We agreed Kelly should stay in the shade while I scrambled up a nearby rise to spot either the trail or a way out. Up I went, still unable to gain the view I needed, so I scuttled higher still. I gazed north and saw the distant peaks I’d noticed on the drive in. We had to be close to the end; Kelly had done this hike before and had confirmed we were most of the way around the loop. About to stop scanning, I finally noticed a manmade structure, some sort of metal-roofed shelter, maybe a mile off. That had to be it, I reasoned, and just in time as my worry for Kelly grew.
In my excitement on the way down, I overshot the return and found myself near the small pools of water we had long since passed. Crap. Well, she couldn’t be far. “Kelly?” I asked aloud, as if she was only a few yards ahead, then “Kellllllllyyyyyy” I yelled into the dessert.
Silence. More yelling from me was met with more silence.
I panned the valley in a careful three-hundred-sixty degree turn. I was utterly alone, but more than that, confounded by the duality this represented. The realization that the stakes had been raised to life-and-death level stood right alongside the visual majesty of the place; the almost inexplicable natural beauty. There was no one, and nothing, zero signs of human existence. We’d only seen three people on horseback the whole time anyway, and they were long gone. I remembered my mighty iPhone, trusted new companion, yet even as I pulled it out of my pack I also knew that hoping for a signal was hoping for too much.
Were it not for having seen what I assumed was the way out, the icy flow of panic might have frozen my veins; thankfully it did not. Kelly had sufficient water remaining but my bottle was bone dry. Having watched what you can argue are far too many Survivorman and Man vs. Wild episodes, I knew if push came to shove I was not above drinking the fetid water I’d traversed and eating prickly pear fruit straight off the cactus. I wasn’t concerned for me, I’d seen where to go, but Kelly hadn’t and was sick besides.
I followed the creek bed again, the route familiar from having traveled it before we separated. “Show me the way out,” I asked aloud of anyone or anything that would oblige. No sooner had I said it than I revised the question “Show me Kelly,” and almost immediately, I found where I’d left her.
She was gone.
I was sure it was the place; a crumpled Kleenex marked the spot. My mind raced through a dozen possible plans of action at once. We hadn’t discussed this scenario since we had never intended to separate. What was the protocol? I figured as a last resort I’d get out and go for help. Visions of helicopter search parties at dusk and her husband, whom I’d barely met, simultaneously worried, weeping, and wondering who the hell this woman was who had lost and then abandoned his wife flitted through my head. The “What If” dam burst and the worst-case scenarios flooded in, too horrible to give voice or vision to. “I’m good in a crisis, I’m level-headed in an emergency, and I know this,” I reminded myself; “Don’t go to the worst case scenario, go where Kelly must have gone,” my better judgment guided. Leaping from boulder to rock down the creek bed for another ten minutes, I at last heard her calling my name as loud as I’d been yelling hers.
To our mutual relief, we reunited and after a few final rests, ants that stung through my rip-stop nylon pants, and requisite cactus spines in the butt, we found the trail. Now certain we were near the road we’d come in on and despite my trepidation, we agreed I’d go on ahead for the car and pull it up to the trail end. After five hours in the 90-degree desert, at last we were ensconced in air-conditioned comfort, chugging the extra water bottles from a cooler in the trunk and exhaling heavily between gulps.
