Printer Friendly Version

6/17/05
THE WONDERLAND OF ROCKS
16 PAGES

I recently re-read the book “Desert Solitaire” by Edward Abbey in which he recounts “a season in the wilderness” when he was a park ranger at Arches National Park in Utah.  This was back in the 60’s before Arches had been paved and turned into the congested tourist’s bottleneck that it is today.  The book consists of several essays culled from Abbey’s journal during that time and vary in content from informational essays about the various animals and rocks one might find in the desert, to persuasive essays about the need to stop the incessant corporate development of wilderness areas, to personal essays telling the story of some adventure Abbey went on during that long hot summer.

One of these latter types, entitled “Havasu” recounts a couple of weeks that Abbey spent camped out by himself at the bottom of the Grand Canyon, far from the teeming tourists a mile above his head.  One day he decides to hike up to the north rim and ends up getting lost on the way back down.  He tries taking what he thinks will be a shortcut and it ends up leading him down some other side canyon that he doesn’t know.  Rather than turn back and retrace his steps to a spot he recognizes, he forges ahead, certain that the next bend in the canyon will put him back at the Colorado River, which he could then follow back to camp.

He eventually comes to a ledge that drops twenty feet straight down into a deep pool of water.  That leads to another ledge that drops an additional ten feet into another pool.  From there, he can’t see what lies beyond.  Abbey realizes that this is a point of no return.  If he follows his instinct and goes forward, he’s committed.  He won’t be able to climb back up to this ledge if it turns out the canyon dead ends at the end of that second pool.  If he jumps and is wrong, he dies.  What does he do?  He jumps off the ledge.  Then he swims over and drops down into the second pool.  Only then does he realize that his worst fear was true: that way is a dead end.  He cannot go forward.  And he cannot go back.

After he sits on a rock and cries for a few minutes, clearing the fear and panic from his system, he starts looking for ways to climb back up the two ledges.  It’s a harrowing ordeal in which he actually ends up scaling the canyon wall via a two-inch lip in the rock.  But with a pair of solid steel balls, he works up the courage to overcome this seemingly impossible obstacle and climbs back to his “point of no return.”  From there he retraces his steps and eventually finds his way back to camp.

Reading this story made me remember a trip I took into the desert back when I lived in Los Angeles.  The scenario so closely resembled Edward Abbey’s experience at Havasu that it struck me almost as déjà vu.  I’ve told my story to several people and received the due amounts of awe and comments of “you’re insane” that the account warranted, but I had yet to write about it.  After reading Abbey’s tale, I decided it was finally time to put my adventure down in print and share it with the world.

_______________________________________ 

Joshua Tree National Monument was, hands down, my favorite place to go hiking and camping.  It was never too crowded, especially on the remote, unmarked trails I often followed and I had all the solitude I would ever need.  One of my favorite things to do at Joshua Tree was to go bouldering, or “scrambling” as it’s often called.  There are several places in the park with giant fields of boulders ranging in size from basketballs to Volkswagons to small buildings.  To get across these fields and up these mountains, you have to “scramble” up on top of the rocks, leap from one to the other, lower yourself down and sometimes, when the angle of the rock is steeper, scamper as fast as you can to the top of an incline before your boots lose traction.  It’s exciting, thrilling and the closest you can come to rock climbing without using climbing gear.  Few things have made my heart pound in excitement as much as jumping from one rock to another several feet away, where misjudging my jump would mean falling through the gap a good ten or twenty feet and breaking several bones as I landed on the uneven ground below. 

Most of my bouldering had simply been a matter of finding a cluster of rocks, scrambling to the top and then scrambling back down.  Then one day I was looking through a book of hikes in Southern California and I read about a place in Joshua Tree called “The Wonderland of Rocks.”  The six-mile hike took you through a long and difficult mile’s-worth of boulders as you descended farther and farther into a place called Rattlesnake Canyon.  The hike was given a four out of five star rating for difficulty and the disclaimer at the beginning warned “This hike is not for the faint of heart.”  I, of course, decided immediately that I must do this hike. 

I sat on it for a couple months waiting for the right weekend to head out to Joshua Tree.  I had just moved back to L.A. after shooting a movie with some friends and was finally settling down into a routine.  I had a job that I enjoyed and I had just moved into my own apartment, living alone for the first time in my life.  Things seemed to be falling into place until one Thursday my boss called me into his office and said, “Brian it’s just not working out.”  He gave me my paycheck prorated up to that very day and sent me home. 

I couldn’t believe it.  I had never been fired in my life.  I didn’t cry but I came close.  I had been scared to move out to L.A. but by the end of shooting the movie, I was finally embracing the excitement of that feeling of the unknown.  I was finally looking forward to tackling whatever challenges I would face in the big daunting city.  As I drove home from my premature last day of work, I felt that sense of empowerment ebb out of me.  I always thought that simply moving to L.A. would be the biggest challenge, and after that everything would just work itself out.  But just as everything seemed to be working out, I wondered if this was a sign that L.A. was not the place for me.

I needed to get away for a while and clear my head.  I immediately thought of Joshua Tree.  I thought specifically of the Wonderland of Rocks.  I couldn’t confront the mental and spiritual challenges I had suddenly been presented with, so I would deal with a physical challenge.  That, at least, was something I had some control over. 

