Gallery: Hiking to Hot Springs on the Verde River

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by Mark Stephens on Thu Jul 14, 2011 - (1) Comments

playing in the verde river arizona

The two little girls hiking in front of me are far from bumming. They're beaming. For the moment, I'm just here to silently supervise and swat the flies and watch for snakes. My own flesh-and-blood daughter has discovered a short piece of a cottonwood branch and declares that this new hiking stick makes her the leader. She's 3 years old, jamming down a footpath trail next to a desert river with a stick in her hand. She's unstoppable. Of course she's the leader. Even her 8-year-old cousin yields to the demands, looks at me and rolls her eyes.

Eventually, the trail dies and the blonde twosome turns to me. We're trapped between the river and a 15-foot cliff that I'd just climb if it were me and some buds. But it's not, so I tell the girls to wait here while I find the route.

"I wanna go in the river!"

"No. Wait."

"Why?"

"Because I said so."

"Why?"

If I never hear that question again it probably means I've wised up and stopped using "Because I said so" as a retort. But I'm a parent and therefore delusional with rarely anything better than "I said so" as a reason. I said so. Yeah you go, dad.

A short scramble up a loose slope brings me to the trail again. I wonder if the girls can handle it, decide the only way to find out is tell them to come and that I'll help, and so I go down. Surprisingly, neither one of them whines as they slide around and I hold their hands. Surprisingly, again, neither one of them asks if we're there yet.

So I offer it. "We're close to the hot springs now, girls. Almost there.  Let's keep going."

Another 20 minutes of solid hiking goes by, and their stoke is far behind us now.  I keep coming up with things to count - birds, lizards, clouds, anything - to keep them distracted and moving. Then we follow cairns through the trees, which juices their stoke meter a few notches, and we encounter the river again. This time it's clear that we must pull up our shorts a bit and wade across. So we do. My daughter insists that I carry her across, and double insists that I don't fall in.

Shortly after, we come to the remains of the hotel that was abandoned in 1962 and find a naked old man soaking the springs all by himself with a can of beer in his hand. He smiles, says hello, and slides his shorts on without drawing attention to it. Such it is at middle-of-nowhere hot springs.

The girls hop in a shallow part of the springs. Once again, they're far from bumming. They're beaming. And I take satisfaction in the idea that they'll be passed out in bed, hopefully, around 7:00 tonight.

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