The moon was down now but somewhere below the opposite horizon, the sun’s light curled over into our world -- a grassy, rolling plain in Gila County. We were not far from where the Pleasant Valley Wars had erupted which included generations of two families -- the Grahams and the Tewkburys.

But my mind was far from thoughts of wars or any sort of conflict: the growing morning light and the dawn-song of the birds had led me to a place of profound peace and contentment. I was ready, however, to unkink myself from the tight quarters of my tailgate refuge.

I dragged my cot and sleeping bag out from under the tailgate so that they would be out of my way as I unpacked my single-burner stove and a small pot and set them up on the tailgate so as to boil water for a cup of coffee. My friend Kelly had brought a larger, percolator style pot along and would be up soon to make coffee for the other members of our camp: Dan, his daughter Maggie and her friend Karen.

But I wasn’t about to wait for anyone else to arise and tend to coffee. Once I’m vertical, hot coffee can’t come quickly enough. So, I had my first cup solo but, by the time my second cup was ready to be poured through the grounds, Kelly was up and had started making a big pot over on a camp table he had brought for food prep and cooking.

Generously, as is his nature, Kelly had planned, bought and would prepare all the meals for the five of us for the entire camping trip. He’s a veritable prince of a guy. He also has a more refined palate than I do since I’m the type of person who basically “eats to live….” and would be about as content with a sack of oats as I would a quiche Lorraine smothered in butter-sautéed truffles.

The other members of our party emerged from their tents just about the time Kelly had retrieved cream from his cooler to go with the now ready pot of coffee. In the meantime, I had used an old newspaper from my truck to re-ignite our campfire and had thrown on a few smaller logs. For the first hour of morning, we could huddle around the fire-ring where the yellow flames took the chill from the dewy, May morning air.

After breakfast and our easy, meandering conversations around the fire, we put our minds to weighing options for our day. Since Karen and Maggie would be leaving after two nights, I suggested that today we drive down what I knew would be a bear-of-a-road to a trailhead that led down into Tonto Creek, near its confluence with Haigler Creek. I had once hiked that trail many years ago (circa 1992) as part of my role in “The Gila Taxonomy Project” (a massive collection of specimens of the genus Gila, an assemblage that included several species of “chubs” -- a group of fishes in the minnow family that were in need of DNA analysis to elucidate their genetic relationships).

For various reasons, I knew that Kelly and Dan were not particularly “into” hiking down to the confluence so I wanted to make the most of the time by recruiting Maggie and Karen into my nostalgic trek down into my faded memory of the canyon. Since both women were avid hikers, it didn’t take any persuasion to fire them up for the hike and soon we were piling into my truck to make the roughly 8-mile drive to the trailhead.

I felt bad for Dan, Maggie and Karen since they were smushed into the cramped backseat of my truck. Kelly, being the tallest member of our group, sat in the passenger seat up front. But nobody complained as we drove through gorgeous terrain and along some of the most savage roads this side of Marrakesh.

Between watching for jagged rocks that might flatten one of my truck’s tires, I scanned the skies and land for birds and wildlife. But it was Karen, from the obstructed view of the backseat, who spotted our first big game: a small herd of cow elk, alert but in no hurry to flee our on-coming vehicle. As we rolled onward, I quietly counted birds and was happy to see plenty of Western Kingbirds, Ash-throated Flycatchers, Vesper Sparrows, Mexican Jays and once, a gaudy Western Tanager somewhat out of his typical habitat.

It took me several wrong turns and points of utter confusion to eventually find the place where we would park and hike to the trailhead. And even then, we only found it because Maggie adroitly used her phone’s map and GPS to guide us to where I had wanted to get to -- a raggedy old, eroded and up-heaved cattle guard -- too dicey to cross in my truck.

So, we started from the cattle guard, with Kelly and Dan indicating that they would hike as far as the trailhead -- and maybe a mile or two beyond. When we left them in the shade of a large thicket of junipers, I suggested to Karen and Maggie that they not wait for me as I didn’t want to slow them down and I sure enough knew that I wouldn’t be able to keep up with them, given the decades difference in our ages.

But they were both used to hiking with folks of varying ages and conditions and they never advanced too far from sight. We soon settled into a type of hiking that Karen (a seasonal wilderness camp counselor for youths while she pursued a degree as a P.A.) called “rubber-band formation,” owing to the fact that they would stretch out a half-mile ahead of me and then stop to let me catch up and then, while I rested, they would again forge ahead only to repeat the process over and over many times until we finally reached the bottom of the canyon. It was a very effective and prudent system of hiking and I was as impressed by their keen awareness of their surroundings as by their boundless strength, energy and stamina.

Throughout our steep, four+ mile downhill hike, a light rain had kept us cool. Nonetheless, by the time we reached Haigler Creek, I was soaked both from perspiration under my rain-jacket and from the wet manzanita that constantly brushed against my legs. The scenery was more than stunning enough to keep me from dwelling on the fact that I was soaking wet or that I would soon have four arduous miles to climb on our return hike back to the top.

We explored the canyon bottom for about 30 minutes but the creek water was high and we were limited in how far we could go without taking undue risks. So, before long we decided to head back to the Rim. By the time we met back up with Dan and Kelly, my legs felt like they were made of lead; heavy and only moderately flexible, such as they were from nearly five hours of strenuous down- and up-hill slogging. But I was happy and it was good to see four beaming faces when I finally caught up with the full crew and we finished the last mile or so back to the truck.

We drove back to camp and enjoyed a late afternoon and evening of perfect weather -- cool and moist but without any annoying wind. Kelly cooked up another sumptuous feast and, after dinner, he and Dan played their guitars in between free-wheeling conversations about anything and everything under the sun (and the moon -- which, when it rose shortly after sunset, had grown noticeable larger and would be full within a few more nights).

The next morning, Maggie and Karen hit the road. They would be returning to loved ones back east and each would be starting grad school programs in medicine and public health. I bid them farewell and wondered if I would have occasion to hike with them again someday. For years to come, they would be increasing in strength from all their outdoor adventures while Kelly, Dan and I would be fussing about how we could no longer hike like we once did together,back in our days, when we owned the canyons, the mountains and the brawny hills.

For Kelly, Dan and me, our remaining two days and nights in camp included several highlights: there was the houndsman/taxidermist from Young who stopped to yak with us and who, along with his six hounds kenneled in boxes in the bed of his tricked-out 4WD, were just returning from a lion hunt. There was our nightly pondering of the heavens as we struggled to distinguish between planets, stars, satellites, UFOs and aircraft as they traversed the night sky between the Phoenix airport and points to the north and east. There were the creatures and the plants that we studied during the days and listened to during the nights (the latter including chorusing coyotes, a softly calling Western Screech Owl, the amorous trills of crickets and the occasionally audible squeak of hunting bats).

Most of all, there was the camaraderie. Three old friends who had been earnestly, but joyously, engaged in frequent worship of all things natural and unique to wild lands. We had suffered the tribulations common to humankind but we had found ourselves re-charged and fortified by Nature which allowed us to step lightly into our futures, knowing that no matter what, at least we had friendship and the common bond of Nature to help us keep us sane in a crazy world.