Page 74 - Ninety Miles From Nowhere

We picked up Doc’s supplies for the lodge, and several other passengers and their gear. Then we started on the road to two weeks of wilderness experience.
Passing through Pinos Altos and on up to Sapillo Creek, the road was very good, but after we left the state highway and started up the mountain, our speed was cut down considerably. The rough road and our overload delayed us somewhat, so that we spent about six hours making the trip to Doc’s. On the way, at the highest point on the road, Doc stopped the pickup and used a portable telephone on the telephone lines, somehow, to call his wife to let her know where we were and when she could expect us.
At Doc’s we grabbed a quick bite to eat before Doc took us on up the river to our camping spot, about a mile and a half above their place.
We started setting up our camp before dark. We unpacked our provisions and put them away, using our cardboard boxes for storage. I cleaned out the spring, filled with leaves and moss, and widened and deepened it enough to dip a sauce pan in. We stored our perishable foods, such as oleo, canned milk, an opened package of bacon, etc. in buckets with lids, submerged under the icy water and held down by rocks. Fred was really right about the temperature of the water. Several times while I was clearing the spring, I had to stop to warm my hands. I hollowed out a place in the wall following the creek bed where it was always shady and cool, to hold our eggs, unopened bacon and oleo.
We made up our bedrolls, but darkness caught us before we had a proper bed prepared. The first night we slept on the sand, apparently so soft, but proving to be as hard as a rock. During the night we turned and tossed and mumbled and groaned. Several times we got up to shovel out hollow places for our hips to recline in, otherwise we shouldn’t have had much sleep.
Our camp on the Gila.
The next morning the first thing on the agenda, after breakfast, was to make comfortable beds. We placed four small pine logs to form a rectangle, and filled the inside space with green pine needles for our mattress. We put the bed rolls on top of this and had a good springy bed. There were no sleeping bags or air mattresses then, and this served as a good substitute. The needles had to be changed occasionally as they became packed down or dried out and lost their spring.
During the days we took walks, looked for wild flowers, went for swims, read, slept, worked on improving our camp, gathered wood, and gathered edible wild plants. Among the last we found lambsquarter and watercress and horse mint for our tea.
In improving our campsite, we made a rock- encircled fire pit, cleaned up the area of all