I spent one day on the south rim sightseeing. I had to laugh when I was getting on the free shuttle bus, and the driver told the people to clear the front seats, which are reserved for old or handicap people. When the driver saw how stiffly I was walking, which always happens when I’ve been sitting for a while, she figured I should be in the front seat. I didn’t dare tell her that I was hiking the whole Arizona Trail. I was grateful to have a seat and I figured at the very least I am a senior citizen.

One night on the south rim another hiker and I walked to a spot on the rim to see if we could see the northern lights. We did manage to see them, although it was faint. But what was spectacular was both the sunset over the rim and the wildlife. We saw elk and big horn sheep from a very close distance.

I was awake fairly early on the morning I was set to leave the south rim campground, but I realized I was missing one of my charging cubes. I thought I must have left it in the lodge the night before where I had charged my devices, so I walked back up there and asked around. It was not in the wall outlet I had been using the night before and the lodge said housekeeping usually “just throw those things away.”

I treated myself to a breakfast burrito and pondered what to do. I knew I was close enough to the end of the trail that I could probably get by. I was determined not to turn this into a catastrophe. But I could feel the little ones inside me wanting somebody to recognize they had lost something important. We wanted someone to care. Another part wanted to find fault or blame someone but I knew it was my doing and I quieted those parts by letting them know that even if it had been my doing I wouldn’t get in trouble and it did not mean I was a bad person, nor would the world come crashing in as a result. I kept reminding the troops within that it would be okay and we could get a new one before the next hike.

I remembered one night when I was low on water and an ATV went by. I had been hoping they would stop and ask if I needed anything. As they passed I recognized that I could have been more upfront with flagging them down and asking for what I needed. So when a woman sat down near me with a cube similar to mine, I asked her if she had a spare. I explained my situation and she said she did have a spare and gave me the one she had, refusing to take any money for it. Unfortunately it had a different size connector than all my cords. The woman gave me a cord that would work with one of my devices but not most of them. (I need to charge my flashlight and satellite device which use one connector, my phone and ipad which use another, and my battery pack which uses still another type of end!)

Still hoping I might find it, when I got back to the campground I asked if anyone had seen it. Someone said she had seen it on her picnic table. In that moment I remembered placing it there the night before. Unfortunately it was no longer there. I worked to really let it go. Another hiker offered me her cube with the correct ends saying she could share with her hiking partner. I was really touched by this young woman’s kindness. The icing on the cake rewarding me for not catastrophizing the loss, was when another hiker came up very apologetically saying, “I saw it on the table and thought someone left it behind. I have your cube.” This is not the first time something like this has happened, but it is the best I have ever done at not turning it into a disaster. I hope I finally learned the lesson and don’t need to lose more things.

By the time I got going it was after nine and I had a few miles to hike before reaching the rim where I would drop down in. I picked up water at the rim and started the long slog down. There were a lot of people coming up and I had to constantly move out of the way as people going up have the right of way. I was carrying close to six days of food and two quarts of water and was not finding the downhill easy. I thought how ironic it was that just a few days ago I was worrying about hypothermia and here I was thinking about overheating.

I couldn’t help stopping every few steps to take pictures. It was so spectacular. Partway down I sat and chatted with a volunteer ranger who was asking me a lot of questions about my hike. We had a lovely visit before we each headed our separate ways.

About the 4 mile mark, I reached a place where there were some rainwater collectors to provide water to hikers on the trail. Three young men came down looking for water. I noticed that there was water in the barrel, but it was below the faucet so it wasn’t coming out. I lent them my water bag and showed them how to reach in from the top to get water. Another hiker came in who was actually doing rim to rim to rim for a total of a 42 mile day. He had only those 4 miles left to do but was feeling unwell. I gave him some electrolytes and he soon felt better. We all discussed another couple we had seen on the trail who did not look to be doing well. The next day I learned that that couple had in fact had to be evacuated out of the canyon. A lot of people hike down not realizing how hard the uphill will be in the heat. They have a saying here “Hiking down is voluntary but hiking up is mandatory.” I remembered when I was in my late teens and tried to get a permit to hike down into the canyon by some remote trails off the north rim. The backcountry office didn’t want to give me a permit because I was a woman hiking alone. They actually took an imprint of my boot and made me agree to cache eight gallons of water on the way down before they gave me the permit. I am really glad that now they no longer distinguish between male and female hikers.

I was weary by the time I hit the Bright Angel campground. I set up my tent, got water, chatted with some of the other hikers, ate dinner and was thrilled when I was finally able to lay down. But even though I was tired, I spent a restless night. It was the first night on the trail that wasn’t cold, and rather than being cold, it was quite hot all night long. I didn’t even get into my sleeping bag. The extremes on this trail have been really huge.