I drove to my friend Jason’s house to borrow his tent then went home to start packing.  The next afternoon I loaded up my car and headed east toward Joshua Tree.  The feel of the freeway, unusually devoid of traffic, put a tingle back into my fingers.  Less than two months before, I had spent more than a month road tripping back and forth across the country.  The movie I worked on had been a road trip movie and we had spent four straight weeks driving and shooting as we went.  I could already feel the aching draw of the road.  Part of me strongly considered bypassing Joshua Tree and heading all the way to Boston.  There was a girl there that I was in love with and thought I wanted to be with forever.  Maybe I would drive out there and surprise her.  It was only four days across the country if I sprinted. 

But that would just be running away from my problems.  That would be running away from the challenge right as it began.  No, I needed to stay in L.A. and figure things out.  Getting fired was eating at me, but no matter where I went, that was still going to be there.  I couldn’t escape it in Boston.  I had to face it in L.A.  I had to rise to the challenge.  But first, I had another challenge to face.  The Wonderland of Rocks. 

_______________________________________

I got to Joshua Tree around two in the afternoon.  The park was fairly deserted.  Not surprising really considering the hot August sun was beating down at close to a hundred degrees.  Nobody in their right mind would have or should have been going to the desert this time of year – especially not to go on a hike as strenuous and difficult as the one I was planning.  But I wasn’t in my right mind.  I was, in fact, desperately trying to cling to my sanity.

My plan was to camp out tonight and then start hiking in the morning before sunrise, hopefully getting to the end of the trail before it got too hot.  I figured, even if it took me four hours to cross the rugged mile of boulders, I’d be on the other side before noon, after which there was a relatively easy foot trail that went around the Wonderland of Rocks and back to my starting point. 

It was too early to start making camp, so I decided to do a test run of the trail and see what I was in for.  The book said the hike was a total of six miles.  The first five follow a normal hiking trail into the Wonderland, after which, there isn’t so much a “trail” as just a general direction you need to head in, eventually ending up at the Indian Cove picnic area at the northern end of the park.  I pulled on my boots and threw on my backpack, which contained a couple of snacks and several bottles of water, and started down the trail. 

I was the only person for miles.  I thought the solitude would feed my soul.  Instead, it just made me feel lonely.  The desert, which I’ve always found beautiful and mysterious just looked parched and desolate.  I felt the knot that had been ever present in my stomach begin to tighten, and I fought the urge to cry.  The sand was loose and with every step my feet sunk in, making it feel as though I were constantly climbing uphill even though the terrain was flat. 

Two miles in, the trail split.  The right fork led into the Wonderland of Rocks.  The left fork was called “The Boy Scout Trail”, a circuitous route around the Wonderland and through the canyons.  This would be the trail I took back at the end of the day tomorrow.  I headed down the right fork and an hour later I came to a small pond surrounded by rocks called Willow Hole.  According to the hiking book, this was where the Wonderland of Rocks began.  I scampered up the side of a rock and made my way around the pond, which was filled with little croaking frogs and tadpoles.  Beyond there, I saw the ridge rise up, filled with boulders.  Everything past this point would require scrambling.

It was getting on past four o’clock by now and I had to start heading back to the car to find a campsite for the night.  I scampered back around the pond and began the five-mile walk back.  The sun was setting but the temperature was still in the low nineties.  My footprints on the way in had already dissolved into nothing but small divots in the loose sand, looking like any of the dozens of animal tracks and miscellaneous indentations criss-crossing the desert floor.  You’d never know that a human in boots had crossed this way not two hours earlier.

Back at the car, I drove about ten miles deeper into the park to the Big Rocks campground.  I pitched my tent in the very campsite we’d camped in two months earlier at the beginning of the road trip movie.  It gave me some comfort to be there, but it also reminded me of how much I missed it all, how much I still wanted to be living carefree out on the road, rather than dealing with fear and insecurity in a city that I already loathed. 

As if to accentuate my grim feelings, I nearly stepped on a rattlesnake walking back to the campsite with the rest of my gear.  I had been looking down, the way one will when you’re walking without purpose, and didn’t see the thing moving out from under the shade of its bush.  In the movies, they always make a snake’s rattle sound quiet and sinister.  In reality, it sounds like TV static turned up to full volume.  All of a sudden, the air was split with his machine-gun warning and I jumped back three feet in time to see him curling into a pile, the snake’s trademark “don’t fuck with me” signal.  I gave him a wide berth and headed to my tent. 

I built a fire and heated up some water for Ramen Noodles, although I had no appetite.  I wrote in my journal and read for a bit, but finally decided to just retire for the night.  I had a long day tomorrow.  Plus, I was feeling all around miserable and just wanted to be asleep.  My original plan was to sleep outside under the stars.  I had done it before.  The sky in the desert is so beautiful and clear with no lights for miles and not even any humidity to obscure the nighttime sky.  You can see the band of the Milky Way without having to squint, and even if there’s no major meteor shower, you’ll see at least one shooting star per minute.  Tonight I just felt too scared to be outside the security of my tent.  Scared of what?  I’m not sure.  Snakes maybe.  Psycho killers.  Monsters from the Stephen King book I was reading most likely.

