40 year walk in desert full#

Or, if I could not have been carried for miles out of the testing area and driven to a hospital in time, I may have even croaked. If I was staring off into the abyss beyond or had my attention occupied for even a mere second, I may not be sitting here ticking out these words. ? If it were not for the little trail of sand that rose up as a palisade around her circumference, I do not know if I would have noticed her. I saw the snake this time, but what about the next. I stood over the wrapped up little serpent as my concerned climaxed: this highly venomous snake blended into the desert floor - the background - without blemish. And I saw it: a triangular shaped head connected to a coiled tubular body whose terminus was a threatening set of rattles.Ī Diamondback rattlesnake was coiled up one step in front of me. I focused my gaze before taking another step. I was walking step after unbroken step, until a blemish in the soil manifested itself one footstep in front of me.

It is easy to daydream and to allow your gaze to wander after walking for four hours straight in a beautiful desert. We were around 7 miles into a 10 mile survey and felt the rhythm of the walking thoroughly. I was walking through the Sonoran desert near Quartzsite today on my transect surveying for archaeology sites. On my first day out on this archaeology project I lost myself in daydream and ran square into a thigh-high choya cactus - a couple spines stuck into my leg real good.

40 year walk in desert full#

If I try walking through the desert without paying full attention to what is around me I WILL get hurt. I like walking in the desert precisely because the landscape forces me to focus on the landscape that lays right in front of me. I want to keep my boots stomping on solid earth as often as is reasonably possible.Īnd if you cannot see where your feet land, if you take a chance about what lays on the other side of a log, if you fall through a chuck of dead fall or into a rabbit burrow, you may find yourself in pain. I do not want to take a chance that there will not be a rattlesnake on the lee side of that downed log, I do not want to test whether or not that dead fall can support my weight, I do not want to take a chance that those owl and jackrabbit burrows will not collapse under me. I want to be able to see where my feet land. Only under no-other-choice circumstances, will I step on top of anything that lays in my path. If it would break my regular stride to try to step over something out in the desert, I look for an accessible route around it failing this, I carefully step over it. When walking through the desert of Arizona on archaeology survey, I try to keep my feet in sight and under my body as much as possible - I try to step around every chuck of dead fall, bush, or half stunted tree. The effects of an injury only grows in proportion to how far out in the wilderness you are. The idea is that injury can better be prevented if you stay squarely on your feet as often as you possibly can. It is better to step around this dead fall than to step over it, it is better to step over it than to step on it.