We still haven’t found what we’re looking for

For C.Z.

My husband pours a few drops of water into a small burrow next to two intact dead tarantulas and a few more dismembered ones.

“What the heck is IN there?!”

“Tarantula hawk?” I suggest. “Do they burrow?”*

He sticks a blade of grass into the hole.

We don’t know where we are, but we can see the road and know how to get back to it. So we aren’t lost, navigationally.

But we are a bit adrift.

We’re in the San Ysidro Trials Area, a chunk of public land with amazing sandstone canyons that’s mostly used by motorcyclists doing stunts. Today, there’s not another soul here.

We’re here to hike an amazing loop found in Stephen Ausherman’s “60 Hikes Within 60 Miles of Albuquerque.” It traverses a sandstone canyon full of natural pools, squeaks through a wild section of land where the soil is red and purple, and brings you back over more trippy rocks.

But even though we’ve done this hike before, we cannot find that loop. We can’t even find a single one of the three sections that make it up.

We find a natural rock mini-amphitheater.

We wander through a wash and find a side canyon of brick-red soil that narrows to a slot too small to walk in.

We scramble up to the rim in search of our route, but while we see lots of volcanic-looking mini-domes and the hometown Sandia Mountains beyond, nothing looks familiar.

We climb back down and head up a rocky canyon. This looks familiar. The spots that look like they could hold natural pools are dry, but that could just be because it hasn’t rained in Albuquerque in nearly 100 days.

But when the canyon ends, we’re facing a fence that we know marks the Jemez Reservation boundary, as far as we can see. We turn around and head back.

Even without the desired route, there’s plenty to see and feel; warm sun, crisp breeze, the play of colors in the slanting light.

We’ll have hiked five miles by the end. We’ll have spotted petrified wood. Our feet will hurt, our shoulders will be sore from backpack straps.

But something’s off today.

We’re out here two days after the death of a family member, which came just a week after he unexpectedly went into the hospital.

We’re out here looking, but not quite finding.

It’s not the first time I’ve gone on a hike in response to the death of a loved one and it won’t be the last. I have a Big Birthday this year. The number of people I love who will die does not get smaller from here.

As we walk the road back to our car and look across the valley, a wash of red and purple soil comes into view. The canyon. We were so close to it, but we couldn’t quite get there.

It’s sad to look back at it.

But we have to keep going.

*Turns out tarantula hawks do burrow.

Hike length: 5 miles

Difficulty: moderate

Trail traffic: none

Wildlife spotted: dozens of bluebirds in trees along the road, two dead tarantulas