I crawled into the tent and tried to sleep, but it was too hot and the sound of the wind against the tent’s flaps was giving me the creeps.  I kept hearing the sound of footsteps outside.  All in my head of course.  I had only seen one other set of campers and they were at their own campsite more than a quarter mile away.  Somehow, I managed to fall asleep, though it was fitful.  I kept waking up to the sound of somebody tapping their hands on the outside of my tent.  I felt like crying again.  Why had I come out here?  I woke up a dozen times before my alarm finally went off at five o’clock.  I got up immediately, not bothering with the snooze button.  I packed up my tent and threw it in the trunk.  I ate a meager breakfast of NutriGrain bars and water, then got in the car and headed back to the trailhead, stopping at an outhouse to take care of business along the way.

I knew I was going to need a lot of water for this trip.  A good rule of thumb they always tell you is to carry one gallon of water per person per day.  More if it’s hot or you’re going to be doing some really strenuous hiking.   Both factors applied, so I put two-and-a-half gallons into my pack.  I had four one-and-a-half liter bottles and a one-gallon jug.  Why I chose to bring a jug rather than extra bottles, I’ll never know.  Within the first mile, the jug had sprung a small leak and was dripping down the back of my legs.  I took it out and repositioned it, which helped the leaking a little, though I still felt a drop every now and then.  By the time I reached Willow Hole and the beginning of the Wonderland of Rocks, I decided to just get rid of the jug.  Beyond the leaking, it was simply weighing me down.  I knew I would need my balance today and the jug was throwing of my center of gravity.  I took it out of my pack and left it sitting on a rock in plain view.  I justified my litter with the thought that maybe it would save the life of some dehydrated hiker in the future. 

I had no real map for this hike.  All I had was the little map drawn in the hiking book, which only showed a few choice landmarks but had no relief lines indicating elevation changes.  All this map was good for was to show me that from Willow Hole, I needed to head northeast toward the Indian Cove picnic area.  I also didn’t bring a compass with me.  I’d never needed one in the past because I’d always just followed pre-marked hiking trails.  I would soon realize that this hike had no “trail” to speak of.  Instead you simply wove your way over and around rocks as you gradually made your way into and through various canyons.  Occasionally you would follow a dry wash for a few hundred feet, but that was the closest you ever came to a defined trail. 

In retrospect, I realize how stupid and suicidal I had been coming to a place like this without a real map or compass.  Although to be fair, I have a hard time reading topographic maps anyway.  The only way I can follow a topo map is if I already know where I am.  Then I can say, “okay yes, this set of lines is that mountain over there and that means the trail is going to bend around this way.”  But as soon as I lose my way, the map becomes useless to me.  I have since looked at topo maps of this area and I have no doubt that had I brought one on this hike, it would have spent the entire trip inside my pack.  A big jumble of crunched together relief lines, the topo map for the Wonderland of Rocks is so confusing that I still have no idea which is a mountain and which is a valley.  Still, a compass might have been nice.  I knew that I needed to make my way northeast, and I did all my reckoning that day by the sun.  It was still early by the time I passed Willow Hole so I knew the sun was still pretty much due east and a little south.  As the day progressed toward noon, I knew the sun was closer to due south.  I assessed my route accordingly. 

Immediately northeast from Willow Hole was a small ridge that I had to get to the top of.  I kept looking for a point of entry but all the boulders between me and the ridge were at least as tall as I was, and most of them way taller.  If I couldn’t find a boulder short enough to climb up on and begin the ascent, this trip would be over before it even started.  I finally found one that only came up to my chest and decided this was likely my best bet.  I set my pack on top then placed my hands on the rock.  One, two, THREE – I jumped as hard as I could, feeling the abrasive granite tear at my hands, and swung one leg up onto the rock.  I kept my momentum going and rolled over, banging my knee on the way, and ending up flat on my back on top of the rock.  I grunted hard against the pain in my knee and just lay there for a bit.  It wasn’t even eight o’clock and already I was sweating buckets and slightly injured.  I pulled a water bottle out of my pack and drank heavily.  My stomach was growling, so I pulled out another NutriGrain bar, but the first bite made me retch.  My mouth was too parched to handle the dry crumbly texture, so I spit it all out and threw the rest back in my pack.  I took another gulp of water and continued on.

I scrambled and jumped from boulder to boulder and for a short time I was at home in my element.  This was exactly what I had been anticipating for months.  I gave myself a mental slap on the back with every successful jump.  I’ve never been the most graceful person in the world, but the many movements involved in bouldering – leaping just the right distance, cushioning your landing to minimize the impact on your ankles and knees, grabbing hold and swinging yourself up, grabbing hold and easing yourself down, planting your feet just right on a slanted rock so you don’t slip, even falling down in such a way that minimizes injury – it has always felt like ballet to me.

At the top of the first ridge, I couldn’t see for miles and miles, but simply saw the next ridge in line.  Scrambling back down, I came to a dry wash, which I followed for a short distance.  After less than an hour in the Wonderland, I felt like I was making good time, except for the fact that I honestly had no idea where I was going.  I really had been expecting a traditional blazed trail, or at the very least a beaten down footpath showing the way others had come before me.  But the farther I progressed, the more I realized I was making it up as I went along.  The loose desert sand hadn’t even left any footprints from previous hikers for me to follow.  I double-backed several times when what I thought was the right way led me to an impassable wall of rock. 

