I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect day at Mesa Verde. It was the middle of the work week, and the park was all but deserted as I set off alone on the Prater Loop trail. The summer day was mild, a slight breeze stirring air that felt unusually cool and wet for southwestern Colorado.
The best part of the scene was me: mid-twenties, in the best shape of my life, properly SPF’d, undaunted by the seven-plus mile hike ahead of me. I was, in short, exactly the sort of foolish, arrogant loner that goes missing in national parks in droves every year, only to turn up months or years later crammed into some crevasse, mingled with old bear droppings, or sprawled behind a rock ten yards from the trailhead.
After about a mile, the total absence of other humans became a source of indistinct worry. Had I missed something? A sign at the trailhead, news of an escaped murderer? I was so utterly and perfectly alone that the boundary between me and nature, already so thin, broke down completely. No sooner had I wondered what exactly I’d do if I came upon an apex predator than I realized the faint paw prints I was following in the sandy soil bore no claw marks. What I’d taken for another hiker’s dog was, more likely, a bobcat or a young puma.
At least it was ahead of me.
But as I continued to trail along in the wake of the cat’s prints, I saw them veer aside into the low, scrubby brush on the right side of the trail and disappear altogether. I was no tracker, but it didn’t take one to know prints that clear in such shifting, well-trod soil had to be recent; they were probably the most recent on this trail after my own boot prints.
For the next forty-five minutes or so, I kept one ear on the trail behind me, wondering if bobcats ever attacked people. I knew pumas would, so I decided whatever was back there was a bobcat. Though my mind and ears played tricks on me, convincing me the little carnivore was never more than a few yards behind, I soon became distracted by the next thing.
High on the eponymous mesa, I could have seen the storm coming before I even left the trailhead; but I hadn’t thought to look. Now it was upon me, crackling in the air and darkening the afternoon sky. As I passed blackened stumps of long-dead cedars, it occurred to me that I was among the tallest objects on the trail. I started walking faster.
I gained the midway point of the sweeping loop, where a straight furrow through the desert brush would lead me on a shortcut back to the trailhead. I sat down to re-lace my hiking boots, have a snack, and be shorter.
As I crumpled my protein bar wrapper up and stuffed it in a side pocket of my backpack, the storm moved away, drifting off over the valley. I decided shortcuts were for sissies and carried on, no longer caring if a bobcat or a puma were stalking me. The vise of fear had mutated into exhilaration, and still there wasn’t one single solitary soul on the trail with me.
I was three-quarters of the way around the loop when I ran out of water. But that’s not the third thing. Being a woman has its advantages, occasionally, and I was carrying more than enough water around in my small but functional adipose tissue deposits to get me back to the extra bottle in my car.
The problem was, I started to feel the call of nature in the most inconvenient way, the way that makes you sort of glad you have an empty Sun Chips bag and some Starbucks napkins in your backpack. Given my isolation, I figured the risk of being seen was low, and I finally stopped at an unlucky bush a stone’s throw from the trail.
As I ginned myself up to commit this horrible act, I heard a telltale rattling behind me. Glancing down at the exact spot over which my bare bottom would have hovered, I saw a young rattlesnake. We stared at one another for a heartbeat, and then I ran for it.
I made great time on the last quarter and did, in fact, make it to the trailhead “in time.”
Don’t hike alone. It’s stupid, and you might die.
– AK