Woman Seeks Elevation

Two dogs cover me with kisses.

I rarely pet other people’s dogs on a trail, but this is a love attack, and all I can do is respond in kind.

“Sorry!” their owner says, laughing. She’s ripped, panting, and quickly refocuses the dogs on slurping some water.

“I try to run as much of Three Gun as I can,” she says of this trail. “But you can’t run it! It’s too steep.”

That’s why I’ve been resting my legs at the junction of Tres Pistolas (Three Gun Spring) and Embudo trails for half an hour.

At the Tres Pistolas trailhead, I always think: I’ll keep going past Embudo! It’s so beautiful up there!

And at Embudo, I think: I need an airlift.

It’s supposed to rain tonight in the community where the trailhead sits. But 1,500 feet higher, the weather’s moving faster.

“I heard thunder on the way up,” the dogs’ owner says.

I heard only the sizzling of my leg muscles on the way up. But while I sat at the junction, I watched rain on a ridge a few miles away.

I head back down the trail just a couple of minutes behind the superfit dog owner. She’ll outdistance me in no time, and I need to get down the steepest switchbacks before rain makes them any more slippery.

The sky has turned black over the junction where I just sat. Cold wind whips the top of the canyon.

The breeze feels good on this hot, exposed trail, and I’m making decent time. I keep stopping to get pictures of spring light on flowers and canyon walls, one eye on the sky.

I feel a few drops of rain on the way down.

And I pass several people heading up, taking their chances.

Hike length: 5 miles

Difficulty: the last mile before the junction is difficult

Trail traffic: light

Creatures seen/heard: quail, curve-billed thrasher, blue jays, Stellar’s jay, juniper titmouse, robins, hummingbirds, butterflies, beetles, chipmunk, lizards, crows, raven, hawks

The last time I was here was the last time.

The last weekend before the first Covid-19 cases were diagnosed in New Mexico.

People swarmed the mountain. I passed them, they passed me. I sat on a log, ate my sandwich. No hand sanitizer, or thought of it.

Thirteen months later. The only thing here that shows the difference: a discarded surgical mask on the trail.

I stopped hiking. I hiked again. I quit my longtime job.

Almost no humans on the trail early this weekday morning. Juniper titmice all over the mountain engage in conversation that never ends.

Near the trailhead, I step off the trail to let an unmasked man pass.

“I’m fully vaccinated!” he exclaims.

That means *my* droplets can’t kill *you*, not…

Did you see no news or health bulletins for the past year?

I stay silent. Jays squawk for me.

Millions of feet will never walk their favorite paths again.

Soon, I’ll be fully vaccinated, and still fully masked in public.

Soon, I’ll have the privilege to begin to resume the daily activities that I choose.

I can’t undo any choices I made before the pandemic, or during this past year. Some of them haunt me.

New paths beckon now: me, and all the rest of us who reached this point.

We’ll need strong hearts and strong lungs where we’re going.

Hike length: 4.5 miles

Difficulty: moderate (a 1-mile stretch of switchbacks is difficult)

Trail traffic: very light

Creatures seen/heard: nuthatches, squirrel, Abert’s squirrel, chipmunk, crows, jays, juniper titmice, Say’s phoebes, butterflies, ladder-backed woodpecker, white-winged dove

Only a few patches of snow on the trail at 8,500 feet.

Only 10 a.m. and it’s 65 degrees.

Only a hint of moisture on the breeze. Even that’s a mirage – a red flag warning begins soon.

Only a couple weeks into spring, and winter recedes into memory, faster than ever.

Hike: Tecolote Trail + Balsam Glade Nature Trail, 4-5-21

Hike length: 4 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: very light

Creatures seen/heard: chipmunks, vultures, crows, pinyon jays, Stellar’s jay, spotted towhees, dark-eyed junco, butterflies, squirrels