I’m currently sitting out a storm in a backcountry campsite in Saguaro National Park about eighty miles north of Patagonia. By the time I get to where I can post this I will be another fifty miles up the trail.

After Patagonia, I hiked a few longer days, leapfrogging with a number of hikers. I would get past them for a short while and then inevitably they would pass me. It was always fun to catch up when we saw each other again.

I’ve been in hot days and really cold days. I’ve had days when my knees and feet were screaming in pain and other days that were relatively low-key on the pain scale. I’ve had days when the water was fairly plentiful and days when it was more scarce and fouled with cows. One morning at Pilar Spring I woke up with the entire inside of my tent encrusted in ice. This is because it was so cold out that my breath froze before it could leave the tent.

I’ve had plenty of high points and a few low ones especially when my knees bothered me on some 17 mile days with long down hills. I always find the downhills rougher than the ups. Some nights sleep has been harder to come by and I’ve used my cold hands as ice packs on my knees. But taking a few shorter days and slowing my pace seems to have helped my old body. And as I adjust to once again sleeping on a pad that’s barely as wide as I am, I feel more caught up on sleep than I did before I left Vermont. One thing I’m still getting used to is all the stuff in my sleeping bag with me at night; my phone, my water filter, mini digital recorder and small iPad. This keeps them from freezing and makes the batteries last longer.

I reached Colossal Cave, picked up my resupply box and took an easy two days to where I am now which is the grass shack campsite, one of only two legal campsites for thru hikers in the national park. This is a lovely backcountry spot near a stream. The only amenities are an outhouse and a bear box to store my food in for the night. I’m taking a zero day here waiting out a storm.

This morning a tiny bird that I’ve never seen before, but I think might be some kind of junco walked right up to my tent. It was a small gray bird with a brown stripe across its back.

There has been intermittent rain and hail all day. My tent has seen better days and I knew it had some small pin holes before I left home, but I figured it would be OK for the Arizona desert. Silly me! When the rain started leaking through the roof of the tent, I came up with the brilliant idea of opening my umbrella inside the tent and using it to get the rain to go off to the side where I could then mop it up. By doing this I was able to keep my sleeping bag dry. I love all the ways I find to innovate when I don’t have much to deal with. Another of my great fixes has been to tape some padding to the insole of one of my shoes. It has helped my foot not hurts so much going downhill.

Tomorrow I will try to get past Mount Mica and down out of the national park. How far I get will depend in part on how deep the snow is and how hard the trail is to find.

I don’t have enough words to describe the absolutely incredible beauty of the millions of flowers I’ve been seeing. The stately majestic saguaro cactus never fail to fill me with awe. I am grateful that our national park system has seen fit to save and protect this area.

As I sit in my tent listening to the rain, I am trying try to polish up some blogs before I run out of power. There will be a few coming up that talk about my days and others that ramble about what goes on inside my head as I’m out here. Many might not be fully polished as I’m finding it difficult to keep up with writing and hiking at the same time.

Hopefully by the time I post this, I’ll be able to report it that I made it safely over Mount Mica and Mount Lemmon which are both presently covered in snow. I will have picked up my next food drop in Mount Lemmon and I will be headed towards Kearny Az where I will resupply at Norms’s IGA. Before I left, I called around and Norm was one of the many people willing to accept a small package for me. I’ll be able to pick up fuel I mailed there and then buy the food I need at his store.

The rain has now turned to hail which assures me that 4000 feet higher up the mountain the ground will be covered in snow. But I’ll deal with that tomorrow. For now, I’m glad that one hiker who I met on my first day hiking has caught up with me and will be with me to do the snowy mountain tomorrow. And I’m really glad to be snug and relatively warm in my sleeping bag. It’s been at least an hour since I’ve eaten something. I think it’s time to go eat again.