To continue the story of my week volunteering with No More Deaths, I’ll just share a transcription from the journal I kept while camping in Arizona.
Monday, 3/25/19, 9:25pm
Today was our second day at camp in Arivaca; tonight is our second of five nights in tents.
I feel… disgusting.
I feel great about how things have gone: sleeping warm through the first night in my bag and waking only to coyote cries in the middle of the night and a rooster crow at sunrise. Emerging in the chill for a breakfast of gritty black coffee, sweet potato hash, scrambled eggs, and beans on tortillas. Performing vehicle checks on the two pickups, i.e. checking engine fluids and tire pressure, making sure each bed had a jack, socket wrench, toolkit, and medical kit. Hitting the long, bumpy, rock-and-puddle dirt roads out to a canyon. Hiking for five and a half hours with five others, down the stream and back up again, hopping across the current and scrambling up and down bouldered banks, watching for loose stones and sharp brambles. We left water jugs, cans of pinto beans, a bucket with “trail snacks” (cookies, toaster pastries, crackers), and a black trash bag filled with Red Cross blankets. The sun set as we drove back to camp, and the night was black and insanely starry when we gathered around the picnic table for more beans, tortillas, salsa, and panfried veggies at 8pm.
I feel disgusting because my outermost layer is no longer epidermis but a diverse coating of sweat, grease, grime, sunscreen, hand sanitizer, and desert dust.
The natural setting, the people, and the food are all excellent. The work is meaningful and hiking is genuinely fun. I’m even tired enough to sleep soundly just an inch or two of padding up off the ground. But—the bodily filth. What I wouldn’t give for a shower right now and the chance to suds up my gluey, itchy scalp. I’ve yet to confront the shitter but with all these bean-based meals it’s only a matter of time, and there’s plenty of that left—Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, through Friday morning.
Well. This adventure’s not yet half over. I’ll just have to embrace this bodily state and carry on with the week’s water drops wherever the team goes.
The coyotes are calling again—rapid yips and long thin howls back and forth to each other on either side of our camp.
Good night coyotes—Milky Way—sweaty self.
