MAGAN'S WORLD: MANCHÁN MAGAN'stales of a travel addict
UNLIKE ME, the waif wasn’t dressed for the cold (they never are). Fortunately for her, it was 38 degrees at the time, so it was she who was suitably clad. I, on the other hand, was wearing heavy cords and a jumper. I had been a month in the Sonoran Desert at this stage and the afternoon temperature had topped 38 degrees every day, but I had had to purposefully overdress this morning, as I was going see the new Star Trek release in the refrigerated theatre that buttressed the back of the local mall like a hospital mortuary. The only way of not perishing was to wear every inch of clothing I had.
I was so hot upon leaving the cinema I decided to go for a swim in Sabino canyon, on the outskirts of Tucson. The waif was waiting at the entrance, waving leaflets in the air. “Read this,” she said, “so you don’t get eaten today.”
I took one from her and headed up into the canyon along a rocky ochre trail, reading as I went. “Warning: Some ‘problem’ mountain lions have recently displayed aberrant behaviour that is known to precede attacks on humans,” it read. “This includes stalking humans.”
I stopped in my tracks, trying to decide whether it was worth going on. I’ve been stalked by a wildcat before, a leopard in the Himalayas that crept up on me as I lay by a spring. It had, the locals claimed, developed a taste for humans. On that occasion the animal and I had both fled.
Recently, I’ve been reading Dervla Murphy’s account of her trek through Ethiopia, where she encountered leopards almost daily on some stretches of her journey. I knew that she wouldn’t let such a thing get in the way of a good swim.
Likewise, Spock in the movie I had just seen had been chased by some ferocious beast right into the arms of the person he most needed to meet.
I imagined how cool the water would be – the last snowmelt from Mount Lemmon. It would feel so fresh tumbling over me from the high rocks.
I found myself trying to assess the risk. Dealing with the finer points of probability theory is a constant for travellers. It’s what makes it so invigorating: assessing the unknown. Each new rattling death-trap taxi and dubious restaurant has to be appraised with the skill of an actuary and the speed of a tennis ace responding to a serve. The results can be grave and far-reaching. I have taken risks that in hindsight I possibly shouldn’t have, and missed out on opportunities that I now regret due to over-cautiousness. It would have been wiser not to have chanced the water in that stagnant trough in the Gobi, and I still rue having listened to the fear-mongers who urged me to cut short my stay in Colombia in 1993.
On this occasion I returned to the waif and asked her what she would advise. She shrugged and pointed to the dinky trolley car propelling burger-fattened Americans up the canyon, saying that since the panthers could outrun a deer and jump 20ft, it was as likely they would attack those lot rather than a scrawny, lentil-fed guy like me. The wildcats here were between six and nine feet long. They needed a proper meal.
“If you do see one,” she said, “remember not to flee, it’ll only trigger his chase instinct. Maintain eye contact, and if it raises all its hairs be sure you do the same, make yourself as big as possible, open your shirt, wave your arms, roar. Throw something at it, but don’t bend down to pick it up.”
I weighed up the odds a while longer, trying to guess what Spock might do in the situation, and then I just grabbed a large stick, gathered a few stones and headed off for my swim.