Re-Living the Oklahoma Hike

There's a scene that comes to mind from the Tennessee Williams play "Cat on a Hot Tin Roof." Brick Pollitt is lying on a couch holding a crutch, and his "no-neck monster" niece asks him why he was jumping the high hurdles in the middle of the night.

He answers, "Because I used to jump them, and people like to do what they used to do after they've stopped being able to do it." I've caught myself thinking that this is exactly what I'm up to--at a rock concert, trying to stay up all night, playing basketball, even looking at pictures. I recently had another moment where those words came back to me...

This weekend, my brothers and I took my dad on a backpacking trip that we all did individually as younger kids. Ironically, although we all were very active in camping through Boy Scouts, we had never all been camping together. Since several of us are married and we don't all live in the same town, my brother Don thought it might be a treat to take my dad on the same trail that he hiked with all of us individually over the years. For Father's Day, we announced our intentions to put together the trip that we would arrange the logisitics and do our best to shoulder the burden of the weight. Dad seemed to like the idea.

Anyone that knows my dad also knows that, even if you carry his tent, food, and water, he can still locate at least 30 pounds of crap to stuff into his aging, green backpack--so much that the old seams finally burst at the end of the first day--he grinned and said, "Well, maybe this is the last trip." I knew when he said it that he meant for himself, not just for the pack.

We had driven down on Friday night and, after the four-hour ride through traffic getting out of Dallas, through the empty streets of tiny towns in Southern Oklahoma, where my Dad and brother, Patrick kept violently erupting in excited pointing exhibitions every time we passed a gas station with a new, lower price per gallon (the first time one of the passengers urgently pointed out the window, I winced when I glanced over, half-expecting to be confronted with an RPG-wielding terrorist).

The final hour of the trip was a gut-wrenching, brake-smoldering climb-and-coast through winding mountain roads, during which my headlights silhouetted at least eight deer on the side of the otherwise unlit road, and an unfortunate possum met a grisly end.

Patrick and I set up our tent in the pines of the Ouachita Mountains in the Kiamichi Wilderness, and in the morning we were awakened by the crisp air, the crickets chirping and...

honk, honk, honk....(echoing and continuing)

Dad had slept in the car, which had automatically set the alarm and now we were sounding a burglar-alarm revilee across the Kiamichi...I reached up, grabbed my set of keys hanging in the top of the tent, and pressed the button to turn off the alarm...about 10 times before it actually worked. To Dad's credit, he said he suspected it would go off and waited as long as he could in the car before getting out.

Patrick scrambled eggs and made breakfast burritos with tortillas and coffee--I could tell already that the food on this hike was going to be better than anything we ever experienced as young kids--we would normally have oatmeal, trail mix, and Cup-o-Soup--pretty much gross, dehydrated food. I think all of us were interested in seeing how we held up to our previous physical standards. I would have to say that I've changed the most since I last hiked, 17 years ago. I've grown over four inches taller and weigh considerably more. Don has recently been exercising every day and has gotten lean and mean, so he was probably most prepared. Patrick was just married this year, and hasn't been camping in a while. My youngest brother, Noel, plays hockey in a league so he is physically active. And Dad is still Dad--a trooper who would go camping with us as kids even though it wasn't even clost to his favorite thing to do (which might be watching the Cowboy game on TV Sunday afternoons).

We sat and had our luxurious hot breakfast and I snapped pictures while a frosty dew fell all around us in the crisp morning air. I packed up my tent and snapped this daddy longlegs spider (harmless). The air smelled like crushed pine needles--a smell that brought back memories that I hadn't thought of in a long time...

My job for the trip was to confirm the logistics of the maps. It was a little awkward to call someone that I haven't seen in almost twenty years and ask them for a favor, but that was what my task for the hike was--I looked up our old Scoutmaster on Google (love Google) and it even had his cell phone number listed. He told me a book to get (Ouachita Trail Guide, by Tim Ernst), and even invited me to come to a Boy Scout meeting to make sure I had picked out the directions properly (I went to the meeting and that was a story itself). I felt very prepared.

I'm including a copy of the map, because somebody need to Email Tim Ernst and tell him that it's wrong. That was my one thing to do, and I got it wrong (not my fault!!!!)

We were supposed to put in a car at Forest Road 6031, off Highway 63. We left Patrick and Noel and our packs at the Pashubbe Trailhead and drove up and down highway 63 for well over an hour, stopping at any break in the trees that may look like Forest Road 6031--Finally, in a leap of faith and after realizing that we were dramatically behind schedule, we tucked the car in a grove of trees where we thought we would emerge at the Kiamichi River Trailhead (marked 6032--there were several unmarked Forest Roads along 63, spaced out along the highway). If it wasn't the right place, Don and I agreed that we would hitchhike along 63 until we got to the car and go back and pick everyone up. This kind of bugged me off and on during the trip--Were we going to see our car when we got off the trail?

When we got back to our backpacks, we took a quick group picture and started off--and I promptly got us off the trail immediately--the trail was blazed with blue paint, and I missed a faded blue mark at a switchback and took us in a circle around some trees before Don found the next blue mark. Again, my usually impeccable navigation duties seemed to be faltering a little.

Once on the trail, we were doing pretty well. Don took the lead and set a pretty quick pace up the switchbacks along the hill. The trail was rocky; much rockier than any of us seemed to remember. This continued until the last 2 miles of the hike at the end of the day. After a couple of hours, our legs felt hammered--balancing from tiny, softball-to-shoebox sized rocks put a strain on the tiny support muscles on the sides of your legs instead of the normal, large muscles you use for walking. The nice part about the rocky terrain was that there were several beautiful rock formations cascading down the mountain as we climbed--huge glacier boulders that we sometimes had to climb over.