Here and there I saw a couple of man-made rock piles on top of the larger boulders.  Too neat and tidy to have been created by rockslides these little piles, usually about six inches tall, had been left by others who passed that way.  Sporadic as they were, these were my only guides except for the sun itself.  I’d walk in the direction they indicated and then after fifteen minutes without another guide, I’d begin to wonder if I was really going the right way.  Here and there, I left my own little piles of rocks to aid my fellow hikers.  Though in retrospect, I’ve realized just how much the ones I came across might have been nothing but a false sense of security.  If I was leaving piles and I had no idea where I was going, who’s to say others hadn’t done the same thing.  I could have been following a cold trail for all I knew.

After a couple hours of ups and downs and numerous double-backs, I was finally getting into the groove of this hike.  I accepted the fact that I would just have to improvise and find the best way I could.  It may not be the exact route others had taken, but as long as it got me to the end, it would work just fine. 

Halfway down another ridge, I came to a point of no return.  Most of the boulders on this ridge had been relatively small, with no more than three or four feet separating one level from the next.  But now I was standing on a large rock that dropped down about ten feet to the level below.  From there it was a short couple hops down to another dry wash, which bent around the next ridge.  Once I dropped down from this rock, there would be no going back.  It was much too high and steep for me to climb.  The area immediately around the wash looked equally steep and unclimbable.  If the wash dead-ended into another impassable wall around the corner, I’d be stuck.  I shook my head and sighed, then turned around. 

I knelt down on the rock and slowly eased myself over the edge, feet dangling about four feet off the ground.  I let go and stumbled ever so slightly as I hit the deck.  Now I was committed.  I was down in the wash and around the corner less than five minutes later and was relieved to see that the path continued on through the canyon for some distance.  Over the next hour I came to at least two more “points of no return”.  With each one I sighed and put my trust in… something, I don’t know, then dropped over the edge.  Somehow, each drop proved to be the right decision and I never became trapped by my own recklessness.

I continued descending through the canyon in an up and down fashion.  At the top of each ridge I kept expecting to see the Indian Cove picnic area, but all that greeted me was a view of more desert, more rocks, more Wonderland.  As noon approached I began second-guessing my direction.  I had planned on being through this leg of my trip by this point in the day.  Now I didn’t know if the sun was east or south of me.  Or worse, was it actually in the west now, sending me in wrong direction altogether? 

I had to take my boots off constantly and shake them out in the washes because the large-grain sand kept getting in and grinding at my ankles and feet.  With each new ridge, each impassable barrier and each doubleback I could feel the early stages of panic beginning to gnaw at my senses and wits.  I hadn’t seen any rock pile markers in over two hours and I was beginning to think I had wandered dangerously off course.  The temperature was creeping into the hundreds.  I had already drunk over half my water and had no idea how much farther there was to go.  Even though they tell you not to, I started rationing what I drank.  It wasn’t so much a conscious decision really.  The temperature of the bottles in my pack was rising with the sun and the water was almost too hot to drink anyway.  Or at least too hot to be thirst quenching.

At one point, as I was passing through one of the rare grassy sections of the hike, I stumbled upon a cabin.  Built cunningly out of a combination of cinderblock-sized stones and long thin pieces of tree trunk, the structure looked like it belonged to an old desert hermit, though I couldn’t imagine who would build a shelter so elaborate out here. 

My book said that water in the Wonderland of Rocks was particularly scarce, even for the desert, and any you might find wouldn’t be potable.  So how had somebody been able to trek this far over such rugged terrain with enough water to last him while he built this cabin?  And even then, how long could he have possibly stayed out here with no reliable sources nearby?  Maybe some hikers built it as a shelter for themselves and any others who wanted to turn this trip into an overnight excursion.  I wasn’t sure.  All I knew was the look of this thing gave me the creeps.  It was too shady to see anything through the gaps in the walls so I had no idea who or what might be lurking around in there.  And yet, I knew I couldn’t in good conscience pass this place by without at least taking a look inside.

From a distance of about fifty feet, I called out, “Hello!”  Every nerve ending went on fire with the surprising volume of my voice.  Except for a couple of whispered curses and the pounding of my own breath, this was the only sound to escape my mouth all morning.  And in the dead quiet of the desert, anything above an indoor voice sounds deafening.  I got no response except for the tiniest of echoes, so I called out again, “Hellooo!”  Still no response, I picked up a couple of rocks and threw them at the cabin.  Even if there were no humans camped out inside, that didn’t mean there weren’t coyotes or rattlesnakes hunkered down in the shade it was providing.  I kept picking up rocks and throwing them as I walked closer and closer, but I didn’t hear the sounds of anything skittering away or inching deeper into hiding. 

