's Nest, we saw a tarantula.  It was blocking the only easy way out of the ravine, and I gathered up my courage and sprinted past it into a patch of cactus.  Go figure.

Monday morning, in our few remaining hours before we needed to start the long drive back, we hiked down to the Colorado River.  From Whitmore Point, the hike is fairly easy and safe, and takes an hour at most.  We jumped into the cold water of the river and washed off days of dust.  I'm not sure how effective that was, even with the biodegradable soap I had brought that we gleefully scrubbed off with.  The water was nearly opaque.  But it still felt fantastic to clear out five days of grease from my hair and layers of sunscreen from my skin.

While we dried off on the river bank in the warm Arizona sun, a flotilla of rafters drifted by.  Two men in a duckie came up to chat, and we found out they were on DAY 16 of their float trip. They must have been on the river a long time, because they talked like they were from a renaissance fair, and seemed so happy to see us that they began throwing us Canadian Beer.  In the end, we ended up with a free six pack worth of non-Utah beer (This is significant because beer is both more expensive and watered down in Utah).  Too bad beer tastes gross.

We finally got back to the car and began to drive home.  We arrived at St. George and our first paved road, water fill-up, gas station, and cell-phone service in four days.  We got there with about ten minutes of gas left in the car and two gallons of water.  I clutched my cell phone for half an hour before we got there, waiting to call my mom.  Because I hadn't known where we were going, I couldn't prepare her for me being out of contact on a mystery camp trip with boys she'd never met.  I was worried there'd be helicopters searching for us.  The guys watched the gas gauge anxiously, I watched my phone.

We drove and drove and drove.  The guys eventually fell asleep, and I took over driving for the first time all trip.  I listened to This American Life, I sang Broadway songs, nonsense songs, jazz, hymns, anything I could think of.  We got back to my school, and I climbed into my cold car, which had been sitting in the school parking lot for six days.  Then I drove the weary half hour back to my apartment, and dragged my dusty pack up to my apartment at about 2 a.m.  Three hours later I staggered up off my bed and out the door to teach.  I hit the ground running this week.  I've got 200 projects and papers to grade by Friday, I've got class and homework, and I've got a trip home planned this weekend.

Despite the stress it's placed on this week, and despite my apprehensions going into it, this mystery adventure turned out to be one of my favorite trips I've ever taken.

Restoring My Honor

Every year during my high school days, my high school would host a novice debate tournament.  From my sophomore year on, I attended it as a judge, but my own novice year I was a competitor.  As usual, my mom handed me a couple of dollars to buy food at the tournament, since I'd be there for lunch and probably dinner.  This time, however, I lost the money.  When lunch came I couldn't find those precious dollars anywhere, and I was hungry.  Science had proven that if you don't eat enough your brain slows down and your concentration suffers--consequences I couldn't afford at a debate tournament.  Clearly, this was an emergency.  Then it occurred to me that this tournament was at my own school, and that my very own locker was just around the corner, in that corner was a little colored cardboard box, and in that box was some money.

Enter moral dilemma:  The money wasn't really mine. I was a member of Key Club, and we had been "trick or treating for UNICEF."  The money in that little cardboard box was the donations I had collected from my friends and peers.  The box was printed with facts about how it only took something like four cents to buy enough vitamin A to prevent a child from going blind.  But I was hungry!  If I didn't eat, I was sure I was going to lose my debate rounds, and for such a silly unforgivable reason as losing a few dollars!  I couldn't let that happen!  So I sneaked down to my locker, opened the little box, and stole $3.14 from charity.  I'd bring money to replace what I was taking on Monday, I told myself.

Monday morning, I forgot.  It's ok, I told myself, The fundraiser goes until Halloween. I technically have two weeks to bring the money.

I put it off, I forgot, I didn't have exact change, I forgot.  Halloween came and went.

The next year, I wasn't part of the Key Club UNICEF drive, but I saw my friends wandering around with the same, bright orange boxes asking for donations to save children.  A voice in the back of my head reminded me that I owed $3.14 to a good cause, and I resolved to bring the money to donate to the drive.  I forgot, I put it off, I didn't have exact change, I forgot.

The same thing happened my junior year, and again my senior year.  I graduated from high school having never paid my debt.  No big deal, right?  I just stole money I had collected from people in the name of charity and let kids go blind.

Every once in a while, at college, I'd see tables for UNICEF set up around campus and immediately would be struck by an attack of conscience.  But I also never carried cash, and was just as forgetful as ever.

This morning, eleven years to the month of taking that money from my locker, I cleansed my honor.  I went to the UNICEF website and made a donation that reflected the original debt plus a whole lot of guilty-conscience money.  The satisfaction I feel is a bit like the feeling of actually getting ALL of the ring around the sink drain cleaned and scrubbed off, and the sink looks back at you pearly white like it hasn't been in years.

