Comma Dot Comma

I’ll be in California until Sunday night, camping with my entire family, whose members ranging in age from one year old to mid-fifties. The good thing about camping as opposed to all hanging out in the same house is that you can run off into the woods when things start to get crazy. I love the crazy, and I love escaping the crazy. I expressly requested Smores for the menu, which are a delight at any age.

This is the final part in a five-part series. Here’s the rest: Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four

Finally the sky turned gray and a few birdsongs began to lace the insect noise. The insects faded away as more and more birds awoke and called to one another. “I can’t believe we made it to morning,” said Dr. G. We still had, hypothetically, more than two thirds of our trip ahead of us. After we broke camp I inspected the ground and found some new burrow holes, indicating that the creature or creatures beneath us had indeed escaped. Whew! Safe on that score.

We were leaning strongly toward calling it quits, but Dr. G wanted to check the mud puddle to see if we could get any water out of it. We scrambled down the creek bed with our heavy packs and found that the water had, indeed, cleared and refilled overnight. I applied some first aid tape to the leaky water bladder and then held the hose for the water filter just above the slime in the two-inch-deep puddle. I would wave off the bees while Dr. G pumped the filter handle, and then we would stand back and wait for the puddle to refill. After four attempts, we were at full capacity. Yes! We were getting all the water we needed for the day from a tiny, dirty, puddle, just like the insects. Dr. G, newly confident, voted to forge ahead. I thought it over and agreed.

“You know, after all that, we’re probably going to come upon some big, lovely, clear pools just around the corner,” I said. The trail was just as difficult to follow, if not more so, than the day before. We both looked like the Lilliputians had come after us with tiny whips; our arms and legs were scored and crosshatched with narrow scrapes. We rounded a corner and came upon a set of dark pools. Dr. G. groaned. Right about then we got lost again. At least we were in the shade, among the pines, I kept telling myself. At least we are together in the great outdoors, beating the odds. At least it’s not too hot.
I spotted a cairn on the other bank and we picked up the trail, temporarily, before it disappeared into a dark thicket. I tried and failed to get into the thicket myself.

We walked around it, and I exclaimed at the decaying body of a red-tailed hawk, scaring something big uphill from us. It started a minor rockslide as it scrambled away, but neither of us was quick enough for a glimpse.

The creek bed split in two, and the cairns were hard to distinguish from the general rocks. We were in full sun now, approaching mid-morning. Dr. G began to question the wisdom of the ever-more-scarce cairns. They disagreed with each other; one would point northwest while another seemed to indicate direct north. We spent more and more time in the creek bed itself, rather than on its banks, and you know how I am with creek beds.

The logs we had to negotiate got bigger and more tangled together. I was looking ahead at a possible cairn on a ridge with Dr. G to my left as I climbed over a weathered gray log, its bark in soft piles beneath it. I put my foot on the other side and as it touched down on the bark the air filled with a loud, harsh rattle. It was like someone shaking a castanet right in my ear. A few feet away, sunning itself on a flat rock, was an alarmed rattlesnake. Dr. G and I leapt back over the log and almost fell over each other in our attempt to give the snake a wide berth. I got a good look at this one; it was about two and a half feet long and gold spotted, with a big rattle, uncoiled and trying to scare us off.

“Now that’s how a rattlesnake is supposed to act!” I told Dr. G. He kept repeating, “Two rattlesnakes! Two rattlesnakes in less than a day.” I studied the terrain and proposed a possible path that would give the snake plenty of room. It involved scaling up the bank and plunging through another thicket, then back down to the creek bed. Dr. G looked me straight in the eye. His expression was grave. “I think it’s time to give up,” he said. That is not the kind of thing that he says, ever, but the occasion called for it. We had only gone a mile in the past two hours and we were just getting to the steep part– a 1200 foot climb. The trail showed no signs of becoming less coy and retiring. The further in we went, the harder it would be to get back if something went wrong. “Okay,” I said. It was bound to be easier to make our way back to the trailhead.