I gave the entrance a wide berth and looked inside.  If there was any animal life in there, it was small enough to stay hidden, so I ducked my head and entered.  On the dirt floor was an old ratty sleeping bag, a couple of pots and pans, some kitchen utensils and several books.  I sat down and opened one, a trail register of sorts.  People had written down their names, the dates they had been here and their sentiments about the hike.  One entry said, “We love this trail.  We’re coming back in a few weeks to do the wonderland of rocks.”  I frowned at this.  This was the Wonderland of Rocks right?  Was I lost or had they been lost?  Another entry was a long complaint about how stupid this trail was and how the guy had been talked into it by his friend, but he would much rather have been surfing down in Malibu and would NEVER be coming back here again.  Below this were a couple of indignant replies telling the guy to stop bellyaching and just enjoy himself.  How they ever expected the original author to get that message is beyond me.

The remaining books had similar scribblings.  I tried writing my own entry, but the pen I found in the pile had long since dried out.  I dug through my pack, certain I had a pen in there somewhere, but came up zeroes.  I considered taking one of the books with me to keep as a souvenir of this hike (provided I made it out) but knew that would be wrong.  Instead, I stood up and brushed myself off then headed back into the heat, looking to the sun for my next compass reading. 

By one o’clock I was close to freaking out.  I had absolutely no clue where I was.  My hiking book didn’t mention anything at all about that cabin.  That had been the most notable landmark I’d seen all day.  If the author of the book had passed by it on his hikes, he would have written it down.  For all I knew, I could be miles off course, lost deep inside the bowels of the Wonderland of Rocks with less than half-a-day’s worth of water left.

At the top of yet another ridge, I nearly broke down crying when once again all I saw was nothing but more rocks.  My pack felt a thousand times heavier as I trudged down the other side.  The grace I’d had earlier in the day as I sprung from rock to rock was gone.  Thoroughly exhausted I stumbled more and more with each leap and scramble.  As I my hot aching feet plodded along, I started shouting at the top of my lungs, “HELP!  HEEELLLLPPP!”  I held no fantasies of summoning a rescue squad, but I thought maybe, just maybe there were other hikers out here somewhere who might hear me.  I listened, but heard no reply.  I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled.  The loud shrill sound split the air and echoed through the canyon for several seconds, but again returned nothing.  I put my head down and began my seemingly constant uphill walk through the loose sand of yet another dry wash, making little whimpering noises as I went.  “I’m gonna die out here,” I said miserably. 

Then suddenly I stopped.  Was that…?  Could it be…?  Yes, no mistaking it.  There were boot prints in the sand in front of me.  Not just divots that could have belonged to a man or to a coyote.  They had the unmistakable shape of a boot and some even retained the shape of their tread. 

But that couldn’t be right.  I had seen from my trial hike the day before that footprints didn’t hold their shape for more than an hour or two in this loose granular sand.  That meant somebody had made these prints today, and within the last thirty minutes by the looks of them.  But my car had been the only one parked at the trailhead.  I hadn’t seen or heard a single sign to indicate anything except the fact that I was the only person for miles all day today.  Beyond that, nobody else in their right mind would have been out here on a day like this to begin with.  And yet, there in the dirt in front of me were fresh boot tracks telling me different. 

Either way it didn’t matter.  Somebody had walked this way recently, which meant I couldn’t be too far off course.  I followed the tracks through the wash to the next pile of boulders.  I climbed to the top and found myself not on a narrow ridge, but on a wide plateau.  I walked about a hundred feet across the completely flat surface and at the other side my heart jumped.  Not so far in the distance I could see a road.  It came in from somewhere just out of view and looped around in a big circle.  Indian Cove.  It was finally within reach.

Relatively.  There were still a couple more ridges to climb over before I was out of here, but at least I knew I wasn’t going to die in the middle of nowhere.  I began yet another descent with new fervor. 

Halfway down the ridge I became boxed in.  I was in a three-dimensional cul-de-sac with ridgeline rising on both sides of me, and a steep pile of boulders in front.  I climbed to the top and stood on a rock about five feet in diameter.  In front of me was a rock at the top of another pile that I would be able to climb down.  Just one catch: between me and that next rock was a four-foot gap spanning a one-hundred-foot drop.  In normal everyday life jumping four feet is no great task.  You can do it from a standstill.  But when that jump is across an abyss that could end your life, the distance seems to stretch surreally out in front of you.  And just to add another challenge, the rock I would be landing on was only five-feet wide itself, hanging over an equally large drop.  So I couldn’t just haul out and jump as hard as I wanted lest my momentum carry completely off the other side.  I would have to ignore the instinctual fear telling me that the gap was larger than it really was, and trust my muscles to jump just the right amount. 

I cinched the straps on my pack as tight as they would go.  I didn’t want it flopping around and messing with my center of gravity.  I was so glad I had left that gallon jug of water back at Willow Hole.  The size of the rock I was standing on only afforded me two steps to get up to speed, far more than I needed, but far less than my sinking stomach wanted.  I stood as far to the other edge as I could.  My mouth went dry.  My heart was pounding in my chest.  I wiped my sweaty palms on my shirt and focused on a point in the middle of my landing rock.  I rechecked my pack to make sure it was secure on my back, put my hands to the side and wiggled my fingers for nerves or good luck then moved.

