I was born and raised in Texas and currently live in the Texas Hill Country, spent some 30 years living in the smack dab middle of Colorado, and have spent a lifetime adventuring and leading others on adventures in many parts of the wild world.
It was Christmas break of my sophomore year in high school when my friend and classmate Jake and I took off from Denton. We geared up and drove his parent’s VW camper/van (with their permission), bound for Mexico with a stop in Douglas, Arizona. The plan was to meet up in Douglas with an older, more mature person named Jim, whom I knew from the summer camp where I’d worked the previous summer. From there, the three of us would travel to Guaymas, Mexico, where we’d camp, have some quality beach time, and experience a bunch of “neat adventure stuff.” In the van, we had scuba gear packed away under one of the seats in cardboard boxes, places to sleep, and we must have had some food somewhere.
It was a Fall Sunday during my slow part of the year. Autumn in Colorado’s Tarryall Mountains is spectacular. The Aspen trees turn gold, and warm sunny days are interrupted only by winter’s occasional and temporary arrival. Most years, late September is an ideal time to be there, with long pleasant days almost perfect for mountain biking, hiking, and climbing area peaks. But this particular year, my days were occupied with the aftermath of the OWA base camp lodge’s burning down rather than recreating. Instead of the comforts of my private lodge bedroom and bath, I was sharing an old one-room log cabin with an 18-year-old intern and not doing much besides clean-up and prep for new construction. On the day in question, I was piddling around the job site doing various chores. Since it was an off day, Lee (the intern) asked if he could go on a straightforward, leisurely hike toward Bison Peak. I considered that he’d been on several backcountry trips with my outdoor program in the past. And since no work was planned for him that afternoon, it seemed reasonable. And so, I gave him my blessing.
Ryan had never bonked before, at least in the metabolic shock/ overexertion sense of the word. When he started bumbling around and losing more and more of his edge, I knew that something was up and figured that’s what had happened. Not realizing what was going on, he kept on trying to mountain bike further up the Colorado Trail, although with diminishing returns. The big patches of snow that remained on the trail, even though it was June, were probably a good thing since they ultimately stopped and prevented us from riding any further. His disrupted mental and physical state likely made the retreat more palatable to the 13-year-old, since he wasn’t one to be prone to turn around before his goal was reached.
“You’re not lost if you don’t care where you are,” or something to that effect is a famous quote. I repeated it in my mind several times as we kept walking into the thick fog, headed toward the summit of Chiefs Head in Colorado’s Rocky Mountain National Park. I was bringing up the rear of a group of ten teenage backpackers. Typically, I was confident about wherever Mike was leading us. But not so in this instance. His assistant mountain guide, Dennis, was with me at the back of the line and kept muttering about how we were going up the wrong mountain.
Sixteen empty soda bottles sat on the counter in the Cerro Colorado store for two days before the shopkeeper finally stuck them down with the other empties. They were a good conversation piece while they were sitting out there in the open. But when he found a spider in one, and since he needed to move them anyway, he put them into some empty slots in the Fanta case down on the floor. Then, after tidying things up, he thought about dragging the whole box of empties out from behind the Sabritas rack so they would still be visible. That way, they would continue to be the talk of the town, but he realized that if he did so, they would just be in the way and make things look disorganized. And so he just stuck the case in the back room.
Deep in the heart of Wyoming’s Wind River Range, there’s a place that we called Golden Lake. No marked or named trails go there; if you look on a map or search a guidebook for information about it, you’ll find nothing. But, while there is a lake there, it has another name. It sits in a glacial cirque, or basin, along with two others at the top of an obscure drainage that leads down to the North Fork of the Popo Agie River. The main lake of the three is full of Golden Trout. Thus, the name.
It wasn’t the easy way out of the predicament. But we chose the more physically painful of the two options and climbed up the steep ridge and then over the saddle that led us out of Paradise Park and down into Hell Canyon.
The solution wasn’t jumping out at her. Nothing about the situation made any sense. Why had he said that? His conclusion wasn’t logical. Her mind worked in overdrive to come up with an answer to the problem, although a part of her feared there might not be one. Maybe I should….. But her chain of thought was broken by the reality of the moment. She looked down at the ground, some 30′ below, and her focus reverted to the rock. The climb was rated 5.12 and named “Second Thoughts,” of all things. And from that point forward, the thing that mattered to her most was the few square feet of rock surrounding her.
The countryside opened up as the Silver Trail left the Valley of the Churches. Our group of seven backpackers had passed a young Tarahumara man (the indigenous people of Mexico’s Copper Canyon) earlier that day. And I’d asked about Nacho Kino, an old Tarahumara whom I’d met while mapping the Silver Trail a few years before.
“He’s not at his ranchito. He’s gone to the Dutuburi in Kisochi. I’m on my way there now,” he replied. {Dutuburi- An event held periodically in Tarahumara villages to ask Oruame (God in simplistic terms) for something, such as rain for crops. After dancing the Yamari, the people dance the Dutuburi. And afterward, the feasting begins}.
