Mrs. Gulch (Early 1973): Since we’re taking the summer off for a honeymoon let’s go backpacking.
Me: No thanks, I backpacked during my time in the Boy Scouts before being asked to find another outlet for my Junior High attitude.
Mrs. Gulch: What didn’t you like about backpacking.
Me: At the top of the list — I don’t like cooking over a campfire.
Mrs. Gulch: We can get a backpacking stove.
Me: A what?
Mrs. Gulch: A backpacking stove, they use white gas that you carry in a Sigg bottle. Let’s go to the backpacking store, things have changed since you were a Boy Scout.
That was my introduction to Mrs. Gulch’s knowledge of backpacking. Of course she was way more experienced than I was but didn’t gloat. She wanted to be on the trail and she wanted to take me along. That opened up a world for me and I became obsessed with backpacking — mountains and desert — it didn’t matter, and much of my time during winter, from then on, was spent looking over USGS topo maps, trying to find a cool route to follow. Subsequent years you could find us on the trail in Colorado, Utah, Montana, Washington, and New Mexico most often with my good friend Joe. We took many folks on their first backcountry trek over the years and alternated mountains then desert, year after year.
There is a standout trek for me. Four of us started in Harris Wash, a trib of the Escalante River and walked to Coyote Gulch, another trib of the river. Mrs. Gulch and another friend met us there with a food drop so that she and I could go back upriver to our VW bus parked at the Harris Wash trailhead.
During the hike to Coyote Gulch we met up with hoards of biting flies until below 20 Mile Wash. It was miserable at times but we learned to get in the shade, kill a few, slather up with DEET, cool off and hydrate.
When Mrs. Gulch and I left the group in Coyote Gulch my friend Don asked, “You’re going back through the flies?”
When she and I hit the fly space upstream we ended up hiking from early morning until nighttime to get done as quickly as possible. The last day I was pretty agitated and tired from the trek and I missed the exit to Harris Wash. I was worried and anxious also and a little (maybe a lot) of panic set in. I’ve mentioned before how much I depended on Mrs. Gulch’s wise counsel during our 50 years of marriage and that day it showed up again.
Mrs. Gulch (calmly): Let’s get in the shade, kill a few flies. You can get your compass and the topo sheet out of your pack and figure out where we are.
Me: These flies! We missed Harris Wash? We need to get back to the bus and back to Denver! Blah, blah, blah!
Mrs. Gulch (repeating herself calmly): Look there’s a shady alcove over there, let’s go there, kill a few flies, and you can get your compass and the topo sheet out of your pack and figure out where we are.
After orienting the map and taking a good look at the terrain I saw a side canyon (Silver Falls Creek) coming into the Escalante River canyon just upstream and found it on the map. As it turns out we just needed to go back downstream a bit (just around the bend) and we would be at the confluence with Harris Wash. We didn’t miss it by much.
Wise counsel indeed.
Happy 71st birth anniversary Mrs. Gulch and thank you for your humor and wise counsel over the years.