Article and photos by Rob Bettaso

It was only a single day in early-March, but it lived up to the cliché meant for the entire month; you know the one, March coming in like a lion and leaving like a lamb. Before first light, I had listened to a fierce wind as it rattled the panes of glass in my bedroom windows. I wondered if, once the sun was up, I should call Kip, and suggest that instead of a hike, we meet at a local restaurant and enjoy a leisurely breakfast. But, by the time I had finished my morning coffee, the howling winds had died down to gusty breezes.

I prepared and ate a hearty breakfast, reasoning that I wasn’t sure how much time or effort Kip and I would expend on our hike, and I didn’t want to have to carry a lot of food in my daypack. I can be a lazy guy, and today I figured it was better to carry sustenance in my stomach and only haul water and snacks on my back. It was then that I realized that when I had spoken with Kip on the phone yesterday; I hadn’t mentioned how long we would be out or what to pack, so I decided that I had better call him after all. Having worked with Kip in the past, I knew he was an early riser but, then again, I hadn’t seen him much since we had both left the Philippines in 1990 and, obviously, in that span of time people’s habits can change.

Kip and I had both been volunteers with the U.S. Peace Corps (PC); I had served in Zaire and he in the Philippines. We didn’t meet until many years after our volunteer stints had ended, and each of us had held many different jobs before we each wound up taking paid positions with the PC in the Philippines. I had landed a contract as a “technical trainer” and Kip was an Assistant Director (a more lucrative job, but also one with much greater responsibility). We had both been working in the country for a few years without getting to know each other very well before extreme circumstances forced us to work as a team of two. The event that launched our union was the kidnapping of a PC volunteer by a well-known insurgency group. The PC Director, presumably working with U.S. State Department personnel, assigned some of his training staff to work with the Assistant Directors. These teams then headed out to all points of the country, making sure that volunteers at their posts were safely escorted back to Manila. The volunteers could then be flown back stateside.

Needless to say, it was a stressful job that took several weeks to pull off, and by the time it was done, Kip and I had gotten to know each other quite well. After all the volunteers, and eventually the staff, were sent home, the PC suspended operations in the Philippines, and I didn’t see Kip again for many years. For that matter, we only sporadically kept in touch by phone and email, but eventually we reunited, and it was right here in Pinetop. I had retired from the Arizona Game and Fish Department by that time, and Kip had retired from a slew of overseas jobs doing relief/development type of work. His duty-posts had included Cambodia, Angola, Sudan, and other formerly war-torn locales. When he retired to his hometown (south of Tucson), he let me know and, ever since, we have had the occasional get-together here in the White Mountains. When Kip visits me here, he opts to stay in a hotel, which he says is because he doesn’t want to impose, but in reality, I think it is because my place is a cluttered mess (see previous remark pertaining to laziness…).

Anyway, after picking Kip up at his hotel at 9:00 a.m. We headed to a spot north of town where there is some fairly open country. Our impromptu plan was to just ramble about; walking and talking and catching up on the events which had transpired in both our lives since Kip’s last visit this way, about a year ago. It wasn’t until we exited my pickup and stepped out into a habitat of widely spaced junipers I realized how much of the sky had filled with clouds. There was still plenty of blue in between the small, puffy, cumulous clouds, but they were building and they were also moving quickly and clearly carried enough moisture to tinge their undersides a darkish gray-blue.

As we set off at a swift clip, I said: “Hmm, typical mountain weather, eh Kip? You never know what it’s gonna do.” “Yeah,” he replied, “glad I brought my rain-jacket.” I added: “Have you re-adjusted to the arid climate with its occasional rains; as opposed to the humid tropics, where there is more rain than sun for much of the year?” “Well, when it comes to weather, I’m still fairly adaptable,” Kip said, and continued by expounding on how he could take fickle, and even extreme weather okay, but that he wasn’t as tolerant with people, especially Americans, and said that he had developed into something of a loner since his return to the U.S.

Before I could respond, I stubbed my boot on a lichen-encrusted rock, grunted, and we continued on silently. The countryside in which we were hiking was quite beautiful, but, since we weren’t hiking on a trail, you had to watch every step.

