Coyote

Full Moon

After resting for a full week, I tested out my knee Saturday with a flat, slow jaunt into town and back with the liberal use of a walking stick. Happy to report I think I am going to be okay. My long distance backpacking days may be over, but maybe not. I will definitely need to throttle back the scale of my trips and settle for shorter, quicker trips in warm seasons with a bare minimum of gear. I still get excited about it. I don't want to call it quits just yet.

Close to Patagonia, the beginning of Passage 4.

My brief impressions of the Arizona Trail left me wanting more. I can tell there would be parts of it I would not like, but I am attracted to the idea of section hiking most of it and caching clean water in strategic areas beforehand. I really do not want to drink that cow poo water I saw, even if it does make for funny stories and delectable gross-out photos.

I was already starting to dig the countryside.

That night after my injury, just as I was settling into my sleeping bag, I heard a very loud scream or screech coming from what seemed to be a very short distance away from my tent. If you have ever slept in a tent, you are no doubt familiar with the sensation that loud sounds can seem really close and soft sounds can seem even closer. It is easy to get spooked when you are on your back, zipped up tight. It's a vulnerable feeling to be sure, but less so when you are used to it.

When I heard that scream or screech, followed by a few short barks, I immediately identified it as at least one coyote in some sort of distress. I wasn't sure how close it was, but I guessed no more than fifty feet. My reaction was not one of fear. I wondered instead if maybe I had made my camp too close to a mother coyote's den and she was warning me to go away or warning her pups to stay put. The signal (can't call it a howl, it was not a typical coyote howl that I hear regularly where I live) repeated every couple of minutes for about a quarter of an hour, then ceased. The direction it came from never changed. Then suddenly, all was quiet.

Here is a YouTube recording of various coyote sounds. The ones I heard were the high-pitched sort of screaming/screeching/whistling tones that really get your attention. I don't know enough about them to interpret their meanings.

Coyote Sounds

Anyway, of course, no coyote actually threatened me physically or tried to get my food or anything like that. Much later, in the middle of the night, I heard something kind of slowly creeping around my tent for a few minutes, but it seemed bigger - could have been a cow or a deer, I dunno. I focused on it for a minute, then soon went back to sleep. It was too durn cold and my leg was too durn stiff to investigate. I saw no tracks the next morning.

My feeling right now is that I would like to go back in the fall and hike southbound from the Utah border to Flagstaff, then return next spring to do another section. One thing for certain is that hiking on ice and snow are not in my future. I must become a lot  smarter about when I pick my starting dates from now on.

Peace, Love, and Lessons Learned,
Jim