A few hours later we emerged from what I had started calling the Gorge of Snakes and Thickets and sat for a snack to study the map. It hadn’t been easier on the way back; we lost the trail in new places and picked it back up in unfamiliar stretches. We did see a few landmarks, like the dead bird, the campsite, the mud puddle, and the embankment where the water went over. On the forest service map there were a few tents drawn, marking developed campsites. Dr. G tapped the spot with his finger. “How about a late lunch at a restaurant in Globe and some car camping?” It sounded fine to me. I looked at the edge of the map, where there were some notes about the region:

There are over 900 miles of National Forest System trails. Their conditions range from good to terrible. Challenges include steep grades, heavy brush, wash-outs, lack of available water, and sometimes difficulty in finding the trail.

Check, Check, Check, Check, Check. Now they tell me!

The End

This is part four of a five-part series about our ill-fated backpacking trip.

Dusk had fallen in the narrow valley and I was unfolding our tent in the narrow flat space between two boulders to see if it would fit while Dr. G. went to dig out a murky puddle in the hopes that it would fill with clear water overnight.  It was our only possible water source, about a foot wide and a few inches deep, mostly muck.  The former Boy Scout in Dr. G. comes out in times like this, and he had a feeling about this water hole.  He was going to be resourceful about it, and give it every possible chance of providing for our needs.

I noticed a tiny burrow in the flat spot where the tent had to go, but it was covered with leaf litter. I stomped over it and nothing happened.  It seemed abandoned, and anyway, there was nowhere else to put the tent.  “Guess how far we traveled in the last three hours,” Dr. G. said, GPS in hand.  I had no idea.  “Two point six miles.”  Wow.  It was the slowest hiking speed I had attained in my adult life.  We were only a little over halfway to our original Day One destination!  Our tent only has three poles, and although I couldn’t remember what order they were supposed to go in, I got the tent put together and solidly planted on its tiny patch of dirt.  I saved the last, and hardest, pole loop for Dr. G because I am a wimp about things like that.  The tent fit in its little niche, but we would each have to climb over boulders to get in our separate entrances.   The nice thing was that we would have a clear view of the stars through the mesh roof.

Dr. G. dragged some rocks together into a fire pit and made a kindling teepee.  He had had no problem finding dry wood to use four our tiny fire, and he put a match to the base with confidence.  Whoosh!  The flames flared up three feet high, throwing off sparks.  We noted that the woods were actually a tinderbox, all dried out and primed from the earlier burn.  We stamped out sparks and waited for the flames to die back down.  They didn’t.  Dr. G pushed one of the rocks into the middle of the fire to scatter it.  Better safe than sorry, but we did get a few roasted marshmallows out of it before it smoked out.  Later we found out that the fire danger was so high they weren’t even allowing charcoal grills at developed campsites.  Oops.  No harm, no foul, right?

We ate tuna and processed cheese on pitas, hung the bag of food in a tree, and called it a night.  The moon was out, turning the woods silver-blue and casting gray shadows.  It was a still, shimmering night, with singing insects filling the woods with sound.  I wondered if any big animals would come by.  On our last backpacking trip something woke me as it crashed through the leaf litter.  I was sure it was a javelina destroying my backpack.  It had been difficult to fall back asleep.  This time, I promised myself, I would be calm and curious toward any nighttime visitors.

We usually go to sleep much later than nine or ten and we were cold and awake for a long time under our one blanket.  The other blanket was back in the car, having been deemed too heavy to carry and probably unnecessary.  I didn’t hear any large animals, but some tiny creature kept scratching around the tent.  I’d drift in and out of sleep and hear it again.  Finally Dr. G. said, “It’s probably whatever was in that burrow you put the tent over, trying to get out.”  We listened.  Yes, it did sound like it was coming from under the tent, surfacing to scratch at the tarp first on one side, then the other.  This was horrible!  I banged on the tent floor, trying to scare it into silence.  Dr. G fell back into sleep, but I lay there wide-eyed, listening intently for each tiny sound.  My mild claustrophobia prevented me from even having a blanket over my face; the fate of the tiny creature below me was a scenario I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy.  Trapped beneath a tarp, not knowing which way to dig to freedom!

