I’m awake before the sun. In a haze, I lug bags and gear to the car in the pitch dark. The morning is cool, the sun not even a thought at this dark hour. I walk the room key to the motel office, which won’t open for hours. There’s a padlocked, wooden drop-box bolted next to the office door, and I drop the key inside. In the pre-dawn silence the plunk of the key in the box seems to reverberate through the empty streets. I ponder the countless, sleep-deprived people that have dropped their key into this box – the unwashed, bleary-eyed legions. Like me, they probably awoke in the dark, hoping to get to the hilltop and the trailhead as early as possible. The earlier you set out, the better your chances of being deep in the shadowy confines of the canyon when that blazing, desert sun is high overhead.
I pull onto Route 66, headed West under a black sky. Eventually, as the miles tick off, the horizon in my rearview mirror begins to lighten, the rising sun asserting itself. I keep the radio tuned to classic country; not only because it comes in clearly, but because at this point, in this place, I can’t imagine listening to anything else. At some point Waylon and Willie are singing and the sun is beginning to paint the high desert all around me, bathing it in the first, pure rays of the day’s light, and there’s not another car or human being to be seen. It’s just me, Waylon and Willie blazing across northern Arizona while the sun creeps slowly into the sky behind us.
My body craves coffee. The windows are down and the cool, morning air is the only thing keeping me alert. It’s at times like this that I realize I’m a junkie – a hopeless caffeine addict. Upon waking in the morning, my body shifts into this Pavlovian mode where it impatiently anticipates the strong, dark, caffeinated nectar that I inevitably feed it. Not this morning. I drive, passing little, and with even less actually open for business at this hour. I kick myself for not taking a few minutes to poke around Seligman – for not trying to find a diner or coffee shop to get my caffeine fix.
Eventually I see a sign for Indian Route 18, black numbers printed inside a white arrowhead. I swing the car onto the road and begin heading north, toward the Grand Canyon and the Hualapai Hilltop – the parking area and trailhead into Havasu Canyon. Ahead of me is a rolling expanse whose end is an isolated portion of the south rim of the Grand Canyon.
Indian Route 18 is a long and meandering two-lane road. I drive through high desert scrub, a scattering of pines appearing as the miles roll by and then thickening as I get nearer to the canyon. The morning is breathtakingly bright, and the air is fresh and cool. The low hanging sun makes the landscape seem to glow, the reds and greens of this arid land cast in harsh, stark relief. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a bluer sky. Somewhere during the drive I enter a dense stand of pines. After a while I begin to make out something huge in the road far ahead. As I get closer, I see that what stands in the middle of the blacktop is a massive Elk. She’s huge; at least seven feet tall, by my estimation. I slow to a stop about 30 yards away and hang my head out the window, watching her. She languidly raises her head and eyes me warily, then lowers her head again and walks slowly over to the shoulder of the road. She stops on the shoulder and turns her gaze back to me. I watch her for a bit longer, eventually driving slowly on. As I pass her, she walks a few steps closer to the shelter of the pines before turning one last time. I watch her in the rearview mirror until she disappears. She never takes her eyes off the car for a second.
It’s early when I reach Hualapai Hilltop. The parking lot is surprisingly full, mostly the vehicles of those currently down in the canyon. There are a few hikers in the lot, unloading backpacks and gear from their cars. In the eastern corner, a few Havasupai are tending to a row of horses and mules, all tied up to a long wooden fence. The Indian guides are prepping them for the daily trip to the reservation. For a fee you can have your gear lugged to the bottom of the canyon on the back of a pack mule, while you ride in relative comfort atop a mule or horse. I even read where you could, for a ridiculous price, have yourself and your gear whisked to the canyon floor in a helicopter. The thought of a loud, exhaust-belching helicopter descending noisily into the canyon gets my hackles up. That will never be me, I think. Especially not today – for today I descend into the canyon on foot. I scoff at both the horses and the helicopter as I tighten the laces on my hiking boots and prepare my gear.
For anyone unfamiliar with the geography of Supai/Havasu Canyon, here’s a brief, encapsulated look. Hualapai Hilltop sits literally on the edge of a bluff – the south rim of the Grand Canyon, to be exact. The views are spectacular, with red rock formations rising into the sky along the borders of the canyon floor below. From the hilltop to the Village of Supai is eight miles. The first mile and a half are switchbacks descending almost vertically from the top of the bluff to the canyon floor. From the village to the campground, where I will put up my tent and sleep for the night, it’s an additional two miles. All told, I was looking at a ten mile hike through the desert in the middle of August. What could go wrong, right?
I stand at the entrance to the trail, the pack strapped to my back loaded with the bare minimum amount of gear. Despite packing light, the load on my back is still fairly heavy. I imagine it’s going to fell a hell of a lot heavier as I go on. I start off down the dusty trail, the canyon sprawling before me under a huge, blue Arizona sky.