(right-left-PUSH) 

Time didn’t slow down the way it does in movies.  I don’t remember every sensation as I was briefly suspended a hundred feet above a valley of skull crushing rocks.  I jumped.  Then I landed.  I decelerated with two quick steps a good eighteen inches from the other side, simultaneously letting a formless wordless yell escape my lungs.  “AAAUUUGGGHHH!”  It wasn’t a shout of victory.  It was the sound of fear that had been bottled up inside my stomach all morning finally releasing with a burst of carbon dioxide.

My victory sound was much less dramatic.  Just an exhale of breath coinciding with a deep nod of my head, “Hoo!”

I climbed down the pile and made my way up the next ridge.  It also was a wide plateau, most likely the outer wall of Rattlesnake Canyon.  From the other side I saw Indian Cove.  So close now.  It seemed like once I got down from this ridge it would just be a matter of finding my way through the next wash and into the open.

I began looking for a point of attack to begin what I hoped would be my final descent.  Everything looked far too steep to scramble and far too high to drop down.  But the plateau was wide so I kept looking.  Off to the side I saw crack in the ground, which seemed to provide a not-so-steep pathway down through the rock.  The crack didn’t look natural.  It appeared as though some Titan or Desert God had stuck his finger into the canyon wall and scraped a long narrow chunk out of it.  The ground was smooth, free of loose boulders, and the walls, no more than five feet apart, rose straight up for thirty feet.  Here and there, rainwater had collected in small indentations and the puddles were filled with little frogs. 

The hiking book had mentioned something about climbing through a “slot” toward the end of the hike.  I thought maybe this was that slot.  Maybe I hadn’t been off course this entire day after all.  For the first few minutes, the slot gradually sloped down with an occasional “step” about three-feet tall that I easily hurdled.  Then about five minutes in, the ground dropped twelve feet straight down into a water-filled pothole three feet in diameter.  From there, it dropped an additional twelve feet into another pothole.  Then it dropped yet again, but I couldn’t tell how far or what into. 

Crap.  I turned back.  I looked and looked for another point of descent but every likely exit from this plateau required an initial drop of at least fifty feet.  It began to look like the slot was my only way down from here.  I walked back down the slot to re-examine my options.  I read and re-read the line in the hiking book that mentioned a “slot.”  It really seemed like this was what they were talking about, but I had no way of knowing for sure.

Leaning down and looking over the narrow drop into the pothole, I agonized over my next decision.  I figured I could drop my pack down first then ease myself over the edge and slide straight down by pressing my boots against the walls, which were only three feet apart at this point.  But then what?  I had been crossing points of no return all day, but this was THE point of no return.  No two ways about it.  There would be no second chances, no possibility of searching for hidden access points between larger boulders, and certainly no option of turning back.  If I moved forward and hit a dead end, I would be fatally boxed in by the steep claustrophobic walls with no physical means of climbing back up.  No longer the abrasive granite that had been tearing at my hands and knees all day, the completely vertical walls of the slot were smooth as slickrock.  Which meant that I would never find enough traction to chimney-walk back up.

Once again, perhaps for the last time, I made a reckless decision and dropped my backpack over the edge.  It sank three feet to the bottom of the pothole and I was glad that I had opted against bringing my camera with me on this trip.  I turned around and knelt, my toes hanging just over the lip.  I put my hands on the ground and slid backwards, pressing my feet against the walls.  After this, live or die, I would be committed.  I let my feet slide down until my chin was even with the ledge at which point I let go and put my hands against the walls to steady my upper body.  I eased off the pressure on my feet and started to slide.  Slowly at first, just a couple inches at a time, but after a foot or so I lost friction all of a sudden and fell the remaining six feet, slowed down only slightly by my boots against the wall.

The stagnant, algae-filled water was surprisingly cold.  I buckled at the knees to cushion my fall and slipped on the scum coating the bottom of the pothole, soaking myself up to the chest. 

“Ho!” I breathe-shouted in shock.  Shock at the temperature of the water, and shock at myself for what I’d just done. 

Standing up to my waist in the greenish pool, I peered over the edge.  The next drop would be similar to this one, about twelve feet.  The one after that appeared a little bit easier, only eight or so.  I pulled my soaking pack out of the water and dropped it over the side.  I threw my leg over the lip of the rock and turned myself around, pressing both feet against the walls.  I had even less friction this time.  As soon as I let go, my wet slimy boots slipped and I fell straight down into the pothole. 

Looking over the next ledge I started second-guessing my decision again.  I couldn’t see how far down this slot went, but a sudden thought made my stomach drop completely out of my body.  What if this slot only went halfway through the canyon wall?  What if it emptied into dead space a hundred feet above the ground?  What if one of these drops was taller than twelve feet?  Would I have the chutzpah to press my boots against the rock and slide a hundred feet straight down?  Even if I could somehow maintain the proper friction the entire way, what if I got part of the way down only to realize the walls were gradually tapering too far away from each other to maintain my hold?  Would I try in vain to shimmy back up the crack?  How long would I hang there with hands and feet pressed against the hot granite before finally giving in to fate and gravity?  What would go through my head the instant before I let go?  What would go through my head at the instant of impact?  Would I die immediately, or would I lay in agony for days until finally succumbing?