What if it ran out of air?  But no, it had been going for several hours and seemed okay in that regard.  But what if it was using up all its energy trying to get out, and would starve to death instead?  Sometime in the cold hours of the middle of the night I woke Dr. G.  “We have to get up!  We can both get out of the tent, quickly lift it up, and let whatever is under there run for freedom!”

“Absolutely not,” said Dr. G.  “Out of the question.  I am not budging.  It is not worth it.”

“But what if it dies?”

“It won’t die.   It’s alive and well,” he said, and burrowed back under the covers.  It wasn’t a plan I could enact on my own, so I spent a little time resenting Dr. G’s still, sleeping form before I decided to pray for the little guy, asking God to guide it to freedom.  I slid under the blanket and down toward the southeast corner of the tent.  The spot that had seemed flat in daylight in fact tilted in two directions, causing Dr. G to spend most of the night pressed up against the bottom half of the tent wall and me to spend most of it drifting toward Dr.G.  Every now and again I’d claw my way back up to my side of the tent.

(This is part 3 in a five-part series)

Dr. G and I were back at the dry gulch, trying for round two. The sunlight was creeping higher up the faces of the cliffs, leaving the area where we were in dimness. We kept an eye out for snakes as we tested a few promising possible paths, but as we circled back again and again we found only dead ends. I noticed a big log across a narrow clearing, and beyond it, almost hidden under the low-growing branches of a juniper, a rock cairn. Here was the real trail! We booked it up the path and back into the sunlight. “Okay,” I announced. “Things can only get better from here on out. We forgot stuff at the car, lost water twice, got lost in the bushes, and stepped over a rattlesnake. That fulfills our adventure quota, wouldn’t you say?” Dr. G. didn’t agree. Nearly all of those events had been due to our own carelessness. In a way, he said, you could consider our experience lucky, since none of them turned out badly.

My original sensation of expansiveness and joy had faded. I noted the tiny ache forming in the arch of my right foot, the grimy feeling of dust stuck to sunscreen on my limbs, the tiredness and labored breathing brought on by the steep hill. We could still make it, though. I was sure of it. Obstacles overcome, objective in sight. We crossed an invisible boundary between desert and forest; the prickly pears were sparse now, and scattered among tree trunks. The trail descended as we headed towards Coon Creek along a steep ridge, taking off our hats so the cool breeze could evaporate the sweat from our scalps. Our footsteps were quieter now, muffled by pine needles except when one of us crunched a half-gnawed pine cone now and again. The air smelled like soft dirt and pine.

I heard a thud behind me and felt suddenly lighter. I whirled around to watch our bag of water tumble fifteen feet down the steep embankment and come to rest under a thorn bush, dribbling out its contents. You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. Time was of the essence but I’d always been a cautious descender. I examined the options and chose a round-about route with some boulders and tree roots for footholds down the hill. Dr. G, meanwhile, had rushed towards me on the trail and plunged over the edge, half-scrambling, half-sliding, right into the thorn bush. He handed the water bladder up to me, which was now one third depleted. I fixed the hose and tighted the lid, but water was still splashing onto my hand. It must be dripping off of the outside of the bag, I decided. This time we tied it on with cords and carabineers. I heaved the pack up onto my back and took a few experimental steps. Splash, splash. Water was still dripping onto the back of my leg. Unbelievable—a leak! Well, perhaps not so unbelievable. The bag had just fallen fifteen feet into a thorn bush and maybe a little dribble wasn’t so bad. We transferred water into some other water bottles to bring the water line below the leak, and set off again.

We were very close to the creekbed now, and Dr. G was keeping a sharp eye out for running water. There were occasional damp spots here and there, but nothing actually moving. The moss was shriveled and dead in most places. The trail grew fainter and fainter, and we noticed signs of a big forest fire that had downed almost half of the trees sometime in the recent past. We weren’t hiking so much as clambering over, under, and around logs, playing “spot the cairn.” More scrapes. My hands were totally blackened by charcoal from the burned trees, as were the insides of my knees. We lost the trail two or three more times and had to rock hop up the dry creekbed until we saw it again. Of the two of us, I was better at spotting a marginally less overgrown path or a partly collapsed pile of rocks marking the way forward. Dr. G was better at rock hopping; he could look several feet ahead and move swiftly in long strides. I would to examine all the possibilities, put a foot down, test, and repeat. Even with all my caution I’d wobble or slip one time in twenty. It was slow going.

