Impromptu Arizona '16: Primitive Fire & Treasure Hunting

    “What are you doing in a week or two?” George and I had been trying to get together for a few years, but our schedules just weren't linking up. So, when I read that message I figured the same would hold true. Anytime George was free I was broke or out of the country, and any time I had money, he was busy or I was out of the country. He was a rural EMT for a bit, but had since moved up to management, which is what caused this exchange of messages to end differently than the others. He now had money AND time off. I told him since I had left Japan a few weeks prior and was broke, I wasn't doing anything but training and looking for money. His next messages boiled down to:

“I'm taking time off in two weeks”

“I'm buying you a plane ticket out here to Arizona.”

“Just bought it. Here it is.”

    So, George had decided to fly me out to Arizona for 8 days of shenanigans. I told him I was broke. “Just get here, I'll take care of the rest.” What a guy! With lost Spanish gold looted from the south, stashed railroad heists, and undiscovered gold veins, Arizona is said to have the largest concentration of lost treasures in all the United States; since George and I are both known for traipsing around the wilderness I wasn't wanting this opportunity to go to waste, but George didn't seem keen at first. Even so, anytime with my friends is a good time. We planned to climb Arizona's highest mountain, Mount Humphrey's, and since he had mastered the primitive fire bow drill skill he promised to teach me. Good things were sure to ensue.

    Right from the get-go it was typical Nash life. In the airport bathroom there was a guy who was puking his guts out, which mildly bothered me as Zika virus had been experiencing a surge of popularity, and in my mind every new virus is one step away from a zombie outbreak. I was alert. The boarding time for the plane came and went. First by 30 minutes, at which point the attendants made an announcement that the plane was experiencing “maintenance problems” and they, quote, “Didn't know what they were going to do.” Not reassuring! An hour after we were supposed to leave we all boarded, so they must have sorted out whatever the problem was. I hoped. The attendants announced that because we were leaving over an hour late we would “make the time up in the air” and only be 30 minutes late for arrival. Why don't they go that speed/take that route all the time then!? Sure enough, we landed 30 minutes passed our schedule landing time. I disembarked and made for the airport exit. After a few minutes of wandering around it occurred to me that in our haste to get together George and I had made no actual plan to meet for my pickup. I had no idea were I should go, and no way to contact him... or his contact info if I did find a way. We probably should have planned more than an impromptu flight across the country, but I wasn't worried in the least. 5 minutes of me standing around outside the Phoenix airport was all it took for me to be reunited with my buddy.

    We caught up on the couple hour ride back to Globe, and it was like we hadn't been apart. I love that feeling. Our first order of business after getting back was a grocery run to pickup party supplies. That night George and his girlfriend were hosting a party! We exited the car at the grocery and a couple of punk teens told us we made a cute couple. It was then we realized we were dressed strikingly similar. Rather than beat them up I cracked a joke, though George seemed happy to do either. We got our supplies and the party was a fun, intimate to do, with a total of 9 people. I got to meet George's Arizona friends and we all played a game, which I won, but eventually the evening just devolved into “Story Time With Nash”, not that I had a problem with that.
   
    The next day was Sunday, and on Sunday George always gathers with the locales for a few hours of rigorous basketball. Of course I wasn't going to pass up the opportunity for training, and of course I wasn't going to play basketball. I went with the group to the gymnasium they play at, and went to the training room. I shut myself in there and trained the entirety of their basketball session, which turned out to be 3 hours. I was smoked. After George's signature burritos we spent the rest of the day planning our next day's activity: Climbing to the top of Brown's peak, the highest peak in Maricopa county.