I challenge people to duels now, 'cause I've got honor again!  My unstained honor will not be smirched again!

Crap.  I owe that one kid from high school $25.  Do you think he has a website and except credit cards?

The Great and Dreadless Day

I did it.  I took the dreads out.  I took them out all by myself.  It was a sort of penance.  After so much build-up to getting them, mooching off of so many friends to get and maintain them, after telling everyone who would listen about my dreads, I felt like taking them out all alone, with my own two hands and draining only my own time, was almost a sort of penance for my arrogance and selfishness.  And it was pretty dang effective penance.  I don't have internet in my apartment yet, so I did the 18 HOURS of undreading without Netflix, Hulu, or Youtube.  I had only the dozen or so movies I own and a lot of pre-downloaded podcasts.  I don't have a TV, so any movies I did watch would be watched on my labtop.

18 hours.  8 hours on Sunday, 10 or so more Monday night.  I took the last dread out at 4:15 Tuesday morning, collapsed on my futon, and then woke up at 5:30 to go teach a full day.  A day without dreads.

The undreading began with a shower that included deep conditioner.  Then I spread out a sheet.   According to the internet, we all lose around 20-50 hairs a day, more if we're under stress, etc.  Usually those hairs drop out and end up on the carpet or in the drain or on your roommate's shirt that you borrowed.  When you have dreads, a hair will fall out, but stay in the dread it's woven into.  So, for the past four months I have shed only about ten hairs.  The rest were still in my dreads.  That means that I had an awful lot of hair to be combed out.  A disgusting amount.  A repugnant, repulsive, vomitous amount that made me glad that no one was there to see it.  So I spread out an old sheet on my living floor, crossed my legs, and armed myself with a wide-toothed comb.

My workstation

You see this pile?  This terribly disgusting pile?  It's the hair from about four dreads.  I had between 80-100.  I was going to keep it all in a pile to do one master awful shot in the end of all the hair, but it was just too gross to handle.

Each dread required between 5 and 15 minutes of intense personal attention.  I would dip my fingers into olive oil, and work large quantities into the dread.  Then I would begin at the tip, and slowly pull the knots out, bit by bit.  If I took too much, the comb wouldn't slide through and pull out the knot.  But I wanted to take as large of a bite as possible with the comb to get that dread done as quickly as possible.  I pulled out handfuls of olive-oiled hair.  I gave myself a headache.  I watched Longitude, a fantastic film about the carpenter who invented the first clock that could keep time at sea.  I watched the first half of Romeo and Juliet, I watched all of Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey. I watched the first 50 Strong Bad emails. I listened to 3 episodes of This American Life and I listened to 2-3 episodes of Mormon Stories.  And I took out my dreads.  And then I washed my hair with dish soap to get the oil all the way out.

Sunday night, the front comes out in an 8 hour process. 

If I could give you advice about dreads, it would be don't use wax.  I don't know whether wax does or does not help your dreads dread faster.  I know it made mine look better in the beginning.  But I also know that although I stopped waxing my dreads in early July, there was still wax in the core of my dreads.  Wax, and bits of rubber band glue from the bands.  It was gross; I pulled out wads of hair glumped with old wax and bits of sticky black goo, knotted, and slimed with olive oil.  Seriously, if I'd let myself think about it, it would have made my stomach turn.

Undreading in two days meant that I had to go teach school in between. 

If there's one thing having dreads has taught me, it's to love headbands.  I think I own about 20 now.

And now they are gone, and now I don't recognize myself in the mirror.

Don't let that smile fool you, I'm in a daze.
One hour of sleep and hours of teaching later, and I'm a hopeless wreck.

Didn't put a whole lot of effort into day one.
One hour of sleep doesn't motivate me to play with my hair very much.

But, as if rewarding me for finally letting it do what it wanted to do all along, my hair as been fantastic.  It's happy, healthy, and, somehow, it's cute.  I don't understand that.  It wasn't a cute cut when I put it into the dreads, why would it be when I took them out?  But although I miss my dreads like crazy, and I'm trying to adjust to not having people able to guess my personality in one glance or less, I'm very grateful that my hair is giving me this gift of being cute.  I was worried it't be damaged, straggly, and in some awful shape that I'd need to panic and go fix.

Whoah!  It doesn't look awful!  

I had to go to the store, and buy a brush, and hairspray, and normal shampoo and conditioner.

I dug my curling iron out from under the sink.  I hadn't used it in nearly three years.

But this gives me a few days to figure out what hairstyle I want.  Which brings me to the next question...what hairstyle do I want?  I'm thinking maybe a longer bob or something.