I pass some hikers on the way down the trail, and I’m passed myself by some others. I’m in pretty good shape, but I still want to conserve my energy for the long trek ahead. I pace myself, moving at a comfortable clip. I pass two women, probably in their early thirties, and as I pass I hear them speaking German. They’re both wearing clothes that seem completely unsuitable for the hike they’re embarking on. They look more like they’re dressed for a trip to the mall. I glance at their feet and see that they’re wearing stylish sneakers – shoes not at all designed for the terrain. They have small day packs slung over their shoulders, and they each clutch a small bottle of water. I make a mental note to look for their bodies on the return trip, if the coyotes haven’t already picked them clean.
For the first few miles of the hike the trail winds through wide, shallow canyons. The rocks are a deep, rich red and smoothed by millions of years of wind and water. It’s early yet, probably no later than 10 AM, but the sun overhead is already hot. I walk close to the walls, trying to stay in the sporadic shade that the canyon walls sparingly provide. Unfortunately the shade is sporadic, and a majority of the first few miles are mostly spent in the sun. It’s astounding how hot it can get in the Sonoran Desert so early in the day. It’s not even 10 A.M. yet and already the sun is merciless.
As the trail unfurls, the canyon passages narrow and, thank goodness for small favors, the shade becomes more and more plentiful. The fact that this coincides with more and more tiring miles under my belt is a welcome relief. Smooth slabs of red rock, riddled with shelves and fissures, tower above me on either side. Overhead a narrow strip of brilliant, blue sky winds onward in an endless ribbon.
A few hours in I stop, shrug off my pack and recline on a large rock for a little rest and water. I lay there, drenched in sweat that will dry quickly in the dry, desert heat. I look up at the sky, framed beautifully by the rust-colored rock walls. Something feels off to me. Not wrong, mind you, but just…off. Different. After a few minutes it hits me. It’s the silence. I’ve been to many places that I thought were quiet. In the middle of the woods somewhere. Nights on the Outer Banks of North Carolina many years ago, before the development hit a frenzy. Those places were quiet. But this canyon? This canyon is silent. I can try to describe the difference from now until the end of time, but unless you’ve really experienced deep and total silence, any words I spit out won’t begin to convey it. You know the old saying about “deafening silence”? After that canyon, this saying will always make perfect sense to me. Coming from the Northeast, where it’s hard to go anywhere and escape the sound of auto or air traffic, the ability to sit and hear absolutely nothing was jarring, to say the least. There wasn’t even the sound of a bird to break the spell. After a space of sitting and basking in the canyon’s unrelenting silence, I quickly stood up and threw on my pack. I did this as noisily as possible. See, a thought had occurred to me while I was perched on that rock. I thought about what it would be like to get used to that silence, only to have it ripped away. I imagined how hard it would be to go back to a hectic, everyday life of noise and confusion after surrendering to the canyon’s hypnotic, siren-song of tranquility. I decided it was best to move on.
It’s remarkable how fast the desert air can suck the moisture right out of you. You can take a nice, long drink to slake your thirst only to be parched again within a matter of a half an hour. Read any guide to desert hiking and you’ll be bombarded by admonishments to equip yourself with as much water as possible. The reality you’re confronted with when completing a hike like the one into Havasu Canyon is maintaining that tenuous balance between carrying enough water and keeping your pack light enough to manage. So far so good. I was surprising myself with my ability to manage my thirst. Normally I’m a bit of a sissy when it comes to being thirsty. On any given day I consume copious amounts of water, and I feared I’d turn into a quivering, water-deprived mess after I chugged my supply an hour into the hike. Turns out I underestimated myself. I rationed my water like a champ on the way in. (Things got a little dicey on the water front on the hike out – but that’s for later.)
The miles unfurled; a slow procession of sheer, red rock walls and thin snapshot of a sky that was achingly blue. I was captivated, my mind miles away, and thus needed the occasional reminder from my body that it was time to have a drink. Sit a spell. Don’t kill yourself, my body would occasionally say with a nudge. That’s how it went for miles. Rocky, narrow pathways to be navigated while at the same time trying to take in the surroundings. It was difficult to peel my eyes from the beauty that surrounded me, yet if I didn’t watch where I was walking there were more than a few rocks, embankments and switchbacks willing to put an inattentive hiker on his or her ass. I learned to keep my eyes constantly in motion; scanning up, down and everywhere in an attempt to absorb my surroundings without taking a tumble or snapping an ankle on a rock. The silence persisted, and I walked in rhythm with my own footfalls. Red dust rose in little clouds with each step, the accumulation on my boots and legs marking my progress.
I started to see more and more green the deeper I got into the canyon. It was sparse at first, but soon I saw clusters of it ahead as the trail widened and the canyon began to open up. I rationalized that where the clusters of green were located, that was where I would find the cool, turquoise waters of Havasu Creek.
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