left, it won’t matter much if I do or don’t eat the burrito, but it will put something in my stomach.
I pop the dried-out bite of burrito in my mouth and chew on it for twenty seconds, then take a sip of urine from my Nalgene to soften the mash. Ugh, it’s nasty. I grimace as I chew for another ten seconds, then swallow the disgusting mess, chasing it with another bitter swallow of urine. I should have dipped the bite in the urine and used what saliva I had left to swallow it; it might have saved me from that extra swallow of piss at the end. No matter, I won’t have to go through that again, because now I’m out of food. I’ve licked and relicked my candy-bar wrappers, scavenged for crumbs from my muffin bag, and polished off the burritos. That’s it. I’m on the urine diet now.
Returning to the video camera, I figure I’ll occupy myself a bit more and document that I just finished my food. Taking several long blinks, I film myself speaking very slowly, with long pauses between each sentence. I notice my voice is getting higher and wonder if that’s because of the dehydration tightening my vocal cords.
“Tuesday at four o’clock. It’s about sixty-five, sixty-six degrees out. Just running through the numbers again in my head. There’s very little hope for this kid. I just tried to eat my last bite of burrito and had to wash it down with a slurp of the top part of the bottle of urine, anyways. It seems to leave the denser part at the bottom, but it’s no Slurpee. I could use one of those. I didn’t want to sign off without saying ‘I love you’ to Grandma and Grandpa-both pairs, Anderson and Ralston. Grandpas, I’ll be seeing you soon here. Grandmas, I love you both, proud matriarchs. All my relatives in Ohio, I love you. I’m privileged to be a part of this family.”
I long to see my family again, but I know I’ve entered the protractedly dismal final countdown to my death. This is going to be a hard night.
Stirrings of a Rescue
SATURDAY AFTERNOON, Kristi and Megan left the confluence where they last saw me, hiked up the West Fork of Blue John Canyon, and sat down to have lunch. The two young women relaxed and chatted for about a half hour then packed up their trash and started on their journey up the wash. Sometime during the next hour, they became disoriented and weren’t able to interpret their map to navigate around the dead end below a fifteen-foot cliff rising up from the canyon floor. Backtracking, then returning upcanyon, pacing around below the cliff, they spent an hour trying to figure out the instructions that called for them to bypass the cliff on the right side of the canyon.
“If we go up the right side, it looks like we’ll have to go out the right-hand canyon. I don’t think that’s the way to go.” Kristi pointed at the two conjoined branches of the canyon upstream from their vantage. “And it’s sketchy- looking, trying to cross that ledge over to the left canyon.”
“Yeah. I’m not climbing up this overhang, either. But how else do we get up there?” The sandstone slab in front of Megan was discouragingly steep, even curling back over itself in a lip at the top. Flipping open the guidebook, Megan found the page marker for Blue John Canyon. “OK, here. The book says, ‘Walk along the right (east) side on a little trail, then route-find down two steep sections.’ Are we sure that side is east?”
“I don’t think either side is east. East is down the canyon, where we came from. We’re hiking up the West Fork, so we’re going west. I don’t get it; there is no east side. Can I see the map again?”
“Yeah, sure-here.” Megan handed the map over to Kristi, running her finger over the guidebook page again and again.
“Man, I wish Aron were here-he’d have this figured out in no time.” She sighed and started the route-finding process over again. “OK, so we put my bike up here, at the head of the West Fork. And we’re here…or somewhere around here. We haven’t left the main drainage. Yeah, we have to go left. Why does it say right?”
“Oh…my…God,” Megan blurted out. “Kristi, we are total idiots. It’s on the right on the way
“Oh, man-you’ve got to be kidding me. That’s ridiculous. How did we miss that?” Kristi felt crushed that they had duped themselves with such a rookie mistake (akin to holding the map upside down).
Megan quickly found a sandy ledge on their left that cut back and forth up the canyon wall like a wheelchair ramp. They followed it up and over the cliff, where they continued up the wash until the footprints petered out into sandy hillsides textured by miniature ravines and water drainages. Two hours later, well after five P.M., they arrived at the main dirt road where Kristi’s bike was locked to a pine tree. Kristi lost the rock-paper-scissors toss to see who would ride the bike back to get her truck at the Granary Spring Trailhead. On the ride, Kristi searched the plateau for my red mountain bike. Had she known where to look, she would have seen it still leaning against a juniper tree a hundred yards off the left side of the road when she was about halfway back to the trailhead. By the time she mounted her bike on the roof rack of her 4Runner at the Granary Spring Trailhead and drove back to pick Megan up, Kristi had decided that they’d taken so long in the canyon that I must have come around to meet them already, and they’d missed the rendezvous.
Pulling over to the side of the dirt access road in front of her friend, Kristi rolled down her window and joked, “Hey there, you need a lift?”
Resting in the seats, the women filled their water bottles and drank up, rehydrating after the tiring hike up the West Fork. Megan asked Kristi, “Should we go back to the Granary Spring Trailhead and wait for Aron?”
“I think he made it out before us, actually.”
Megan didn’t believe it. “No way, he had like ten miles left to hike. There’s no way he already got out and came to look for us.”
“But I looked for his bike, and I didn’t see it. There aren’t that many places to hide a bike out there. I think he’s gone. He probably went to Goblin Valley to get to the party.”
Megan figured Kristi had missed seeing my bike and that I would be around in another hour or two. “Should we go back just to see if he shows up?”
Kristi was concerned about her fuel situation, knowing it would be twenty-five miles to the nearest gas station. She hesitated. “If we drive around much more, we won’t make it to Hanksville. We’ve got maybe thirty miles left-we should really go and get gas and just meet him at Goblin Valley before it gets dark.”
Not feeling strongly about it one way or the other, Megan acquiesced, and the friends drove to Hanksville for gas and a hamburger and milk shake at a greasy spoon called Stan’s.
An hour later, around the same time that Brad and Leah were roving the desert back roads at Goblin Valley, Kristi and Megan turned off the highway into the state park, looking for the same party. A large sign indicated that the campground was full. Kristi stopped the vehicle to consider their next move.
“Should we go to the campground and try to find the party?” Megan asked.
“I don’t know.” Kristi laughed at herself, then explained, “It’s funny, this whole day has been so indecisive. ‘Should we wait or should we go get gas? Should we go this way or that?’ ”
“It’ll be fun, but I’m tired.”
“Me, too.” Then Kristi reconsidered. “But it’ll be fun.”
Megan said, “You know what’s going to happen? We go in there, and everybody’ll be drinking, and then we’ll drink. And then it will be dark, and the campground is full, and we’ll be drunk and have to go drive around the desert looking for a place to camp.”
Figuring they would find me over at the Little Wild Horse Canyon the next morning, Kristi and Megan turned around and drove down the highway on the way to Little Wild Horse until the pavement ended. They pulled off on a spur road, where they camped out that night. Sunday morning, they took their time getting ready and then drove the short commute, parking next to a Toyota Tacoma at the parking area for Little Wild Horse. Kristi noticed the vehicle first.
“Hey, do you remember what kind of truck Aron has?”
“Uh-uh. I don’t think he told us,” Megan said, still feeling tired from the previous day’s effort in Blue John.