I screamed for all I was worth, “HEEEEEEEEELLLLLLLLLLLPPPPPPPP!!!!”  I put my fingers in my mouth and whistled three quick blasts, the universal signal of distress. 

Knowing it was a useless effort that was only wasting oxygen, I tried putting my energy into something almost as fruitless.  I tried climbing back up the slot.  I lifted one boot out of the slimy water and scraped it against the wall, drying it off as much as possible.  I pressed hard against the wall with that foot and both hands then lifted the other boot out of the pool.  Balanced in a three-point wedge, I scraped my other boot against the wall.  I didn’t scrape more than twice before I slipped and fell back into the water.  I tried a couple more times before giving up and looking forward again.  There was no way to know for sure how this would end, but I really had no choice but to press on.

After a couple more drops, I stopped even trying to slide down the walls.  My boots were too slippery and I was wasting energy trying to slow myself down.  All of my drops so far had been into these small pools that butted right up against the next drop.  My fifth (or so) drop landed me in a pool followed by a longer landing, about six feet long.  Right away I could see that I wasn’t going to be able to tackle the next drop the way I had the others.  Covering the lip of the rock that I would have to climb over was a swarm of bees. 

Damn.  I remembered hearing reports on the news about killer bees making their way to California.  I didn’t know if that’s what these were, but either way, getting stung by about twenty of them could still be deadly.  I walked as close to the edge and to the bees as I dared and peered over.  The next drop wasn’t nearly as steep as the previous ones.  The walls had tapered to about five feet apart again and halfway down the slope a small rock jutted out six inches from the side.  Normally, I would have lowered myself down to that little rock and then lowered myself into the next pool from there.  But doing so would mean spending several seconds with my face and hands in the middle of the swarm.

I once again, considered my options.  The fact that this wasn’t a completely vertical drop was a benefit in more ways than one.  And that jutting rock could still serve a purpose.  Yes, I definitely saw potential.  I spent a few minutes wiping my feet on the landing and rehearsing exactly how I would do this in my head.  If I misjudged any of this, or if my feet slipped, I would either break my ankle, fracture my skull or get stung by who knew how many bees.  Maybe all three.

As ready as I would ever be, I pulled an empty water bottle out of my backpack and dunked it in the pothole, filling it up.  The bees were crawling all over that ledge, taking off and flying way, only to be replaced by more flying back in.  I needed to get as many as I could out of the way for just a second or two.  I cinched my pack on tight and took a couple deep breaths as I walked to within three feet of the edge.  Mentally steeling myself I upended the bottle and shook a large gush of water over the bees.  I’m not sure how many slid off or took flight.  As soon as the bottle was empty I took one step and jumped.  My right foot landed on the little jutting rock where I bent at the knee and pushed again, turning my forward momentum into a sideways jump.  I planted my left foot against the wall and pushed back.  My right foot shot out and planted itself against the other wall.  At the same time, I stuck out both arms to steady myself as I slid more or less straight down into the standing pool of water.  I wavered a little then slipped entirely, landing on my ass as much as on my feet, but kept moving.  There was another small drop a couple feet beyond the pool so I bailed over the side, dropping another six feet into the next pothole.  None of the bees gave chase.

After that, the slot resumed the gradual slope it had started out with at the top and within five minutes I was once again standing in the open on a large, flat, abrasive chunk of granite.

I shook off my pack and dropped it on the ground.  I took off my wet boots and clothes and laid them out in the sun to dry.  I collapsed in the shade, exhaling hard.  Laying naked on my back I squinted at the sky and shook my head.  By all rights I should have died in that slot.  If instant karma were real, I would have been punished severely for coming out into this wilderness unprepared with no map, no compass, no rope, in the dead heat of August, climbing into places I didn’t know I could climb out of.  I had given up my control of the situation the second I bailed over the ledge into that first pothole.  After that, my fate was no longer in my own hands.  It hadn’t even been in the hands of God at that point.  I had given my life into the hands of the desert.  If that crack had been formed differently, the desert could have decreed my death.  And I alone would have been at fault. 

I exhaled hard again, putting my hands over my face, shaking my head and saying, “What the fuck were you thinking?” over and over again. 

I pulled out another water bottle and tried to drink.  The water was still too warm to do much in the way of thirst quenching.  The remaining food in my pack was useless mush, contaminated with swampy water.  Not that I had any appetite.  After half an hour, my clothes had dried somewhat, but my boots were still waterlogged.  I got dressed anyway, slung on my pack and resumed my descent. 

Fifteen minutes after I reached the wash, I came to the end of the canyon.  Beyond the two walls was wide-open desert.  I scrambled over a few last token rocks and then I was out.  I had made it.  I wasn’t going to die in there.  I walked a few hundred feet and sat down at a picnic table to celebrate quietly for a few minutes.  

I had originally planned on walking back to my car via the Boy Scout trail, but I was absolutely beat.  I thought maybe I could hitch a ride with a park ranger heading to the west entrance, but the ranger station a mile north of Indian Cove was closed.  I walked an additional mile to the main road to find a pay phone so I could call a cab.  There was one former gas station in sight, but everything, including the phone booth had been stripped down and boarded up long before I got there.  I tried hitchhiking for a few minutes, but everybody blew past me at sixty-five miles per hour.  I walked back down the park road where there was a line of houses.  After knocking on a dozen doors, somebody finally answered and I managed to sweet talk the owner into letting me use his phone to call a cab. 

