My second day after Summerhaven, I did something rare for me, which is that I didn’t push at the end of the day. I got to a lovely sandy wash surrounded by a hillside of Saguaro. The sun was shining so it was warm but not too hot and even though I could’ve gone on I thought “I’m carrying 10 pounds of water and this place is lovely. I’m stopping here for the night. It’ll be a chance to catch up on some writing.” I did argue with myself a bit, but in the end, staying won.

It’s dry in this section and because of the water situation, it made sense to hike almost 18 miles the next day, but I decided not to focus on that. Instead, I focused on where I was in the moment and what I wanted to do, letting tomorrow work itself out when it comes.

It made me happy to sit in the sun and write some blogs. I was thrilled to be surrounded by a hillside of majestic saguaro cactus. The ground was covered with miniature lupines mixed in with some beautiful red seeding grasses, along with some other flowers in yellow and white.

I took some photos, did some writing, dried out my tent and sleeping bag, made a good dinner and prepared for a really restful night. I didn’t even feel bad when other hikers came by and went on. It was actually kind of nice because none of them went zooming by. They were all hikers I had seen in previous times who had gotten behind me when they took time off in town. One of them was the one who had built the snowman that made me smile going up Mount Mica and he was thrilled to have me tell him how happy it made me. I felt honored that all these hikers stopped and chatted with me, especially at the end of the day when they were all carrying heavy loads of water. It does seem that the younger hikers do respect me for being out here at my age, which is kind of nice. I met one today who goes by the name of retro who called me a legend. I certainly don’t feel like a legend, but I’m going try to remember this in the moments when I feel down because of how hard I have to work to hike the same miles these younger hikers hike at twice my speed with seeming ease.

That got me thinking about the expectation of ease. I wondered why it was that I expected anything to be easy and I realized that the expectation of something being easy set me up for disappointment.

As an example, the elevation profile about 6 miles out of Summerhaven made it look like the trail would be fairly easy. In fact, it was some of the hardest trail I’ve walked on. It was a steep downhill grade that for miles and miles was covered with loose rock. There was seldom a clear space of ground to place a foot and going downhill on that I had to be extremely careful not to go sliding and fall. It took so much work to hold myself back with my heavy pack on and the sharp rocks were painful under my feet.

I thought that rather than having expectations, it would be better to just be in the moment and take what comes. As I was doing this around Oracle, I discovered that by being in the moment and not expecting ease, I was even more grateful when the trail really did become easier. If I had expected it to be easy, I would not have felt so much gratitude, so once again, this was a lesson to be in the present moment.

And if something is hard in the present moment, one thing age and experience has taught me is that it will eventually change. I’m looking forward to my pack being five pounds lighter in the morning because of the water I’ll use for dinner and breakfast. And even if I don’t make the 18 miles to be able to camp near water again, unless something goes seriously awry, I’ll and tomorrow closer to Kearney and my next food drop.