We passed a slimy, putrid puddle infested with bugs, living and dead. “That could work, in an emergency,” said Dr. G. It was now 7:30 and the sun was setting. We had only an hour or so of dusk to find a place to camp and set up. We were still on the side of the hill, and in addition to being steep it was more rock than dirt, with jagged boulders cropping up every few feet and smaller rocks spilling down into piles of shale, none of which was particularly conducive to camping. We passed a narrow flat spot between two boulders and noted it; our two-man tent just might squeeze in there. We walked a bit farther on until the trail disappeared again. Nothing better had turned up, and the tiny flat spot was within spitting distance of the grimy puddle. We decided to set up camp.

(This is part 2 of a five-part series)

For the first half hour of our hike, Dr. G and I chatted and scanned the dry mud and shards of broken rock for interesting shapes and wild animal footprints. When I got home, I decided, I would learn how to read animal scat because there was a lot around and I couldn’t be sure what it was. Elk? Goat? Coyote? Javelina? We were happy to discover that the trail was in pretty good shape and well-marked with stone cairns. Most places, it was wide enough to walk two abreast. We congratulated ourselves on planning such an excellent adventure.

The trail dipped into a dry gulch shaded by live oak and picked up, much narrower, on the other side. Dr. G. went ahead, and within a few hundred yards we found ourselves on a shrubby hillside where the trail dissolved into faint animal trails headed several directions through the bushes. We pushed on, always choosing the strongest trail, keeping an eye out for cairns. There were three or kinds of bush on that hillside, and two of them had thorns and pricklies hidden among their glossy green leaves. I’d try to step over or around the branches only to have an offshoot cling and drag across a shin or forearm, leaving in its wake a red stinging welt and sometimes an embedded thorn or two. These were the first of 37 separate scrapes I would collect over the next few days. Yes, I counted. But that was much later.

Now, Dr. G. and I peered at each other over the tops of the bushes. The trail had totally evaporated. We had slowly moved farther and farther apart in our separate battles across the terrain and now had to speak quite loudly to decide what to do. We knew that we would eventually be at the bottom of the canyon; we could either bushwhack down now, in the hopes of stumbling across a trail on the way, or retrace our steps to the gulch and try again. If we couldn’t find anything, there was still plenty of light, and we could head back to the car or down a different path altogether.

“Retrace our steps” was an innacurate phrase. Every bush and path looked the same as all the others, and we just floundered along the path of least resistance, generally uphill and to the right. Dr. G broke through a big pile of thorny bushes and ended up behind me in a somewhat clear path. I was navigating a fallen log when I heard him say, “Move ahead, quickly!” in a voice that wasn’t exactly a shout but wasn’t not a shout, either. He is the least bossy person I know and almost never orders me to do anything. The last time I heard him use that tone was when he said “Pedestrian!” while I was driving the car. So when I heard his command on that trail, I figured I’d better obey, post-haste. I hurried over the log and a few paces down the trail.

“You just stepped over a rattlesnake!” said Dr. G.

“Where?”

“Right, there, that big yellow thing coiled in the path!”

“Where?”

“Right where you were just standing!” He backed up a few yards. I inched forward so I could see over the log. Sure enough, there it was, stacked in a tight, striped coil, its triangular head slowly weaving and scanning. I backed up again because it seemed like it might be coming my direction. Dr. G. narrated its actions at a safe distance on the other side of the log. “Now it’s stretching out a little. Its rattler seems stunted– there are only a few rows on it even though it’s such a big snake. Wow, this pattern is beautiful. It is moving very slowly. Why won’t it move?” We waited silently for the snake to make a decision as the breeze whispered through the bushes. After a few minutes of watching it sway, Dr. G. decided to take on the clump of thorny bushes again and give the snake a wide berth, since it was in no hurry to move on. There were more and more clear spaces and soon we were back on the trail.

