Hayduke Day 34: Bull Rush Hollow with No Rush About It

Our tent does its one job well last night. It keeps us dry. The rain stops an hour before we start moving. When I poke my head out of the tent, the world is aglow with sunrise. No puddles, the ground absorbed every drop of rain. She’s thirsty.

We pack up and say good morning to Silver Bullet who camped near us last night. Our first time camping near another human! A Hayduking human no less. We all agree, there was a lot of rain last night.

Walking through a damp morning reminds me of home, I think to myself. Then I see a douglas fir tree and question if I did actually somehow wake up in Washington.

Weekend and I are easily distracted as we slowly getting momentum. Collecting sherbert rocks. Forgetting trekking poles at the last place we picked up sherbert rocks. Stopping to watch the ground and trees release a tide of steam when the sun hits them. It’s a stop and muse at things kind of morning.

Why’d someone hang a bone from this tree?

Why’s this rock so cool?

We hike around to the head of Bull Rush Hollow. That Day-Glo green grass is back and the sides of the gorge are actively eroding as we pass through. The signs of recent rock and landslide keep us moving.

The walls of Bull Rush grow taller as we hike down further (as drainages often do) and consolidate into more solid rock. Solid rock that looks like towers of stacked plates, leaning into each other and somehow staying upright. What makes a single plate in those rocks? A flood? A year? We speculate and appreciate how much we don’t know.

What makes a plate?

After the gorge we join a dirt road down Park Wash. The rain last night makes for better walking on the sand. I keep remarking all day on how easeful everything feels. How pleasant, I announce out loud. And an hour later to no one but myself, How pleasant!

We stop at a funky abandoned cabin to eat lunch and hang our tent and sleeping bag to dry on a tree and wooden post respectively. The cabin has an old stove, some rusted furniture I can’t identify and two cots with mattresses. What would it take to sleep in one of those cots? Life or death, says Weekend.

Cabin with No Man’s Mesa is the background

Old looking windmill

The rest of the miles are flat easy walking. It feels good to let my legs unspool as many miles as they can before dark, past windmills and horses and dried up cisterns.

As the sun is setting, we start Campsite Watch. We’re poking around a grass field when we see a truck pull out from a driveway we didn’t notice just ahead. Whoops! Private property. A man hops out, not to chastise us but to check something in the dirt he’s very interested in. We have a brief, phrase at a time exchange.

“Start at the top?” He asks.
Who knows what ‘the top’ means.
“Cold morning I bet,” he adds.
I agree even though it was warm relative to our trip so far.

He has a gentle and kind presence. I wish I had more to say so I could stay near it.

“Good camping ahead?” I ask.
“More that looks like this.”

The length of the silence that follows tells me we’re done. We say goodbye and camp just at the edge of his property behind a stand of trees.

How pleasant!