I imagined myself leaving my room in the morning to take my car up Route 62. I’d reach the campground parking lot, and, dressed in my shorts and short sleeves, would tackle the familiar trail, finding my way from the black-pebbled channel to the yellow grasslands and up to the green forest for the view. I saw myself eating lunch nestled in a crag above the trail, across from San Jacinto and the Coachella Valley. Then, I would drive back, and everything would be like always, a blue-sky feeling on the pool deck of the resort.
Karl and Ursula had invested in new beds and bedding. I pulled back the coral and yellow weaved covers and untucked the lower edge of the fine cotton sheets from beneath the mattress. My travel bag lay unopened on the second bed. I set out my outfit for the hike: my hiking socks, short sleeve white shirt, underwear, and shorts. I cut two thick slices off Ursula’s luscious bread and slathered both with crunchy peanut butter, then gingerly placed these together, cut the sandwich in half, and wrapped it in aluminum foil. Ursula had left several delicious tomatoes on the kitchen counter. I took one and put it in the fridge in a plastic bag with the peanut butter sandwich. It was close to 10 p.m. when I filled a glass with some cold goat milk and then finished off half a bag of Sara Lee Bordeaux cookies. When I closed my eyes and pulled just the right layer of sheets and coverlet over me, the last thing I noticed was my box of granola, next to the sink, waiting for morning on the kitchen counter.
For all my anticipation of a wonderful day, I woke on Friday morning very weak in the already warm room. Once my feet reached the floor by the bed, I ran to the bathroom with cramps from diarrhea. At 7 a.m., yellow morning light illuminated the asphalt lot. At its edges, the view of grey desert gravel and scraggly grass was very unmotivating. My mind agreed with my body’s weakness, and despite the months of anticipation, I told myself “forget the hike,” flipped on the swamp cooler, crept under the covers, and slept.
Two hours later, my cell phone woke me up. It was Britten, a client. We had circled beneath every beaux-arts facade and each goddess and gargoyle of the historic core, as if we were Jason and the Argonauts in search of the Golden Fleece, and we’d still not found him a deal. When he realized he had awakened me, he suggested we talk later. Foggy, I stumbled around the room. It was around 10 a.m., and if I were to take the hike, I was two hours behind schedule, but I decided to go. I threw on my outfit. I left the box of granola untouched, opened the fridge and filled a glass with peach juice from Trader Joe’s. The glass slipped from my hand, and I watched shards disperse on the linoleum. I bent to mop up the little glass islands from the peach sea. Standing, I tossed the paper towels in the trash, then grabbed my peanut butter sandwich and tomato and headed to the parking lot, determined to reach the gorgeous vista.
I stopped for coffee. After grabbing a styrofoam cup to fill, I noticed a family in the front window nook at a white formica table. The waitress had just brought some sunny side up eggs on white plates with bacon. She leaned over the bony-armed father to pour his coffee. The t-shirted man smiled at his son, and the buxom wife in a work shirt beamed at the kid. I turned back to the vat and flicked up the dispenser. The waitress behind the restaurant grill window asked me, “Anything else you want?”
“No, but where is the cream?”
“There is some milk over there.” She pointed to a jar of powdered milk on a high shelf. I scraped the crust off the powder top, then mixed some in my coffee. My eyes were drawn to the family in the nook near the door. To avoid them seeing me seeing them, I focused my attention on the brass staples circling the backs of the red Naugahyde chairs. They matched the metal-buttoned suspenders on the man’s jeans. The waitress in her white apron brought the family English muffins. The man buttered his, and I watched the melting gold fill the crusty crannies before he dipped it in his pooling orange yolk. He savored the egg and smiled to his wife as if he had sold The Bank of America Towers. With my neck craned over, to keep an eye on the family, I waited for the waitress to return from her conversation with the man working the grill in the kitchen, then asked, “How much for the coffee?”
“$1.50.”
I carried the foam cup in front of me, down the center of the café, and as I opened the door by their niche, the wife said, “Sure, Honey,” to a request from the little boy and leaned forward to stick a bacon strip into his mouth.
I continued up Route 62. After miles of broken windows and shuttered storefronts, I reached Route 248, the west entrance to Joshua Tree National Park and Black Rock Canyon Campground. The access road led to the ranger station, where I usually parked. The wooden building had a sign that read, “Park Closed,” but cars had filled the spots.
I drove down to the regular parking lot, which was packed, and after searching for a spot, I saw an old, bearded guy standing by his trailer.
“Hi, I’m on a day hike. Do you know a place I can park?”
“Right there is okay. I’ve seen hikers leave their car in that place.”
“Thanks, that’s great.”
I pulled my Passat into the dirt across from his red trailer. The kind of space you would not know is there until you make it. Heat hung over the lot. Knowing it would be even hotter as the day wore on, I was in a rush to get going. It was hot enough to leave my jacket in the trunk. I glanced at the red and blue water jugs in my new wicker containers, but I was in a hurry and figured that I had enough in the camelback for the usual three-hour hike.
I stepped away from the silver trunk onto the sand and strapped on my pack. Still a little sleepy, even after the coffee, I asked a last question of the white-beard, “Hey, can you remind me where the access trail is to Warren View?”
“Sure.” The helpful man pointed thirty yards away.
It was close to 1 p.m. I strolled up an incline from the campground to the road, and the familiar white water tower appeared behind the trail. West on the dirt road to the trailhead, I kept a steady pace until a brown and tan coyote stepped out of the scrub and met me. Instead of circling to avoid contact, it planted its paws in my path. The trailhead sign was visible between his ears, almost as if he were park property.
For the first time in two decades, a coyote was blocking my way to Warren View. Its black snout ten feet away. The brown-tinged auburn fur against the brown twigs of the desert. The narrow eyes above the white chin. We stood in the heat above the beige and green tents in the campground. He seemed to address me. Me, in my white short-sleeve shirt and beige shorts, the coyote in its beige fur, tinged with white.
It was late midday toward the end of September; any hikers would already be well into their hikes. We stood and waited. The auburn fur on his hump rumpled in a warm breeze. I leaned on my hiking stick, watched until the creature turned and crossed the high weeds behind it. Its bushy tail left the road and blended with the white buds of dried borage and disappeared. I headed to the trailhead.
The trailhead sign came up in fifty yards on the left side of the access road, and I crossed over to take it at about 1:15 p.m. I planned to be back at my car by 4:30 p.m. The familiar sandy trail was lined with dried shrubs and succulents, and after about a quarter mile it reached Black Rock Canyon Wash, where the trail started in earnest. I stepped down into the forty-yard-wide, pebbled channel and, out of habit, turned right. I didn’t need to reconnoiter or correlate my direction to any compass point. The wash didn’t have a drop of water in it. Lined by a landscape of short grasses and rocks, shriveled purple prickly pear blossoms, and dried yucca wands that had sprouted in spring, the wash broadened and shrunk as it rose on a gradual incline for about a mile.
After a mile, the wash passed a set of ramshackle water tanks made of large rocks which settlers used to collect water and feed cattle, and where I had a memory of my daughter calling me five years earlier and proudly announcing, “Dad, I passed my driver’s test finally,” as I dreaded the day she would actually