I didn’t realize just how far apart the north and west entrances to Joshua Tree were and I ended up paying fifty dollars for a trip that was only seven or eight miles as the crow flies.  I felt a little like a failure because I wasn’t able to walk back to the car myself, although the cab driver told me that this wasn’t the first time he had made this exact trip.  Apparently other hikers who went into the Wonderland had had no strength to make it back either.  Next time I did this I decided I would hide a tent, a sleeping bag, some water and some food at Indian Cove and spend the night there after the Wonderland hike, then hike back to the car the next morning. 

I climbed into my Geo, turned on the air conditioning and cranked up the radio.  The sound of music sounded so sweet after the lonely silence of the desert all day.  But it did nothing to lessen the feeling of loneliness and fear that still sat hollow in my stomach.  I thought that this hike would empower me again, that if I could get through it, it meant I could get through anything.  But I’m too honest with myself to believe such self-delusion.  My struggles in the Wonderland of Rocks were completely different from the intangible struggles awaiting me back in Los Angeles. 

I was originally planning on spending another night camping out in Joshua Tree, but I felt miserable and lonely and I just wanted to be home – even if that home was a city I hated.  A friend was crashing at my apartment temporarily so at least I would have company.  So I headed back to L.A. where I did face my fears.  Some of them I overcame.  Others still lurk in the background of my mind.  Today, almost six years later, I shake my head and laugh at the things that scared me back then.  So much useless worry about career, money, relationships that all seems so insignificant now.  But isn’t that how it always is – hindsight being 20/20 and all?

_______________________________________

I often think about that day and I’ve told and re-told the story dozens of times.  And every time I tell it, I feel the excitement.  When I think about the things I did – jumping across chasms, sliding down cracks in the canyon wall, crossing points of no return – I still break out in a cold sweat.  When I think about the footprints I saw in the sand, I get goosebumps.  Logically I suppose it was possible that a hiker made those footprints several days earlier.  It’s possible that the sand in that particular wash was slightly different from the sand leading up to Willow Hole and that’s why the prints held their shape.  But then again logically, none of the other washes I’d walked through that day did anything of the sort.  Pretty much as soon as my foot left the ground, the print filled in with loose sand.  My thoughts always go to that poem, “Footsteps”.  Was it possible that those had been the footsteps of God in the sand, or of His angels?  Instead of carrying, maybe God had led me, and showed me the way to safety.  Maybe He even led me to that slot in the canyon wall, knowing it really was a safe way down.  I don’t know.

I’ve been back to Joshua Tree nearly a dozen times since that day and have hiked the Boy Scout trail a couple times.  Every time I pass by the fork in the trail, I always think about taking the route that heads into the Wonderland of Rocks.  I’ve gone down to Indian Cove several times and looked up at what I climbed down from.  You can’t see it from the ground, but I know somewhere up on that ridge is a narrow slot cutting through the canyon wall.  Each time I look up at the northern end of the Wonderland, I get chills.  I think about everything that happened that day and I feel that fear again, that fear of not knowing for sure if I would make it out alive.  Every time I’ve thought about reattempting that hike, I get scared and talk myself out of it.

Lately though, I don’t know.  Reading Edward Abbey’s work has definitely filled me with that primal desire to “just go.”  To just get out into the wilderness and experience it via the bruises on my knees, the scrapes on my hands and the aching in my feet.  I regret that I spent so much of that day’s hike in a general malaise, feeling more fear and loneliness than excitement and adventure.  I’m not sure when I’ll have the opportunity, but the next time I find myself with a few days to kill in Southern California, I think I will try my hand at the Wonderland of Rocks.  And I’ll be smarter about it this time.  I’ll wait for the milder temperatures of autumn or winter.  I’ll stash some gear at the far side so I can camp out afterwards.  I’ll bring better food, water in smaller bottles, some rope and a compass.  I’ll probably bring a topo map too, though I still doubt if it will do me much good.  Most of all though, I will enjoy it – every minute of it – free of all fear.

Plus, I’ve reasoned: What is there to even be afraid of anymore?  You’ve done it once before and made it out perfectly fine.  You can do it again. 

And silently, deep down another voice says: If you do die out there, what better place, what better way to exit the earth forever?  It’s a voice I’m sure Edward Abbey heard often and would approve of.

Benedicto: May your trails be crooked, winding, lonesome, dangerous, leading to the most amazing view. May your mountains rise into and above the clouds. May your rivers flow without end, meandering through pastoral valleys tinkling with bells, past temples and castles and poets' towers into a dark primeval forest where tigers belch and monkeys howl, through miasmal and mysterious swamps and down into a desert of red rock, blue mesas, domes and pinnacles and grottos of endless stone, and down again into a deep vast ancient unknown chasm where bars of sunlight blaze on profiled cliffs, where deer walk across the white sand beaches, where storms come and go as lightning clangs upon the high crags, where something strange and more beautiful and more full of wonder than your deepest dreams waits for you --- beyond that next turning of the canyon walls."

-Edward Abbey

Damn right.