    We were up by 6 and gone by 7, stopping at the grocery to pickup our summiting-celebration-ritual item: a coconut. We were to carry the coconut up to the summit where I would chop it in half and we would drink it's juices toasting to victory! These things are important. A couple hours drive through lumpy desert and mountain paths later we were ready to begin our ascent. Along the way we found the remnants of a couple campsites, depressingly full of garbage and unburied people poop. There's nothing like the beauty of the outdoors! We climbed our way to the summit of brown's peak in 2 hours. Once up at the top we pulled out our victory coconut, and got ready to celebrate. I placed it on a rock and prepared my strike. I hit it with a chop causing a crack to from along the meridian of the nut with a wisp of smoke rising from the opening. Smoke? Hmmm.... I reasoned this must be some kind of cold-steam, with the inside of the coconut being vastly colder than the stifling desert heat of our environment. I struck the brown orb again to cleave it fully in two. BAM! Black smoke exploded out. The inside of the coconut was as black as coal... it wasn't smoke or steam flying out, but mold! The coconut was like none I'd ever seen, the outside seemed fine, and it was still full of putrid water, but everything else looked like death. Who would have guessed you couldn't get quality coconuts in rural Arizona? The incident was par for the course when hanging out with me. We tossed the coconut off the top of the mountain and ate the sandwiches we had as rations. We made it down the mountain in one and a half hours, and I tagged the back of the welcome sign with a sticker on my way out. Driving back to globe on solitary desert roads I made a comment about our speed. “I don't even think cops out here GIVE speeding tickets. I've been speeding here for years and I've never got one.” Practically as he was finishing his sentence a cop appeared on the road going the opposite direction, passing us without indecent. “See? Can cops even use their radar while driving?” Yes. As I answered his question the cop made a U-turn and began following us at a distance. “No lights. He must have just needed to change direction.” No way. A minute later the lights were on and we were pulled over. The officer grilled him about everything from his address on his license to the tint of his windows, ending the ordeal with the issuance of a speeding tickets. “I can't believe it.” I have that effect on situations. We drove away, deciding that we would go to George's favorite Chinese place to lift his spirits. I was excited to try it. That day turned out to be the only day of the week it was closed. Of course. We made do with what food we could, then spent the evening planning our next days trips to Flagstaff, which was to serve as our base for camping, climbing Mt. Humphrey's, spelunking into a three-quarters mile long lava tube cave, and general good times.

    Packing all our gear the night before, we were good to get up and go to Flagstaff. We set out, and less than 2 hours in, one of the tires blew out. Nothing like breaking down in the middle of the desert. We used the jack George had in his car to jack his car up and take off the tire. Unfortunately, even with careful attention to alignment, the shift in weight from removing the tire caused the jack to slip and the car to fall, landing on the tire which in turn damaged the body of his car quit a bit. Now we couldn't have put a new full sized tire on even if we'd had one. We did have a donut-tire though, which we put on. The donut was flat! We managed to flop our way to a station and got enough air in the tire to get to the next town, Payson, where we could get the car worked on. George had a coworker in Payson and asked who he should see about the car. The guy made some calls and told us to go to a particular garage and see his friend. The guy was going to hook us up but didn't have the tire we needed and the place was booked all day. The guy skipped us to the front of the line, removed the damaged part of the frame that prevented a full-size tire from going on, then made some calls and told us where to get the tire we needed, all for free! We went to the garage the mechanic sent us to, which was also packed, and again we were bumped to nearly the front of the schedule. Thanks to a friend of a friend of a friend we got a new tire for only 40$! Great misfortune, great luck, break even! I hear that's called “The devil’s luck”, but I'm just used to calling it Nash luck! At last we could finally continue on to Flagstaff, which we did without further incident.

    Flagstaff, unlike the rest of Arizona, has a climate more reminiscent of southern Canada than southwestern deserts. Rolling mountains and pine forests make for a nice change, which I loved. We made our way to the campground we were staying in, pitched our tent, then immediately headed out to the lava cave to due some spelunking. On the way we drove passed a large patch of seemingly wild bulls in the middle of the forest, driving several miles to finally reach a hole in the ground. The lava cave! An extremely quit, dark, ¾ mile long tunnel into the earth. Creeping into the earth in an alien looking tunnel was fun and all, but my top-of-the-line headlamp which I had spent many breaths bragging about didn't work when we got there... dead batteries, despite me testing it before we left and turning down new batteries! Luckily someone was kind enough leave an old crappy headlamp at the entrance. Don't mind if I do. It wasn't good, but it was better than nothing. I figured not many people could be bothered to get to the very end of the tube, and the extreme darkness meant people would be prone to dropping/losing/hiding things inside; treasure hunting! That was the plan anyway, but all we found was a startling amount of human feces. Who's marching a mile into the black earth to have a poop!? Well, judging by the volume, I should say “What ARMY is marching...”. George and I made it to the end, then hiked out. I tagged the sign at the entrance with a sticker and returned the headlamp for the next poor fool without one.

    To celebrate our thorough exploration of the cave, George decided to take me to his favorite restaurant in Flagstaff, an Indian Place. That day was the only day it was closed... We had also kept an eye on the weather for Mt. Humphrey's and it looked like a days-long lightning storm was going to stop us from climbing. George said “You know, I didn't believe all that mumbo-jumbo about misfortune following you around, but it has been NON-STOP since you got here.” Welcome back to hanging out with me. You can't say I didn't warn you, plus you literally brought this on yourself by shipping me here. Best to just ride the lightning! Ride we did. We went out to downtown flagstaff around 10pm and had a victory pub crawl. The area had a new Orleans vibe to it, with people playing Jazz in the street and drinking in outdoor gardens. We focused on drinking exotic fruity drinks, including one made from rose petals that tasted like drinking expensive shampoo. That bar even had an adventurer's log that we signed. We watched some people brawl, some people do karaoke, and played some ping pong. We even had a creepy guy in a bar give us a detailed break down of the weekly migration cycles of the local females for casual sex, after the guy heard me say we were looking for action. I meant a place with a hustle and bustle atmosphere, but sure, do tell. We drank and talked of adventures past and future until the wee hours of the morning. At 3 we were back in our tent engaged in drunken camp talk, and after a couple hours sleep we were up and ready to roll.