“How come you don’t travel much anymore?” Kip asked me. “I travel, just not very far.” After a pause, I continued: “The Four-Corner states have provided plenty of excitement for me these past several years, I guess. Besides, I did do that Patagonia, South America trip in 2019.” After some thought, I added: “But yeah, exotic travel just ain’t the same once you get to a certain age, I guess.” Kip retorted with a simple but emphatic “Bah!”

In a few minutes, we stopped to catch our breath and watch a flock of ravens as they played tag overhead; spinning and spiraling and looking like they were trying to pluck a few tail-feathers from their nearest partner. I continued my discourse on foreign travel: “You know how it is, we seem to more easily get sick, or turn an ankle, and it just takes so much longer to recover. Some of the stuff we used to eat in the Philippines, like ‘kinilaw,’ my stomach might not tolerate at this age.” Kip replied bluntly: “So you carry ‘Cipro,’ and you’re good to go. Hey, you gotta remember, all of life can’t be derring-do. But that doesn’t mean you have to join a gaggle of geezer tourists, knobby knee’ed in Bermuda shorts, with expensive cameras dangling ‘round your necks.”

I resumed hiking and was miffed by his simplification and said: “Look, overseas, especially in places with limited infrastructure and where I can’t speak the language, well, I just can’t afford to take too many risks anymore. Anyway, it’s not like we can still scale high peaks, swim in strong currents, or keep our eyes peeled for dicey critters as we’re picking our way through jungle terrain.” Kip stopped and pointed to a Sage Thrasher perched on a scrubby pine, identified it, and then said: “So, you trade those activities for more sedate levels of nature study, that’s your thing anyways, ain’t it?”

Pondering Kip’s rhetorical question, I stepped up our pace, and we hiked hard and refrained from talking for about a mile. When we arrived at the edge of a minor canyon, which was forested with more ponderosa than juniper and pinyon, I asked Kip if he wanted to explore. He did, so we slowly descended a rocky slope and hiked along a muddy creek for a while, remarking occasionally on some aspect of the local geology or biology. Eventually, we opted to climb out of the canyon and start heading back to my truck. The temperature had warmed considerably, and the sun was slightly less obscured by clouds. We were both hungry, so we headed back to town for lunch.

After sandwiches (which Kip washed down with a few beers, while I nursed an iced tea), I dropped Kip off at his hotel so he could rest up and I returned home to do the same. Later that afternoon, we drove out to a wetland and strolled around some marshy ponds while watching waterfowl, blackbirds, and some returning migrants. The sunset was of the orange, then red, then pink variety and we stayed out to enjoy the twilight and emerging stars in what was now a mostly clear sky; on a calm, temperate evening. We discussed many a topic during our visit to the wetlands — some relevant to our having arrived at a later stage of life; others, still full of youthful dreams and aspirations.

When we bid each other adieu back at the hotel, I revealed a couple of minor surprises I had held from Kip. The first being that I WAS, in fact, going to be taking a trip at the end of the month to a touristy but very exciting locale. Naturally, Kip wanted to know where, but I told him I didn’t want to jinx it by telling him the country’s name. I teased him a bit by stating that my destination was tropical and possessed one of the richest bird assemblages in the Western Hemisphere.

“Hopefully, you’ll be able to read all about it in my May article of the Outdoors Southwest,” I said, “which, by the way, leads me to my second low-key surprise: I might write-up today’s outing for the April edition, assuming you don’t mind?” His reply was symptomatic of his cagey nature: “Sure,” he said, “just don’t use my real name. In fact, give me the name of one of our favorite writers, like you gave yourself when you came up with your email handle.” “You bet,” I said, “and I’ll make it an abbreviation, like I did for my email, so that if anyone wants to figure it out, they’ll not only have to be somewhat well-read in the classics, but they will only have one syllable to work from.”



We parted ways, my day ended, and the following morning I wrote up this story. Next month I hope to have a bird-watcher’s travelogue to share with readers. In the meantime, you can take a guess at who is represented by the shorthanded pseudonyms of “Kip” and “Hem.”