The Strange, Long Tale of Mike and Tim
Part One: Into the Breach

Tim Gorman may never go camping again.

Last weekend, Tim and I spent two nights camping in the West Clear Creek Wilderness, part of the Coconino National Forest. It’s about 120 miles northeast of Phoenix -- Mogollon Rim country.

Tim works with me at a major newspaper in the arid American Southwest. I don’t want to say right out which publication because loyal reader and Jefferson County [N.Y.] Legislator Phil Reed recently informed me that his family computer cannot open my blog because it contains “highly inappropriate terms and objectionable content.” So I fear the newspaper would not care for any association with my modest and apparently vulgar Web postings.

At any rate, Tim went camping once many years ago, but has not logged much time in the wilds since then. I told him I planned on spending a couple of nights under the stars and he said he’d join me. Now my camping gear is, for the most part, 1,300 miles away at my home in Columbia, Mo. and Tim has no equipment. But I figured tramping across the backcountry of Arizona packing light would be fun, like something out of an Edward Abbey book.

I told Tim ours would be a Spartan Camping trip. No tent. No fancy backpacks. No hot food. No turning back. Just a sleeping bag, a bag full of peanuts and dried fruit and a 99-cent poncho.
Perhaps I romanticized this mode of camping. Perhaps I downplayed the potential discomfort. Or maybe Tim is just a little too trusting of a guy; a genuinely nice individual not used to interacting with the criminally insane.

He did say at one point during the trip, delirious from sleep deprivation, that he thought he’d have made a good priest and I see what he means. He’s one of these attentive, quiet trusting individuals who doesn’t have to try hard to behave like a good boy. But ultimately he’s no priest. He’s too thoughtful and has a zest for life not found in any man who purposefully avoids the vagina folds just because he thinks that’s what God wants.

Whoever’s to blame though, Tim ended up throwing his small amount of gear in the back of my SUV early Friday evening and we drove north up I-17 from Phoenix Arizona to the Camp Verde exit. We took Route 260 east to 87 north to forest route 3 to 81E. This road is NOT marked so you must map out the mileage or you will miss it.

Route 81 is a one-lane, out of the way dirt road so we whipped out the 24 ounce Mickey’s we bought at a gas station and rumbled along in near total darkness, sipping at our cheap beer and the closeness of our weekend wilderness adventure.

At the edges of the federal land, close to the road, car campers had set up a few separate bases of operation. We passed the Parson family reunion, the Sato reunion, the Wilson reunion and then the Parson reunion again. We were lost and feared we would have to ask the Parson Projects for directions.

Luckily, we came across a group of teenagers. A group not deterred by the social consequences of giving head to a person they met at a family reunion. They were driving around in what looked like a roll bar, two seats and four wheels wrapped around a large engine. They set us on the right path toward the Maxwell Trail head, our intended destination. The guy in the Carhart jacket helped us out despite the fact that I referred to him several times as Caligula and threatened his cousin with the pepper spray I brought to fight off bears.

A treacherous drive across oil-pan scraping rocks and ruts large enough to swallow an army convoy, oh and through a herd of grazing beef cattle, spat us out at what the next morning’s light would reveal as pretty close to the trail head.

“I’ve smelled the smell before, but I’ve never been in this total absence of sound before,” Tim said, while I marveled at a couple of shooting stars.

Another beer, a swig of bourbon a little more talk under the heavens and we rolled up in our sleeping bags for a sleep interrupted only by the brief and pleasant little pitter patter of a few drops of rain against our bags.


So Big it's The Man.



Pretty.



West Clear Creek



Pell, a watery tart.






























































































Tim Gorman the wilderness is funny.