Bizarre Weekend

It all began when Wendy, Ridgewalk, felt good about me coming out to the Trail this weekend. Well Saturday morning came for us to drive out to the Trail together. We headed out in the white suburban but had to make a quick stop and pick up a burrito. As we turned off the freeway onto Gilbert Rd, Wendy turns to me and says the car won’t accelerate as we began coasting slower and slower down the road. By this point the power steering had gone and she had to “crank” the wheel to get us off the main road. We called a fellow Anasazi employee who lived close and tried jumping the sub to no avail. We headed back to the office (without forgetting to pick up the burritos) and got all our things moved into the truck. While I was getting in, I noticed one of the tires was flat, so we had to spend another hour replacing the tire there in the office parking lot. Once the tire was swapped out, Wendy and I were actually on our way when we should have been arriving at the bands. Two days before this, it got very cold here in Arizona and it snowed on the Trail. We were most of the way to where the bands were when the road turned from dirt to compacted snow and ice. Wendy didn’t feel confident driving the truck through that (I don’t blame her) so we switched drivers and crawled down the side of Cooks Mesa in 4L without any problems. Once we arrived at the bands location, there wasn’t much for me to do yet. So I spent the day with Wendy and Stanger joking, napping and reading bridal magazines (wendy just got engaged so I was flipping through them with her and discussing wedding options). That night it was cold with ice forming on things by 7pm. The next morning my canteens were frozen solid and there was ice on everything. If I had to guess, I would say the temp. was in the mid-teens. I stayed warm by making sure I went to bed hydrated and put an extra wool blanket that Ridgewalk had under me with my capote over the top of my sleeping bag. One great thing about the cold night with no moon was the star gazing; there was not a single part of the sky that wasn’t covered in stars.
Sunday morning we realized the starcraft vehicle (another suburban) we were in had a dead battery. After spending an hour just getting the hood open, we tried our jumper box which didn’t work. Two weeks before when I was coming off with rabbitstick we had the same problem and spent two hours looking for someone with jumper cables in the bloody basin. This time we had the same issue but instead of having an extra vehicle to drive around and find someone we had to sit there and wait for a passerby. Needless to say I got a good nap in while waiting and then was suddenly awakened by Wendy and Stanger yelling at me to stop the car they could hear coming down the road around midday. He was kind enough to stop even with filthy hippy looking people running at him and give us a jump.
Shortly after that chore, we picked up the injured young walker that we needed to drive to Final “D.” Well we were afraid of the car dying again and drove back over the snowing mesa into town to get the battery replaced. It’s a good thing we did because it was smoking and bulging by the time they pulled it out. We made a good time of it; joking that we had gotten lost and calling the buildings “large tents.” The young walker was awesome and played along. As we drove into town someone had built this snowman alongside the road. Stanger got a picture of me taking a picture of it. By the time the car was fixed, it was dinner time and we decided to get some grub. We ended up at a Thai restaurant. Picture in your head for a moment four people, one of which is a young walker, dirty, smelly, looking like bums in a nice sit down restaurant. The whole situation seemed very surreal. We made the most of it by splitting four appetizers and then each eating a full entrée.
The next day we finally made it to Final “D” which still had snow on the ground. I took full advantage of it and hit Wendy with a snowball square in the chest. I spent the rest of the day with the injured YW and her band. I found an amazing metal shack someone had built complete with a 55 gallon drum fireplace. How could I pass up not sleeping in it. It was so awesome with my own little fire for warmth. For the first time that week I woke up with no ice on my things. Tuesday I was priveledged to take the dawnstar YW’s to family camp and bring in their parents to them. I just love that reunion because that is what our program is all about: bringing families together. I and another TW cried when we saw it. Then I was off back into the bands to do the medical assesments for the nurse who was sick.
This whole weekend was strange because I went out without any set plan as to what I was going to do. I’m glad Anasazi feels they can trust me to be able to go into any situation and do a good job, and I’m glad I have so many weeks on the Trail to give me the confidence to be put in such a variety of situations.
Oh the car trouble didn’t end with the dead battery. The shadows, another TW and I almost got into a car accident on the freeway as we were coming home. Luckily we had prayed for safety and our driver was alert. The irony of it was that we were passing an accident when two cars in front of us hit each other.