“Weren’t you afraid?” Dr. G. asked. No, I wasn’t. It was hard to feel afraid after the fact, when I was safe and couldn’t even see the thing very well. He was the one who experienced a real sense of danger on my behalf, watching me blithely step over a coiled snake. I was put out, actually, that the snake didn’t act like a proper rattler, warning me to stay out of its path. What the heck was its problem? Was it a rebel snake, not interested in the common courtesies of the wild? I don’t have snake radar, for heaven’s sake. It was my closest encounter with a rattler ever, and I had almost missed it altogether. I assumed, incorrectly, that it would be my last for this trip. Surely I had used up all my rattlesnake bad luck.

(This is part one of a five part series of our attempted backpacking trip. )

“Are you excited?” Dr. G. asked, as we tromped in unison up a gentle incline. We crested the hill, and a red-gold wall of stone rose into view across the valley, its colors amplified by the slanting sun of late afternoon, its curves and hollows accentuated by shadows. My favorite time of day. To our right, the vista opened to rumpled blue hills as far as the eye could see.

“Yes, I’m excited,” I said. I felt I was expanding to fill every space my eye could see, a kind of joy that doesn’t come easily for me except outside, far from concrete and powerlines. It was an accomplishment just to be walking side by side on the wide gravel path late on Friday, after a late start, a long drive, and repacking our too-heavy backpacks at the trailhead, leaving behind one third of the food and a blanket. A quarter mile down the trail I had to run back to the car for a forgotten knee brace and some prescription medication. Before that,we had had to open and close a barbed wire gate just to get on the access road to the Oak Creek trailhead. There were good reasons for it to be gated; the narrow dirt road cut into the side of a ridge, and for much of the time I looked out the passenger side window of the car past the crumbling shoulder to a long drop into creosote and prickly pear. At a few points we drove down inclines so steep that we couldn’t see the bottom until the nose of the car crested the hill.

Yes, I thought, certainly the worst was behind us now. We would sweat and grow tired carrying our shelter, food, and water on our backs, but that was expected and even part of the satisfaction. Here at the start of the three-day, two-night journey, the terrain was dotted with twisted juniper trees just beginning to produce their hard, blue berries; sprawling prickly pears that grew their oval segments any which way; and cholla, blooming magenta at the ends of all its arms. Ahead, though, the valley was shadowed with dark green: pine, fir, and oak. We were headed for real, old-fashioned forest in the Sierra Ancha Wilderness, along the Coon Creek Trail. Just the sight of dark green tree tops massed on the flanks of the hills made me pick up my pace until I was breathing hard. Descriptions of the area included secluded, multi-story indian ruins hidden in box canyons like the one we were headed for. It was almost five and only a few hours of daylight remained to climb four miles through the forest to the ridgetop before making camp. It was going to be perfect.

The first inkling I had that our trip would not be perfect was a warm spray of liquid wetting my calves as I walked along. I yelped and scurried forward, filled with the wild conviction that some animal was peeing on me. This was a remote area and perhaps the animals didn’t know to be afraid of the likes of us. “Help!” I cried. Dr. G came over to inspect. The hose had detached from our giant 3-liter water bladder, a piece of equipment which we had not yet fully tested and were now relying on to keep the majority of our water safe throughout the trip. We would hike from spring to spring, but there was always the danger that creeks and water sources would be dry. I wiped some of our precious drinking water off of the backs of my legs—it gave me the heebie jeebies even though I knew it wasn’t pee– while Dr. G reaffixed the hose. A few minutes later, the whole bag broke loose and tumbled onto the ground, spilling another cup or two. Rats! Well, we still had enough to get us through the day and most of tomorrow. We positioned the water bag even more carefully and securely, quixotically sure that the problem was solved.

