But then the bottom fell out. One of the volunteers who had graduated from one of our early training sessions had been kidnapped from his post on an island in the Visayan Region of the country. The volunteer had been abducted by one of the primary rebel groups in the Philippines -- at that time known as the “New People’s Army.”

The Country Director for Peace Corps asked me and my fellow tech trainers if we could help mobilize for the pull-out of the Peace Corps from the Philippines and I was assigned to shag after hard-to-reach volunteers to help expedite their departures. The evacuation was chaotic, exhausting and depressing and, when we had finally ushered out the last of the volunteers, we had to leave the country as well.

I headed to my dad’s place near Tucson with plans of loafing on his couch and draining his refrigerator of beer. At least for a few weeks. But I wound up getting a field biologist job in Tucson helping a consulting company survey for tortoises in lands slated for development as part of Tucson’s latest sprawl into relatively open and wild desert. During this time, I also reconnected with a friend from high school (her name was Jorie), who had moved out to Arizona after leaving the Michigan town where she and I had grown up many years in the past.

Over the course of a few months, Jorie introduced me to many of her friends and colleagues in the University of Arizona’s (U.of A.)graduate level Sociology Program. One of her associates, a guy by the name of Kelly, shared my interest in herpetology so he and I started spending time driving the back roads of Pima County looking for snakes and lizards as they luxuriated in the heat coming off the nighttime blacktop.

Time passed and we took a few camping trips in the mountains surrounding Tucson. On one of those trips, I met another of the grad students by the name of Dan. To make a long story less long, over the many years since I first started spending time with those U.of A. Sociology students, the only two I have kept in touch with are Kelly and Dan. Together, we have taken several camping, canoeing and biking trips -- not just in Arizona but also have gone on adventures in Colorado, New Mexico and, most frequently, Utah.

Over the years, and to varying degrees, the three of us have confronted several life challenges and have undergone many changes -- including such things as jobs, towns, marriages, divorces, births, deaths, health issues and, basically, all of the standard milestones folks experience within a 30-year time span. There have also been a few less commonly encountered milestones that some of us have faced and that most people thankfully don’t have to go through. Nonetheless, a few things have remained consistent: Kelly and Dan have forged ahead as professional sociologists and I have continued my career as a professional biologist. The other thing that has remained constant: we have remained solid in our love of Nature and in our enduring friendship.

But, as often happens with the passage of time and the associated increase in existential complexities, our time together in Nature has become less frequent. That said, I am happy to report that recently, in mid-May, we were able to re-unite once again and this time for four days and four nights of camping not far from Pleasant Valley, Arizona -- in a sweet and solitary spot on the Tonto National Forest.

From our earliest stages of planning, we knew that we might have difficulties getting to where I had suggested we camp for our reunion -- on an overlook into Tonto Creek’s rugged canyonlands. Dan was coming down from Denver, Colorado and had wanted to meet up with his eldest daughter, Maggie, and her friend Karen. Both of them would be starting grad school in Wisconsin this fall and they wanted to explore some of Arizona’s wildlands prior to their departures east.

As things turned out, we set the town of Young as our rendezvous site. Kelly and Dan arrived in one vehicle: a recent model, medium clearance, all-wheel drive Subaru; Maggie and Karen in another vehicle: a recent model, medium clearance, front-wheel drive Kia and me in my 16-year-old, high clearance, 4WD Toyota light pick-up.

Because of the recent rains, the Pleasant Valley area was rippling with tall, green grasses - a bucolic paradise and stunning vision of loveliness. We all met according to plan and were in unanimous agreement that we should proceed, post-haste, out of town and on to even greener pastures; speaking in poetic terms, since the land could not get any greener and it was simply the allure of solitude that drew us like a magnet into the hinterlands.

By the time the roads turned from cratered blacktop to gravelly dirt, a gentle rain had begun to fall. Every time the road dipped into a swale, the road’s surface of rocks and gravel was replaced by slippery clay soils. In much less time than I had anticipated, it became apparent that we would have to park the Subaru and Kia and any driving we would do over the next several days would entail all five of us piling into my extended cab, two-door Tacoma.

As such, once we had passed the last private ranch in-holding, I started looking for a place to pull off. We found a spot in the nick of time as the rain had started coming down hard and the trailing two vehicles were fishtailing and spitting a gumbo-like mud high in their wake.

For some, rain on a camping trip is the kiss of death but for folks used to camping in arid lands, rain is more akin to the breath of life itself. In near unison, the five of us emerged from our three vehicles smiling and quickly dug out and donned our rain gear. Then, we gathered in a random, conversational formation and each slowly turned in individual circles so as to best take in the sights, smells and sounds coming from the rolling hills of Pinyon-Juniper habitat mixed with chaparral -- all of which was heavily festooned with blooming cacti, yucca, agaves and countless species of flowering grasses, forbs and scrubby vegetation. Here and there were pockets of gnarled oak and other low-growth trees.

Not searching for the perfect camp -- we had found the perfect camp.

When a break in the rain came, folks moved to unpack and set up their tents. All save for me, having decided that I would take a chance that the sky would clear come evening and, if not, then I would either sleep in my cab or under my tailgate; such is my loathing of tents.

Once camp was made, Kelly whipped up a tasty dinner of breaded chicken tenders mixed into a big green salad. The meal not only satisfied, it also somehow seemed to mesh just right with the landscape. We were able to get a fire started using dead wood that had remained relatively dry under the P-J trees and to that I added oak logs I split on the spot with firewood I had brought from home.

As a waxing quarter moon revealed a cloud cover that showed no signs of dissipating, a dozen conversations ebbed and flowed while we basked in the warmth of the campfire. Some of us satisfied our sugar cravings by roasting marsh mellows and making S’mores. Before long, the accumulated fatigue of a long busy day made the lure of my cot irresistible and I said goodnight to all. It was good to fall asleep to the sounds of low conversation in the distance and I didn’t even mind when several hours later a light rain forced me to pull my bedroll under my tailgate so that I could finish up the night in a more or less dry sleeping bag.

Having attempted to set the scene, I will now bring to a close Part One of my story. The remaining three days of our trip will be addressed in a concluding Part Two. Suffice to say, when you are surrounded by Nature, as long as nothing too terrible happens, the days have a way of merging together. They do this seamlessly and beautifully. One of my favorite aspects to camping in wildlands is that not a single “momentous” thing ever need happen for a trip to take on an indescribable wondrous significance. The clouds build; they fade. The grasses grow; they are nibbled on by the deer. Time passes but only the seasons show the change. And can you really even call that a change, since it is, more precisely, a re-playing, over and over of the same eternal cycle?

GROUP PICTURE (Rob Bettaso): Dan (shorter of the two men) and Kelly (the taller and wearing shorts); the two women are Dan's daughter, Maggie (in the baseball cap) and Karen (in the hood). The site is dispersed camping on the Tonto N.F. not too far from the town of Young.