Then the trail headed uphill--steep! By the time we reached the top of Wilton Mountain, we were gassed and broke for lunch.

We sat down and Patrick broke out the first meal for Dad. Don, Noel, and I brought our own trail meals, but Patrick took care of my dad--and boy, did he! He started to make a sandwich with cheese, mayo, the works (which is really unheard of, for good reason, in backpacking). As Patrick offered Dad a choice of flavored water, chips, and condiments, I started wondering exactly what kind of smorgasboard he had going on inside his backpack. I teased him, asking "Hey, Pat--do you think you could whip us up a chocolate bundt cake?" Little did I know that, not only did he pack steaks in a light cooler for us as well as a lightweight metal grill to cook them over the campfire that night, but he had also baked a chocolate cake and put it in an uncrushable container for dessert that night!--Patrick and his magic food-pantry backpack became an amazing phenomenon that we all uneasily watched all weekend...and benefitted from.

Again--all these things: sandwiches, steaks, cakes, grills--backpacker sacriledge! I felt naughty just participating in it...

As we sat in awe catching our first glimpse of Patrick's chefery, we were startled to hear voices approaching. It's hunting season out in the Kiamichi, so I was a little worried that we might encounter people with guns in the woods, but these were two merry hikers with hiking sticks who stopped to chat for a moment. They had also bought the book by Tim Ernst, and were also gassed by the climb to the top of Wilton Mountain.

Suspiciously eyeing the remains of a sandwhich tossed into the firepit, the larger of the two men reminded us to make sure we left the trail clean when we left. This could have been interpreted as out-of-line, but I thought he was right and we picked up the fire pit and tried to leave no trace of stopping there. We ran across the two guys several times on the trail, and I nicknamed them "Siegfried and Roy", which made us laugh every once in a while when we would wonder what they were up to.

The rest of the day went much smoother--Don led most of the way and each of us had a nice time hiking with different groups of people. Going downhill, even though it was rocky and composed of 33 switchback trails, was much easier going and the trail leveled out at for the last several miles--we passed Siegfried and Roy who were setting up their tents a campsite that we would have probably comandeered since it was getting dark and we got such a late start. We decided to push on to our destination, which we calculated as about a 10-mile hike for the day, with a five-mile backtrack the following day to the "car" (we were hoping and praying).

Noel and I got to the campsite and started the fire immediately, so we would have coals to cook on when Patrick and Dad got to the site--we knew they were at least half an hour behind. Don came shortly afterward and we both set up our tents while it was light.

I had sent out an Email to all the guys warning them about Giardia, which is a parasitic cyst that is common in water due to rodent feces. I told them that if we didn't bring in enough water, we would have to drink out of the "possum potty" (Kiamichi River which is known to have Giardia in it). Our projected campsite was on the banks of the Kiamichi, so one plan to keep from having to tote in liters and liters of water for overnight on the trail was to bring just enough for one day, then purify the water from the river for drinking and cooking. We've done it before and it's no big deal, but I'm glad that wasn't our strategy this time: the river was completely dry due to drought! In fact, there were pockets of unnaturally blue, milky, stagnant water that I'm glad we didn't have to consider drinking an of it.

We sat around the campfire, feasting like kings on steak, potatoes with butter and cheese, and chocolate cake and telling stories about camping in years past. Dad was quiet, but I think I caught him smiling a little...I hope that, even though he was exhausted, he had a nice time. I brought my nice camera, my luxury item of the trip, to see if I could capture some nice shots--one of my favorites was of my brothers, Patrick and Noel, and my dad sitting close to the fire--Don took this one of me.

A dog howled in the distance--enough to later give me a bad dream about a dog eating my entire backpack, which I had left outside the tent. Other than that, I was warm and toasty and slept soundly there on the banks of the river--I kidded my dad and Patrick: "If you guys have to get out of the tent in the middle of the night, I wouldn't go more than five steps--that sixth one is a long way down..."(the bank of the river).

At about Four AM a front moved through and the wind shaking the trees sounded like a freight train coming through the forest--Noel said he thought someone had opened the floodgates of the river--I woke up from my dream about the dog and started wondering what weather the front would bring--but beside the wind, it wasn't bad at all, and we got up, had a hot breakfast (there's a funny story about one of my brothers who was decidedly not pleased that his oatmeal was ruined because it wasn't warm enough, but I won't name names...) We passed Siegfried and Roy yet again on the trail, and I even sneaked off the trail a ways to catch my version of an "Abbey Road" photo of my brothers hiking by in a row in the thick cover of the forest.

When we got to the end of the trail--voila! We had guessed right and the car was there. Thank God. We were all in good spirits as we bundled into the car and the rain that followed the front moved in and soaked our packs as we drove to the beginning of the trail to pick up the other car.

The ride back always seems like it takes a lot longer than the ride to get there. We had a little miscue where Patrick, who was seemingly asleep in the back of my car, slinked off when we stopped to get gas and was highly offended that we drove off without him there. In fact, when he called my Dad's cell phone, my dad leaned back toward the empty back seat and said, "Patrick, what are you doing calling me?" To me, it was one of those Hitchcock moments of hearing my dad, glancing at the empty seat, and the sinking realization that I had abandoned my brother in an Oklahoma gas station...followed by hysterical laughter. I'm not sure if we were able to convince Patrick that it was humorous.

But we succeeded in revisiting the trail from our younger days, and this time, we did it in style.