It’s been a week of record highs. Even up at the Grand Canyon, where we went with my parents last Thursday, the sun wanted to press right through one side of my face and out the other. The ravens rose and dove as we crept down a trail that carved into the cliff face and snaked out along ridges. We descended until we caught sight of the Colorado River, an oily green streak far below. Dr. G had arcs of red dust that settled on the backs of his legs. The persistent dust crept into the corners of my eyes and dusted my scalp. My ears were full of dust and my nose ran red. The cell phone died searching for a signal. A sharp breeze whirled through and knocked Dr. G’s hat over the ridge, in sight but good as gone. They have books there, in the big store not far from the edge, about all the ways that people have died. We didn’t feel even close to dying.

Back from Oregon! We set foot in the Willamette Valley a few days after one of the rainiest weeks on record. Even the pavement seemed squishy. Within two seconds of being outside I felt my perpetually chapped lips begin to absorb the moisture of the Oregon air. Ahhhh….. the relief! There was fog and a few showers, but most of the week was clear. Dr. G and I set off into the woods in search of a Christmas tree. We wandered for hours down tinier and tinier trails and roads, to no avail. The roads and trails were covered with huge fallen trees that had lost their purchase in the saturated soil. Undisturbed frost had grown inch-long crystals on trees and grasses. It was all very lovely, but there were no good Christmas trees. We gave up and headed for a tree farm, where we acquired a lovely stout fir that put all those woodlands trees to shame.

The week also included playing with a kitten that purred constantly, building a chocolate-mint graham cracker house, going to a craft fair, doing our favorite hike (a three mile climb through old growth forest, with the trail beginning across the street from the house), and attending a family party. We went to the craft fair to do a little detective work.

Yes, detective work. For the past few years, Dr. G’s parents have received handwritten Christmas cards from “Glenn and Marie.” No last names, no return address. His parents don’t know them. They talk about their grandchildren, their illnesses, and their hobbies. This year they even invited them to a party at their place because it has been “TOO LONG”. They also included a clue: Glenn would be selling wooden bowls at the fair. However, there was no one there named Glenn exhibiting wooden bowls or anything else. I think it must be a joke, and a pretty good one.

Glad to be home. Today it’s raining in Phoenix. It’s more like mud falling from the sky than rain. If you want to see some pictures from Oregon, go to our flickr page and check out the first two pages.

A few months ago on a scenic drive, we passed an intriguing closed road to Horseshoe Reservoir. A fire had burned through and we were curious about what a burned desert looked like. Saturday we finally got our act together enough to load up the bikes and head out there. The GPS said it was 10 miles to the lake; twenty miles round trip was a challenge, considering our 2:30 pm start time and complications related to my recent pants size impairment (e.g., frequent wheezing on difficult terrain). But, if the road was paved and all low rolling hills, we could manage it. We figured it was a chance for a nice ride on a car-free road, even if we didn’t make it all the way. As it turned out, it didn’t start with rolling hills but a steep two-mile climb to the top of a ridge. Dr. G has that pioneer constitution that allows him to summon sufficient strength and energy for adventures, no matter how much sitting around precedes them. I was a little wobblier and a lot wheezier, but we made it. Then the road turned to dirt. Sand, ruts, gravel, and dirt to be exact, and all downhill.

Facing that downhill grade caused me to send up a little prayer of thanks once again for my Peace Corps bike training, humiliating though it was at the time (imagine a town’s worth of hollering boys following a consipicuous 30-person bike parade every Friday). We learned to bike through sand and water and over ruts and boulders, and I did all of it in ankle-length dresses. Now I can face rough terrain with a little adrenaline and almost zero fear, though real mountain bikers would sneer at my speed. We rattled downhill for a few miles and stopped to shake out our sore wrists. “You go on!” I said nobly. “If I go any further, I have serious doubts about my ability to get back up.” Dr. G was having none of that. We were stopped next to a trail, so we ditched the reservoir plan and scrambled to the top of the ridge instead. Right where the trail petered out, a sign appeared, declaring the area an archeological site and forbidding us to dig up or remove anything.

