Week in the Gila was no walk in the park

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My journey to the Gila National Forest to volunteer for the U.S. Forest Service began on Sunday, when I missed the 5 p.m. Greyhound from Albuquerque and squeezed my way onto the next one, which left at 2:50 the following morning. By the time I reached Glenwood at around 10 a.m., I had been awake for more than 24 hours straight, and was slightly delusional. I swear I saw a tree at the side of the road that looked exactly like the Virgin Mary cradling Jesus.

MONDAY
A trail crew worker drove our truck, which was packed full of beef jerky, mummy sleeping bags and angry-toothed saws, down bumpy dirt roads through Reserve, NM. I was told the town has a population of about 500, according to the most recent census. A sign in the window of a local café listed the prizes for the town’s raffle: first place — ­elk hunting permit; second place — gun; third place — camouflage outfit. The front page of the local newspaper featured a 200-word sentence describing old-timers in Pie Town.

We filled our canteens at the only water spigot for 20 miles and drove uphill through giant ponderosa pines until we reached the rest of the crew. We were greeted by a thunderstorm, so the crew leader quickly taught me how to get into “lightning pose,” which requires squatting above the ground on tiptoe with a ducked head. We looked like five constipated monks reckoning with the heavens while simultaneously trying to take a dump at the pinnacle of a mountain.

TUESDAY
The goal of backpacking is to carry everything you need in as little weight as possible — easier said than done. One of the trail crew members knew exactly how many ounces his plastic-encased “Pasta Sides” and other food weighed. I took canned corn, pasta and a gourmet glass bottle of tomato sauce and was ridiculed the whole hike down the side of a canyon. We lost 2,000 feet of elevation over the course of three miles, and I’m pretty sure my backpack propelled me the whole way down — the extra weight was a smart move after all.

WEDNESDAY
There’s something to be said for sawing through a log that’s wider than your body with a saw longer than your arm span. The crosscut saw is a deadly tool from the late 19th century that the Forest Service still employs when not all crew members are certified to handle a chain saw. Ours was made in 1940. I pulled the saw back and forth through the log with all 115 pounds of my weight, as sawdust flew up my nose and my arm muscles felt like they would burn out of my sweatshirt.

When the behemoth log finally cracked and fell, I felt like I had just conquered Troy and punched a bunch of people in the face while doing it. Maybe I should drop out of school, grow a beard, drink chicory root, smoke a pipe full of harvested mint leaves and spend my life sawing through dead logs in a remote mountain valley next to a river filled with crayfish. What a life.

THURSDAY
We finished the trail work early, so after axing through the final tree we hiked a couple of miles to the San Francisco Box Canyon, where many of the animals have never before seen humans. There wasn’t a trail, so we plodded through the river in our leather hiking boots, shrieking at the freezing water. A family of raccoons sunbathed and groomed each other on a rock as we stood watching from 10 yards away. A blue heron flew into the distance as two of the trail crew members hunted for crawdads, which are an invasive species. They caught two, and we watched them jerk their claws as they were boiled alive. Their guts were bright yellow and dark green, and we examined one of the creatures’ heart or brain — we couldn’t tell which one it was.

FRIDAY
Tackling the massive hike uphill was more difficult mentally than physically, and one trail crew member said the trail was steeper than trails in the Grand Canyon (he once hiked rim to rim, no big deal). When I reached the top, my whole back was soaked with sweat and I took off everything except my underwear and stared at the valley below us. Roads cut through the forest like ant trails and the lakes looked like tear drops and I didn’t give a flying freak that my back felt like it was 100 years old and my face was red as a strawberry and I smelled like a dying cow.