I’d hoped to introduce Nacho to the group when we passed by his log house the following day. The wiry older man embodied pure happiness and a positive perspective. I’d stopped and visited with him several times previously. And the experience had always served to brighten my day, and I wanted to share that with the group. With a broad smile, he’d once told me how he’d come back to the valley of his birth to die. And how he had all the good stuff around him that a person could ever really want—a fine dog, a prolific apple tree, and plenty of family and friends nearby. Since visiting with him this time around wasn’t going to happen, I told the young Tarahumara to tell him, “Saludos de David, el gringo.” He said he would, and we all moved on in different directions.
After the trail encounter, our group continued backpacking along the trail toward our anticipated campsite on a mesa just above Nacho Kino’s house. On the next day, we planned to go from there to a place adjacent to the Rio Conchos called Huajochic. That section was a long haul, but I figured we’d break it up with a short visit with the old man. Now, I reasoned, we’d have that much more daylight to work with since we wouldn’t be making that stop.
As mentioned, we were a group of seven. It included five teenagers, me, and another leader, Ryan, and we were backpacking along a 40-mile section of the historic Silver Trail. We were headed northward on the section of trail that starts near the remnants of the waystation named Pilares. Ultimately, we planned to pass by the ruins of the one named Huajochic. And at that point, we’d cross the waters of the Rio Conchos and then head toward our final destination, the town of Carachic.
At the northern end of the rock-spire-filled Valley of the Churches, the trail markedly turned to the north as the creek we’d been following joined another. Once we rounded the corner, I could see the Kino Springs mesa overlooking Nacho’s ranchito, rising above the lower hills a mile ahead. So, I knew we were getting close. We worked our way across the valley floor and soon passed just to the side of the small and seemingly deserted village of Siquerichi before beginning a gradual climb to the mesa summit. The trail steepened as we moved up onto the actual mesa. It crossed a rocky section and stayed just below the ridgeline before finally dumping us out onto a flat and scrub brush-covered area on top. Once there, we found a good place to camp and began setting up with just enough time to do so before dark.
Everyone put their packs down and immediately began setting up tents and fetching water from the spring. By 7:00 pm, we were all sitting around and waiting for the supper water to boil when the same young Tarahumara man we’d seen earlier in the day just appeared. He stood off to the firelight’s edge and obviously had something to say. I was a bit confused by his reappearance. “What is going on,” I wondered. I’d never felt at all threatened anywhere in the Copper Canyon backcountry. And we were in the Nacho Kino realm, so I felt that at least there wasn’t likely anything sinister going on.
Then, he spoke. He said that Nacho Kino had invited us to the Dutuburi and that he, the young man, would take us there. I was immediately overcome and overwhelmed by the gesture and its prospects. Seven white boys from the United States attending a Dutuburi in the wilds of the Sierra Tarahumara. How could we not seize the moment? What would it mean to a 16-year-old from middle America or even a 50-year-old like me? My mind buzzed with excitement.
Seamlessly, I went into mental rationalization mode, figuring out the logistics of how to make it work. Then, just as a plan was solidifying itself, the slightly inebriated way he slurred his words while extending the conversation changed the situation. Visions of corn-beer drinking, teenage boys getting into a moment they weren’t prepared for, and me trying to explain it all to a parent in an Austin coffee shop suddenly overwhelmed my thoughts. And I turned down the offer.
“Thank him,” I said, “but we have a lot to do tomorrow and need to rest.”
True, it was late, and we still had a long way to go. A part of me said, a fantastic opportunity missed. But my pragmatic side told me, “a profound disaster averted.” The Tarahumara shook his head in acknowledgment, smiled, and disappeared into the brush.
The offer and refusal parts were straightforward enough. Even though the boys didn’t speak much Spanish, they could pick out a few words, feel the goodwill, and ultimately get the gist of what was happening. And so, for that moment, it was a cut and dried event that they weren’t physically going to be a part of but felt good about, nonetheless.
After the Tarahumara vanished, everyone in our group began talking, asking questions, and mostly trying to figure out what’d just happened. We discussed it a bit, and I was convinced that the details of the Dutuburi and the invitation for us to attend had captivated the minds of the five younger people. Even though none of them spoke Spanish or completely understood what had occurred, they each seemed outwardly fascinated by the events. But then, a discussion about Sardine guts started up. And for that moment, the Dutuburi episode drifted into the background. And I smiled to myself as I thought about the time that would surely come when one of the boys would be an old man and recount what had happened. And I had to wonder how he’d tell the story.
Crossing through The Valley of the Churches in Copper Canyon
I was in Mexico’s Copper Canyon with a group of adventure travelers, “Chavochi’s” (non-indigenous/devil people, as some of us gringos are fondly known among the Tarahumara). Some things happened while we were down there in Batopilas Canyon and the town of Batopilas, which may or may not be related. I think they are.
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