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Big Rock in the Gila — through the seasons, through the years
Last updated on Sunday, January 05, 2003
I think Big Rock is on Gilita Creek, though I’ve never really looked at a map, maybe five miles or so downstream from the Gilita campgrounds. The trail always appears to be well beaten, but we’ve never seen anyone else on it. Seasoned hikers would probably consider it an easy stroll, but for city folks unaccustomed to carrying 20 or 30 pounds on our backs, it’s challenging. You wind your way along the stream, frequently wading to follow the trail markers carved into trees along the path. The scenery is beautiful, the mountain air cool and fragrant, and the only sounds are the birds and the rattlings and squeakings of our backpacks. Finally, you wade the stream for about the hundredth time, climb up the bank and find yourself in a clearing circled by great old trees. Then you see the Big Rock, standing almost like one of those giant stone faces on Easter Island.
The author's son, on a 1998 trip to Big Rock. Photo by Gary Smith We’re not the kind of purist backpackers who camp only to rest up for the next day’s hike. We prefer to pack in a few days’ worth of supplies, find a nice spot, and stay there. We usually spend 3 or 4 nights at the rock, since that’s about all the food we can comfortably carry . Days we spend wandering up and down the stream, fishing for our supper, exploring . . . or reading paperbacks beneath the circle of trees, smelling the warm pine smell, listening to the chuckle of the stream. Nights we sit and watch the fire cast dancing shadows on the trees around the rock. My son was 6 years old the first time he watched those shadows, probably a little afraid of what might be watching him back from outside the circle of light. On our last trip he was almost 30, standing nearly a foot taller than his old man, now able to carry more than his share of the load.
The big rock makes a natural chimney, evidenced by its blackened face, charred from the smoke of a thousand campfires. We’ve cooked many a skillet of freshly caught trout there, though some years we’ve had to rely more on noodles, jerky or other portable meals when the fish either weren’t there or didn’t cooperate.
A lot has happened in the world over the years we’ve been going to the rock. Wars have been fought and forgotten; politics have waxed and waned; new technologies have been invented, some already obsolete.
In our own families there have been births, deaths, marriages, divorces . . . beginnings and endings.
At home in the city we’ve grown numb to constant change and relentless progress. We’re accustomed to seeing familiar places disappear under yet another shopping mall or freeway.
But back at Big Rock, a year, or two, or five, passes with barely a change visible. Oh, surely the trees have grown a little, the rock is a little blacker, the stream a little higher or lower. But, reassuringly, there’s always that moment when you’ve made the long trip once again, when you wade the stream that one last time, step into the clearing and see the Big Rock . . . yes, it’s still here; everything looks the same.
I worried last year that maybe we were getting too old to make the trip, that our 50-something year-old legs might protest at taking us so far away from the comforts of home. But, we made it fine, the only casualty being a foot I twisted jumping backwards when a mountain rattler buzzed his warning beside the trail. It only occasionally still hurts a little.
I need a place like Big Rock, a place I can go and be reminded that the real world goes on whether we are here or not, and that the most transient things in our lives are those things man has made. In troubled times I‘ve found great comfort in imagining the Big Rock in its clearing: silent, just there, through the seasons, through the years. Even when my body won’t take me, my spirit will always carry me back to Big Rock.
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