We scoured the hillside and found nothing human. Sad, I thought, that our observation skills were so ill-tuned to archeology. We admired the full moon rising above a peak in the late afternoon and decided to walk along the ridge awhile, toward a rocky point. The point was much rockier than any of the surrounding territory. “Hey,” I said, “Look at this rock shelf along the path. It’s perfectly straight. I detect human activity!” Dr. G raised his eyes to the rocky point just ahead of us. “Those are walls!” he said. We had stumbled upon a collection of ancient fortified stone buildings, perhaps 20 or 30 spread across the ridge. Many of the walls had caved in, forming jumbles of river rock, but many others were still standing strong. I stepped down into what appeared to have been a cooking area, judging by the black smoke stains on the rock. The ground was littered with potsherds and sharp flakes of black shiny rock similar to obsidian (though the rockhound Dr. G insists that it was not actually obsidian).

Everything we clambered over and touched was at least 500 years old, since the last native inhabitants had left in the late 1400’s. Later internet research uncovered a description of a similar hilltop fortress in the area that was around 900 years old. The shards of lovely red and buff pottery felt just like my own occasionally broken ceramics, and I felt a connection with the ancient women who had made and used them. “Who are you people? What were you doing up here?” I kept yelling. It was a vertiginous 500-foot drop to the dry creekbed below. They had hauled both rocks and water up to this windy point and settled.

The shadows were already growing long. Just one more structure, we kept telling each other. I just want to check out the one on that point. Finally the sun dipped behind a ridge and we knew we had to book it. We scurried back down the hill and I put my bike in the lowest gear and pedaled until my thighs started to burn, then I got off and walked it until my quads started to burn, and so on for the whole uphill stretch. Dr. G taught me how to do switchbacks while riding, and that eased some of the pain. When rubber finally touched the the ridge top, it was pretty much dark. A few gulps of water, a few moments absorbing the deep desert quiet beneath a rusty sky, and we went for it. Dr. G was soon out of sight, cruising around the turns, a brake-free biker if there ever was one. I imagined the heat streaming off my knuckles and ears in long orange streaks until they petered out, leaving my extremities totally numb. I rounded a bend and there was the car, lights on, doors open. The adventure was over. There are some days when everything that passes my senses feels like a gift, and this was one of them. So, as always, thank you to the good gift giver.

What happens to 131 images when a memory card goes on the fritz? Do their pixels just disassociate? I had big plans for rabbits, bowls, and petroglyphs but apparently there are consequences for waiting weeks to download photos to the computer. The other day the memory card went kaput mid-sunset extravaganza. Oh well. It was under warranty.

One of the walks we went on recently was inspired by the atlas, which showed a little marker for “petroglyphs” somewhere behind our grocery store. We parked at a nearby church and found a paved pathway. Lo! We came quickly upon a jumble of boulders with carvings both old and new. Dr. G spotted the first petroglyph, a swirl that looked organic enough that I doubted his sharp eye. (Note to self: do not doubt Dr. G’s sharp eye.) We clambered up and around and found lizards, people with antlers, squiggles, and all kinds of things. There was also the word “DAN” which I assume has more recent provenance.

The best thing about the glyphs was touching them. I ran my hands over the gentle indentations and thought about other hands that had done the same, five hundred years ago or more. Most of the artifacts around here are from the industrious Hohokam people, who vanished in the late 1400’s, leaving behind buildings, petroglyphs, and irrigiation terraces, among other things. There are three long, straight piles of rock running down the valley toward our condo complex, and I wonder if they are also Hohokam, though my musings are unconfirmed.

The petroglyphs we found are pretty simple; they meander in horizontal spirals around all sides of the rocks. Some are composed mostly of straight lines, others of spirals and squiggles. My favorite lizard’s tail curls up like a lolipop. I love 3-D art, but there are so few opportunities to actually touch it. The last time I got to touch some cool art was when one of Henry Moore’s pieces — it looked like giant separated joints–stood outside the Hirshorn for a year or so. That was great; I could practically hug it. I don’t think I was really supposed to but oh well, it was outside on the sidewalk! The petroglyphs are tactile in a more small-scale, mossy porous rock kind of way. It’s fun to compare the old with the new, imagining ancient teenage boys and more recent ones connected by their graffitti.