The fire flickers and weaves, yellow flames dancing frantically but gently above the glowing embers. My hands and chest are warming, my back and butt are cooling. I turn, again and again, a chicken on a barbeque spit, trying to strike that special, delicate balance between singed and frostbitten. The endless, eternal, campfire polka.

Today, we hiked the Rings Trail. It’s a fairly plain desert stroll that leads up into a worn, eroded canyon, that leads up into a fairly technical rock-climber of a wall. For the faint-hearted and unskilled (like us), the Monument caretakers installed a series of iron stakes and grab rings – – ergo, the trail moniker. It’s short, interesting, briefly challenging, and right next to camp. You just have to take this hike when you’re at HITW.

Going clockwise, the flat, easy trail goes past an information sign with a trail map and icons, and warning of the usual desert issues.

As the trail rounds the southern peak, the south-facing slope shows off its barrel-cactus collection. They are hard to see in the photo, so I marked most of them with red stars. It’s like a little cactus convention. Unlike its nasty cousin cholla, the barrel cactus is fairly friendly. Yes, it has needle-sharp spines that will drain a lot of blood, but they are stiffly curled around the plant and will not snag any traveler not actually in contact. And forget about getting any moisture out of one of these, it’s a total myth. Even if you managed to penetrate the tough, woody exterior, all you would find inside would be a damp pith. If you squeezed it in a vise, you’d get only a few drops of a fluid, and your intestines would make it a drink to remember.

Further along, some old rock petroglyphs… it’s funny, with all the extensive oral tradition and concentration on preserving various tribal “cultures”, it’s quite common for absolutely nobody to understand any of these writings, across the entire West. To this day, they are often discussed and pondered – – art? graffiti? messages? – – and no-one seems to really know.

Further around the southern end of the trail, one of the enigmas of National Monuments and BLM land comes into view – – here is a small ranch right in the middle of campers, hikers, and even designated wilderness. BLM has as its charter the concept of “multiple use” land management. This is why you will see, on our public lands, side-by-side activities such as wilderness, tourism, cattle ranching, and mining, to name just a few.

Approaching the “hole” area, the land forms get varied in color and texture. Some of this stuff looks like a big construction crew dumped some extra concrete – – but it’s all totally nature-driven formations.

The substrates, although of volcanic origin, are made of weak rock that is easily weathered. Everywhere are pockets and clefts and cavities worn by wind and rain. Here’s a small arch atop a ridge.

Looking up at one wall, the intricacy and variety of the weathering is apparent. Swirls of wind and/or water carve imaginative hollows out of the softer aggregates.

And then come the clefts. I tie our hiking staffs onto my backpack to free up both my hands and Karin’s.

The weather has not cooperated in making this a hiker-friendly passage – there are two parts of the trail that are nearly vertical and very rough. Yes, a skilled technical climber could probably get up or down with little trouble. But your average hiker-stroller (that’s us) is very grateful for the iron assists.

The trail outside the ring zone is not always obvious, and a marker helps us find our way out of the cleft.

Near the exit, a deep gouge holds moisture in its shade. There is a perennial “lawn” growing on its floor.

And camp comes into view, just before breaking out into the open on the eastern side of the ridge.

After our hike, we while away the afternoon, enjoying the great weather, quiet space, and sense of freedom. We watch an improbable, but surprisingly common sight: kayaks on roof racks in the desert. No, there are no bodies of water that big on the Preserve, but for roaming explorers, other options are not that far away. We are only about 60 miles west of the Colorado River.

In late afternoon, we decided to go find out why there are so many Airstream trailers showing up here in this lonely camp. Yesterday there were three, and today the count is up to six. The iconic rounded aluminum shell is unmistakable, but except for rallies they are not often seen in groups. Yesterday, there were three and today there are six. License plates are from all over – – Utah, Quebec, etc.

We strolled around the camp and, not by chance, past the Airstreams. Stopping to chat with one owner, we discovered a treasure trove of information about RV life.

We did not learn his name, so let me just call him Jake. Jake bought a used Airstream and found that he, his wife, and three daughters loved the roaming life. After leaving their “stick house” behind, going back, and leaving again, they finally sold it off and became “full timers” over a year ago. They are now mortgage-free and roaming North America.

Jake has a lot of other friends, and they have online associations, beginning with email and flowing through Facebook, Instagram, and so on. By communicating and coordinating for the last couple of weeks, they have made a semi-impromptu rendezvous here at this innocuous camp in the Mojave desert.

As an integral part of their full-timer strategy, Jake and his wife give their kids carefully-planned and orchestrated home schooling. Jake works for a living in software, and puts in about 30-50 hours a week, depending on his contracts. He’s amiable, articulate, and personable, and also pretty technical. We talk for over a half-hour about family, work, RV stuff and Internet on-the-go.

In the conversation, Jake made an interesting comment that’s a reflection on modern social values. He felt his kids were doing well socially, and one of the dynamics he described was this: when the kids met other children at an RV camp, they knew full well that the new acquaintances would be on their way in a few days, different families going their different ways. So the kids reaction was not a fearful separation anxiety – – it was rather an immediacy of action. Let’s get together and play, have fun, be friends, until we all start traveling again. It sounded reasonable and healthy to me and Karin. I see parallels in the way we also meet people and befriend them.

Strolling back to camp, the evening was still nice, not having cooled off too much yet. Karin and I tossed down a couple of hard ciders, and she became an appreciative one-woman audience to my one-man concert.

What a life.