Boreal B[l]og

I limped in to a bare spot on the North Tonto Platform of the Grand Canyon shortly before sunset.  That afternoon my wife and I left Clear Creek, a well-named delightful, quiet spot, where we had camped two nights. Neither of us was eager to hike 7 miles back to Phantom the next day, but if we could get the climb out of the creek done and a couple more miles, the last stretch would be simple. Canyon hiking is full of long descents into drainages and long climbs out of them. We loaded up with as much water as we could carry, because we were going to dry camp. I would miss soaking my feet in the stream, which I love to do below the Rim.

An hour later, we stopped on a pile of cinders, dropped our packs, pitched the tent, unpacking and getting dinner going before it became too dark. Some spots in the Canyon are “At Large” camping, the North Tonto among them, meaning one may camp anywhere. We have spent many nights below the rim; on the south side I always marveled how I could be several miles from another person by trail but only three thousand feet away from those on the rim, high above me. But that distance was as the raven flew, like the one that called while flying into The Abyss, its call echoing off the curving arc of the Redwall Limestone. By foot, it would have taken most of a day to reach the top.

We were careful with water, even left some in the filter that we carried out and could use, used no more than necessary for dinner and cleaned everything the best we could. In twilight, it was quiet, the Canyon Wrens were silent, and we couldn’t hear the river. It was clear and would be a great night for sky viewing. It was different camping with no designated campsite. We just stopped, dropped and made camp. Who knew who last had camped here? The flat area had probably seen many stop for a drink, food, rest, and periodically perhaps an overnighter like we were doing. Go back a thousand years, and many likely came through here.

I don’t know if it was a mouse, a dream, a jet’s passing high overhead, bound for southern Arizona or Salt Lake, that woke me, but I unzipped my sleeping bag, unzipped the tent door, but definitely did not zip outside in my sneakers, standing rather stiffly on the North Tonto Platform. I looked around and then up:  Wow. The sky was clear, and I got lost among all the stars. Normally I find my way through the sky by starting from a bright star or two I know which are guides to dimmer ones, and so on, like finding my way in a city from main roads to secondary ones. But there were so many bright stars above. From home, I saw bright zero and first magnitude stars, dimmer second and a few third magnitude. Down here, I could clearly see fainter fourth magnitude stars in the Little Dipper’s handle. At the end of the handle was second magnitude Polaris a bit more than a third of the way from the horizon to the zenith, an indication of my latitude. I saw fifth magnitude stars, 6% as bright as Polaris, and even fainter ones. The constellations we see in books really are visible, but one must look from a dark site to appreciate them, and today there are fewer such places.

I checked the time. Since I had gone to bed, the pointers to Polaris, Dubhe and Merak, in the asterism we know as the Big Dipper, had moved counterclockwise from the “8” on a clock dial to “6” or directly below Polaris, the center of the clock. This is one-sixth of a daily rotation, because the clock disk is almost 24 hours as the Earth turns (just 4 minutes shy, to be more exact.) Four hours had passed. Cowboys used the movement of the Big Dipper to determine when a two hour watch was finished. Escaped slaves could find the North Star and headed towards it. Islam uses a lunar calendar; Ramadan is 11 days earlier every year. Jews use a lunar-solar calendar with 7 leap months every 19 years; Hanukkah occurs 11 days earlier each year for two years then jumps back forward, always on the 25th day of the ninth month Kislev. The Persian year begins based on observation of the vernal equinox (Nowruz). Looking at the night sky connects us to all before us who have looked up at the same stars, which are all moving, but because of their immense distance generations a millennium from now would see them not much different. Each of us has had a reason for looking up, often asking who am I, where am I, what is that, why is it there? 

And tonight, I had asked and had answered, what time is it?

I was lucky and saw a sporadic meteor, not part of a known meteor shower. I remembered the first one I ever saw from the Finger Lakes region of New York, when I woke up one night, head just outside the tent, and saw a flash west to east right over my head. It was brighter than Venus. I recalled 18 November 2001 when I lay outside at 2 am for an hour and counted 300 meteors, four times seeing 5 simultaneously, and while that was a great Leonid show, the Leonid storm of 1966 had rates of forty per second, a celestial waterfall of meteors.

