Into the Desert

By Jordon Shinn
summer 2009


The drive from Philmont to Double H is roughly six hours—taking the highway south past Springer, brushing the edge of Santa Fe and busting straight through Albuquerque, and driving two more hours out under the looming red sun. But time is lost in the desert, as heat slithers like a dry river over the briary plains and burnt buttes of south-central New Mexico.

…

The sun rises quickly without cloud or event over the ridge. A breeze picks up from the west. Michael is off chasing jackrabbits.
Michael Hunter is my trusty Photog. Has been all summer. And leading us through Double H is our perceptive Wilderness Guide, Christopher Vacek. A WG is the equivalent of a Philmont Ranger, but stays with a crew during its entire weeklong trek, also acting as a conservationist, leading crews in their conservation projects and performing backcountry maintenance. Vacek is one of the most knowledgeable men I have ever met, well learned in everything from plumbing to swing dancing.

Together with crew 705BB we are camped at Gibson Well, an old homestead in a piñon-juniper forest located on the west end of the ranch. The forest is eerily quiet, silent at all hour of the day, save for the ping-ping of an old windmill steadily pumping water out of the ground—the only place safe from the sun. The birds, I suppose, have already taken to the shade of the ridge. Eight a.m. and already the sun has risen to an angle sharp enough to dispel what little shade there is.

Meeting up with Michael, we get our packs and head toward the large windmill. There the crew is filling their water bottles and circling up to stretch. Yesterday the Scouts hiked nearly 16 miles. Not bad in this heat.

Next to the well I notice a larger, different looking tree other than the typical junipers and piñons. Its trunk is wider and taller than the rest, its branches reaching out farther than the other trees, fuller and with longer needles. Its bottom branches brush the ground. This is the perfect tree to shade several people any time of day—a rare object in the desert.

Vacek informs me it’s a ponderosa. No. Can’t be. Ponderosas are tall and straight with orange bark and they drop their lower limbs. I draw near to smell its grayish trunk. Sure enough—butterscotch. “They survive how they can—there’s barely enough water to sustain them, barely enough to survive,” Vacek says. He points out that the tree grows around its dead branches. “They’re different in each part of the ranch.”

Full on water and stretched, the crew heads out on an old ranch road. Day three. True, there are no hiking trails, but there are plenty of old roads and cattle trails leading obscurely through the desert. We trail behind the crew, the temperature rising but the air still cool. This is best time to hike at Double H, if not earlier. After about a mile, the crew stops on the roadside. Dropping their packs, one crewmember unfolds the map and another turns on a GPS, as the crew gathers around. They are searching for a “geo-cache,” or GPS located treasure box. Thirteen geo-caches are hidden throughout Double H, and no crew had yet located all of them.

We hike on, reaching the next well within minutes and drop our packs, headed for the geo-cache before the crew finds it. No need for a GPS. Vacek leads us down into what looks like a dried-up pond—lush, tall, wheatlike grass with paintbrush tips moving in languid unison to the breeze—vivid green vegetation, and delicate white and yellow wildflowers. He informs us this area collects the water. What water?

Meeting the end of a dry streambed, we step over one-rock dams and pass arc-dams wedged into the sides of the creek. Scouts built these to prevent water erosion, Vacek says. We walk under a taut barbed wire fence of crooked wooden posts, suspend ten feet above the ground, spanning the rising banks of the stream—odd. Before us is a small a small canyon.

Tracing the canyon back nearly 20 yards, the earthen walls abruptly stop, rising a sheer 14 feet. At the base of the walls are fallen boulders—more willing than the half rooted junipers hanging diagonally over the canyon’s edge, the soil underneath slowly slipping from their clutch. “In a year they’ll be gone,” Vacek says. We’ve reached the “head-cut.” Where the earth was soft, surging rains from the monsoon season formed the small canyon, wide enough to drive a Philburban. The ground here is washing away and taking everything with it. And that lush area we crossed was dug to collect all the water run-off—a near swampland in the desert.

Our guide points off in the direction of the geo-cache near the base of a large piñon above us on the level ground. We hear the crew coming and make a dash for the cover behind a large, dead branch lying against the canyon wall, which I had not noticed. We slide in, following Vacek’s lead. The crew appears on the canyon rim, moving slowly like a thin line of desert nomads, until they have congregated around the tree and locating the hidden green ammunition box—the geo cache.

Back on the old road we head onward to Martin Camp, ahead of the crew.

Deviating from the road, Vacek leads us upward over forested hills—a steep trek, our intuition guiding us as much as our compass. At the top of the second hill, we cross a fence line. Vacek then leads us to an old washed-out road cut into the winding canyon’s edge. At the end of the canyon is Martin Camp, the light glinting tauntingly off the barn’s metal rooftop like beacon. There is no direct route down.

After nearly an hour we descend out of the canyon and pass the tall wooden corals of Martin Camp. Entering the wide, dirt courtyard, we set our packs at the side of a small cabin to our right. Weathered lava rock and elk bone line the front entrance to the “Ponderosa.” The air is so hot I collapse under the shade of the ponderosa. A staff member offers me a cup of sweet tea. I oblige. “We like it sweet,” says Program Counselor Daniel Verplancke, grimacing behind a thick red beard. Iced tea sounds divine after hiking through the desert, but I can barely get the first sip down, the sugar is so dense.

Sitting, I survey the area. Across the courtyard is the he barn, with the trading post. To my right is a large white yurt, like those of Whitman Vega or Seally canyon, the conical canopy resembling a small circus tent. That’s where the staff lives. Beyond the yurt is a row of portable bathrooms. And to my left is the cistern—a tall, circular concrete wall like an above ground swimming pool, where the Martins who lived here stored their water.

Lunchtime in the Ponderosa and someone is cleaning a black powder rifle with a soapy rag, charred suds and water splashing out the end of the barrel onto the gray concrete floor. Two men enter, one drinking dark coffee from a plastic measuring cup, the other scooping chopped fruit from a can of Surefine cocktail. A fourth man enters wearing a red-patterned kilt. Flies proliferate inside the living room of the Ponderosa as the temperature rises almost hotter than outside, where the desert has breached a blaring 100 degrees. The smell of frying sausage and egg plumes through the hallway from the kitchen. We are baking.

Next to the cabin is Martin Hill, a large mound rising like a dome, with a rocky trail swirling around its side to the top. Atop the hill I look out at the expanse of desert landscape—barren, desolate, beautiful. Yucca and cactus and prairie grass. Vacek takes out his binoculars and aims them toward the largest of visible landforms, a butte rising like a prehistoric castle to our left—dark rock and jagged cliff. He hands me the binoculars. I zoom in on a large O and X spelled with rocks on top of the butte. Vacek explains Doubles H’s neighbors live there, the Alamo Navajo Indians.

That night the Scouts gather around an old well on the backside of camp, where the staff have built up a large bonfire of dried juniper, the smoke billowing upward like fragrant incense. There, the staff tells the tall tales of Martin Ranch and Chester, the old ranch-hand who roams Double H, monitoring water supplies and trapping coyotes.

“One of the best things I hear about the Double H is it’s like a coral snake,” says Camp Director Edwin Terell “—very austere and dangerous to behold.”