    That morning George got a text that his girlfriend's grandmother had died. On top of that, we were definitely weathered out of climbing Mt. Humphrey's for the remainder of my stay. It was kind of a bummer morning, so we went to the park and played Frisbee for a couple hours, our go-to park activity. After mastering various throws with both hands we decided to head out and get a good breakfast. George did a search on his phone for the number one breakfast place in Flagstaff, and after driving around for over an hour, we found it... but it was indefinitely closed, because of course it was. We got some regular diner food and decided there was nothing left for us in Flagstaff. So began the long drive back to Globe. Along the way we stopped to jump a barbed-wire fence surrounding a field that was housing an ideal looking Juniper tree, which we decided to harvest a bit of in order to add to our supply of materials for practicing primitive fire. Somehow we made it out without much incident. That night in Globe we were all so tired we went to bed around 9pm.

    The next day, after taking full advantage of George's pancake making spree, we set off to the northern ridge to gather the rest of the materials for me to make a fire set out of. While traipsing around I spotted a cave halfway up a cliff face on the opposite side of the canyon we were on. “woah. Do you think there's treasure in there?” asked George, surprisingly into the idea. I think there COULD be treasure in there. “Do you want to try and get there?” … Yes, I do. And just like that, George's formally dormant treasure hunting passion had been ignited. We spent the rest of the day figuring out how to get to the cave and explore it with no gear, since we weren't planning on doing anything that day but gathering supplies. I didn't even have proper shoes! Good thing we're good at improvising. We finally made it to the cave, and it was not full of treasure, unless you count animal poop as treasure, in which case we hit the jack pot. Typical. Why are all the caves I enter full of poop!? What was most important though was that George was now Gung-ho to go on a full-on treasure hunting expedition. I immediately began brainstorming. A week should be long enough, theoretically and if properly researched and planned. Looks like I know how our next adventure together would start. I first needed to gather some venture capital, as this entire thing had been on George's wallet.

    We showered up after our impromptu unprepared treasure hunt and got some sleep since we had to be up at 5 the next morning to make the drive to Phoenix to drop off George's girlfriend at the airport for her grandmothers funeral. George then spent the rest of the day instructing me on how to make and use a primitive fire set, and I spent the rest of the day making and practicing on said set. George and I then used our primitive fire skills to start a bonfire which we used to hang out and drink around as a debrief for my final night there.

    The next morning I got up and finished reading the survival book George loaned me, we went to “The Pickle Barrel”, a museum-like store, and then George drove me the couple hours back to the airport. I thanked him heartily, we said our “see ya later”s and I was off to the plane.

    For once in my life I was finally the first person to board the plane! Not that it mattered, but it was a nice feeling. The feeling didn't last though, as we were delayed leaving, even after boarding, for about an hour. All because one of the first class bottles of wine broke and they were waiting for a new bottle of wine. They weren't even out of wine, just that specific kind! Rich people problems trickle down apparently. On the subject of rich people, I was sat next to a successful jet-setting owner of his own company. I was deep into writing when he said “what are you writing?”. It was one of my travel writings. “What do you do?” Always a difficult question for me to answer. I said 'Adventurer' and made an attempt to be more specific. He then spent the next several hours trying to convince me that nothing that doesn't make money is worth doing. Art? “Dumb and useless unless you get a lot of money from it.” Education? “Why?” yeah... why indeed. The guy was nice enough; he even bought me a couple drinks so we could kill time talking over them (even though priorly I was being productive), but his outlook on life was anathema to mine. Sure, he owned and could fly his own plane, but he didn't really seem content in his existence. We talked of philosophies, and I tried to get him to see my point of view to no avail. Despite his attempts to get me to reevaluate my views and declare the only definition of success as the acquisition of material wealth and liquid assets, using his self as an example, his life had the opposite effect on me. By his definition, I was now more determined than ever not to end up “successful”.

    I was already planning my next artsy-educational-adventure, that would likely do nothing for me but make me smarter, more experienced, and skillful, while leaving me broke. But who knows though, maybe I would be unlucky enough to find something “actually” valuable as well?
             -Nash