It was quiet, and I kept silent. A slight southeasterly stirring of air allowed me to just hear the Colorado River, 1500 feet below. It had been good to look up, but time to return to bed. Morning, I would be looking down a lot on the hike to Phantom. And not zipping along.

See you on the trail. Enjoy the night and the dark skies.

I dropped my pack by the sign at the bottom of Horsepasture Trail next to FS 1993, a narrow single track road that led one way 20-odd miles on occasional pavement and two other dirt roads back to main highway 126. The other way the road continued about two miles to where a landslide blocked it. The rest of the crew would join me in a few minutes, but we were ahead of schedule and nobody was in a hurry to get down. It felt good to have the pack off, the breeze cool my wet back after a day’s work clearing the logs off the trail to the summit.

I walked over to a patch of Cascade Asters by the side of the road. They were filled with bees. That was good. While I am concerned about the yellow jackets later in the summer, I like seeing bees. We have wiped out many insects, and while few care for mosquitoes, we need Insecta in our lives. As I watched the bees, I put myself in let my thoughts wander mode. 

These insects were living, not in designated wilderness, but where there were few visitors and the insects could live their lives—even if shortened by predators—without almost no human contact. Horsepasture trail joined Olallie Trail 100 yards in, to the right about 10 miles to Olallie Mountain, where I had worked the prior week; the other way about 6 miles to FS1993, near Horse Creek. Ironically, horses can’t come in here by trailer.  I didn’t see Indian Paintbrush, Cascade or Mariposa Lilies down here like I did up top, but the asters were just fine.

A movement caught my eye, and a patterned black butterfly, a Variable Checkerspot, had landed on my thumb. It didn’t seem to mind what I was, just a landing or a resting place. It stayed there for the better part of a minute before flying to an Oxeye Daisy.  I watched it flit from flower to flower. It didn’t appear to be in a hurry, either, like me. I can watch little things in nature—and some big ones, too—for an extended time.  I once spent 15 minutes observing an ant carry a pine needle. That was in wilderness, and there wasn’t anybody else there that day, either. On a lazy summer’s day in the Boundary Waters, I have watched many an eagle soar out of sight among the clouds.

My animal sightings are often minor in the current age of seeking uniqueness.  What isn’t minor about many of these sightings are the memories have stayed with me for years: watching a  porcupine’s feeding by Jackson Lake one night in 1971; crows by a stream feeding their large, demanding young at Glacier Bay in 1988; watching a butterfly exit from a chrysalis seventy years ago in Crow Lake, Ontario; my first meteor sighting one night from one of the Finger Lakes; a beaver I snuck up to see while in a canoe on Kekakabic Lake. I then backed away and left it alone. During a “working” canoe trip to rate all 47 campsites on Lake Insula on categories from landing to latrines, my wife and I had a hermit thrush visit us in the middle of our campsite one afternoon. We stayed quiet until it left. Hermit thrushes are worth remembering, especially their song. I remember deep down on the Tonto Platform of the South Rim of the Canyon hearing a raven’s call echo off the curve of the Redwall Limestone  known as The Abyss. 

I’m analytical. I know that the deepest blue sky is about 95 degrees upward from a low sun. I enjoy seeking out that deepest blue,  If I know where to look, I can spot Venus in daylight, a small golden dot.  I follow the Moon through its phases and relative height above the horizon, as well as the angle the crescent makes with the horizon. They all change and are predictable. As for wind, in familiar country, I try to identify the tree by the sound the wind makes blowing through it. I also note wind direction, especially when it is strong from the south or southwest, harbinger of a storm. 

The rest of the crew was starting to show up; the Variable Checkerspot had long since left. Time to leave this area of curious butterflies and a reminder of other special places.

See you on the trail.

View from top of Horsepasture Mountain.