Upon waking up at the Laughing Lizard Inn, I went about the humdrum town business that supports all the wilderness hiking. I made a couple trips to the post office out on the edge of town, packed up my maps, and ate a huge burrito. I washed my socks and underwear, thereby completing the smallest and dirtiest load of laundry that town had ever seen. I sat down to write the blog and it was a full two hours before I looked up again.
That made it noon, and I figured I should get my tuchus in gear if I was going to do any hiking that day. I walked to the edge of town again and stuck out my thumb.
It took a bit, but eventually a giant Dodge pickup pulled over (is there a non-giant Dodge?) and let me in. In accordance with hitching etiquette, I introduced myself and tried to start up a conversation. A lot of people pick up butchers for company, I learned. The trick of it is that you only try once, because maybe they're introverted and prefer silence.
I looked around the cab for a hook to hang my conversational hat on and spotted the logo for the Spartan Race series my friend Nathan likes so well.
"Are you a Spartan racer then?" I asked. He looked fit enough.
"Nope," he responded.
"Oh, I asked because of that sticker in the window. Isn't that their logo?"
"That," he said slowly, "is from a pistol I own."
Well, that was pretty much a ballgame, chit-chat-wise. I cowered back in my seat and watched the canyon walls fly by.
He let me off at Battleship Rock, where I'd popped out the day prior. I started the three-mile road walk to La Cueva, a little trading post where I'd get my food for the next leg. It was getting kind of disconcertingly cold and dark, so I stepped on the gas.
The trading post was dimly lit and kind of odd in the way that very rural outposts get. A teenage kid sat in the camping section, glued to a game on his phone. Skinny, moderately seedy dudes stopped in to do some quick shopping. A family stopped and asked if there was a mechanic, their truck had just broken down. There was no mechanic.
But, well, I'm just here to shop, right? I picked out an obscene amount of food, waddled it up to the register, and discovered -- holy shit -- that I'd mislaid my debit card.
I've been losing very important possessions my whole life. I used to go through a couple pairs of glasses a year as a kid. This rich, deep history of screwing up has lent me a certain equanimity about such situations. I took a deep breath, paid with a credit card, and got ready to hitch back to Jemez Springs.
A fisherman who had been discussing river flows with the owner looked up.
"I'll take you, no problem," he said.
Thus did I meet Gregory Sinfuentes, who not only drove me to Jemez, he drove me back. In the car and over the dinner I bought him, we discussed trout, trucks, and camping. He revealed that he was a diabetic who had lost 100 lbs and gained control of his blood sugar through fishing.
"I used to just sit around the house in San Antonio," he said. "Then I saw a guy catch a trout one day and I said, I've got to do that."
He told me he was a disabled vet, and that he liked sleeping in his truck with his dog. We talked about music -- he had studied composition in college -- and he revealed that his favorite music for carving through mountain canyons at high speed was Beethocen's 7th. And then he put it on, and we just watched and listened.
I was pretty sad to leave that man and his dog. If you ever meet Gregory, be good to him; he is a good man.
But leave I did, hiking up a little rural two-lane and then ditching the road for a(nother) abandoned two-track. That two-track threaded up San Antonio canyon, green and cold in the evening. I set up the tarp in the roadbed and tucked myself in.
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