This weekend I traveled to Tuscon, Arizona, to visit some other volunteers in community who are starting their year off there as well. It was great to reconnect with them, and even though we'd only met in July for about a week, seeing some familiar and friendly faces was a nice boost at this point in the year. We left school on Friday afternoon following an intense pep rally (more on that later), and then traversed the Texan, New Mexican, and Arizonan deserts for about five hours. I was dazzled by cacti-- saguaros (!) the typical picturesque kinds, stark mountain landscapes and a surprising abundance of life. We passed through pecan groves and salt flats, and each little road-stop town had it's own kind of Wild West claim to fame.
When we finally arrived, we were able to visit the school there (and witnessed an adorably awkward HS dance), and later on, see some of the sights of Tucson. It's a similar city to El Paso, but more spread out and definitely hotter. The biggest adventure was the next day, when another volunteer and I decided to undertake a hike to 'Seven Falls', because some of her students had said it was cool and the pictures we found on Google looked really pretty.
Upon arriving at the park entrance, we were greeted with a sign that outlined the amount of time you should set aside for each of the separate trails: about an hour for the nature walk, 3 hours for a different one, 5-6 for a more challenging path, and then for the waterfall hike: 'all day'. In our minds, they couldn't really mean all day- that was just to warn off lazy walkers, or something.
How very wrong we were. In retrospect, starting on a 12 mile mountain trek during August in Arizona at 11 am was not the best idea. The heat was brutal, and we soon found ourselves downing our limited supplies of water, I was reapplying sunblock like mad, and within about an hour of starting out we began to ask everyone we met just how far it was until the waterfalls. It was far.
There were a couple casualties as we went along. I sat on a cactus at our very first water stop, in a kind of ridiculous cartoonish way that left me pulling out needles and awkwardly telling concerned passers-by that everything was okay. (It wasn't, really.) The sunburns were surprisingly minimal, but the blisters have yet to heal. To beat the heat we would hide in tiny shadows under a protruding rock wall, and spent about 15 minutes chatting with a photographer on the edge of a cliff as we caught our breath and hid from the sun. The very best cool-down was about halfway along when we sat in a little stream and natural pool, for really a long time, and it was perfectly magical.
After seemingly endless hours, we finally got to the waterfalls. They were 7 stacked on top of each other, a little less majestic than I'd pictured but still the most welcome sight I'd seen in a while. We had to scramble down a bunch of rocks to get to the bottom pool, and then swam around and finished our lunch. I then had the bright idea to climb up the waterfall to get to the higher levels, which was cool and dangerous and my friend slipped down and now is sporting some terribly impressive bruises. Our photographer friend seemed quite concerned from afar.
At the very eventual end of our hike, we collapsed on the stone bench at the visitors' center. We started about 10:30 am, and finished at 6 pm. It was brutal, I won't be doing a trek that intense again soon, but there was a definite feeling of accomplishment when we finished.
I have a lot of mountains coming towards me in this year ahead, and it's going to be long (and hot), but I know that if I find some little pools of water scattered around, I'll be able to make it through. Thanks for reading, and for writing (newest mail shout-out goes to Alexa!) and for all the support in every way. I couldn't make this climb without you.
When we finally arrived, we were able to visit the school there (and witnessed an adorably awkward HS dance), and later on, see some of the sights of Tucson. It's a similar city to El Paso, but more spread out and definitely hotter. The biggest adventure was the next day, when another volunteer and I decided to undertake a hike to 'Seven Falls', because some of her students had said it was cool and the pictures we found on Google looked really pretty.Upon arriving at the park entrance, we were greeted with a sign that outlined the amount of time you should set aside for each of the separate trails: about an hour for the nature walk, 3 hours for a different one, 5-6 for a more challenging path, and then for the waterfall hike: 'all day'. In our minds, they couldn't really mean all day- that was just to warn off lazy walkers, or something.
How very wrong we were. In retrospect, starting on a 12 mile mountain trek during August in Arizona at 11 am was not the best idea. The heat was brutal, and we soon found ourselves downing our limited supplies of water, I was reapplying sunblock like mad, and within about an hour of starting out we began to ask everyone we met just how far it was until the waterfalls. It was far.
After seemingly endless hours, we finally got to the waterfalls. They were 7 stacked on top of each other, a little less majestic than I'd pictured but still the most welcome sight I'd seen in a while. We had to scramble down a bunch of rocks to get to the bottom pool, and then swam around and finished our lunch. I then had the bright idea to climb up the waterfall to get to the higher levels, which was cool and dangerous and my friend slipped down and now is sporting some terribly impressive bruises. Our photographer friend seemed quite concerned from afar.At the very eventual end of our hike, we collapsed on the stone bench at the visitors' center. We started about 10:30 am, and finished at 6 pm. It was brutal, I won't be doing a trek that intense again soon, but there was a definite feeling of accomplishment when we finished.
I have a lot of mountains coming towards me in this year ahead, and it's going to be long (and hot), but I know that if I find some little pools of water scattered around, I'll be able to make it through. Thanks for reading, and for writing (newest mail shout-out goes to Alexa!) and for all the support in every way. I couldn't make this climb without you.
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