Delirious Ramblings

At the Bristlecone Wall

The Bristlecone Wall, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, January 2012

When I finally reached the thin green line of prostrated bristlecone pines on Agassiz Peak the trees presented me with a choice: If I blundered my way through their ranks and up the summit ridge I would be allowed to stand atop the mountain with only ravens and the blue air above. But the price of that rocky pinacle would be very high: the sound of those trees' ancient limbs cracking and snapping under my weight, of seeing my bootprints pressed carelessly into the cindery alpine tundra. Or... I could willingly abort my climb there at the base of the bristlecone wall, cede victory to the Kachinas, and descend with my wilderness ethics intact, leaving those shining Methuselahs undisturbed in their high and hostile abode.

I'd always thought I would do the right thing when faced with the choice between their well-being and the bragging rights for bagging Arizona's second highest point, but until you are actually there, staring up at those fragile and vulnerable trees after something like 3,800 vertical feet of difficult climbing with only a few hundred more to go, well... you don't really know, do you? Summit fever can afflict the best of us, make us do things we wouldn't normally do.

I looked up at the great pyramid of stone above me, imagined what the view down into the Inner Basin would look like from the top, how the thin breeze blowing along the summit ridge would feel ... and I let it all slip away. I turned back. For their sake I would not walk upon the summit that day.

I had passed the test.

Where Green Stones Flow Like Water

The River of Green Stones, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, January 2012

I'm knee deep in last year's snow, working my way slowly along the face of the mountain when I finally see light ahead through the thick spruce and bristlecone pine forest. I head for it, hoping to see the sun. When I break free of the crusty snow and gloom I find myself on the banks of a river of green lichen and gray lava.

I wade out into it, mindful of the rollers and tippy flat plates, and look upstream. The great river of rock extends upwards for a million years. Downstream is the same. It is a raging torrent frozen in time, the rumblings and stirrings of earth paused in mid flow. Around me I can feel the trembling potential energy in the ancient rocks, all that repressed gravity waiting these many millennia.

 

The River of Green Stones, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, January 2012

They say the San Francisco Peaks are extinct, that they've been asleep for a quarter million years or so and unlikely to ever reawaken. Extinct. Dormant. I guess that's technically true as far as geologists and science is concerned, but standing there in the middle of the frozen jumble of stone with the ancient lava rapids roaring in my ears, somehow it doesn't feel true.

I poke at one of the lichen covered boulders with the carbide point of one of my snowshoe poles. It moves imperceptibly, tips ever so slightly. I hear it grate softly against its mates. I can't help but think about Aron Ralston and his 127 hours.

A little unnerved I stand and work my way across the expanse of rocks quickly and carefully. I let out a little sigh of relief when I reach the other side, having safely forded the river.

No, it doesn't feel true at all. Dormant my ass, this damned mountain is alive.

Liftoff

Liftoff, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, January 2012

Leroux Sunrise

San Francisco Peaks, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, January 2012

Sunrise is still a half hour away when I leave my truck and hike uphill into the forest, angling northeast across the feet of the San Francisco Peaks. The previous night's stillborn snowstorm is dragging a powerful cold front behind it and a biting wind is pushing down from the heights of the mountain. The treetops are swaying wildly back and forth disconcertingly. The gusts are at the upper range of comfort and I think seriously about packing it in, turning around, heading back down the mountain. It's risky being here at this time, dangerous even, but I decide to push on.

The woods are in a strange, apprehensive mood that I haven't felt here before. I find myself pausing often to listen and peer through the gloom, watching for movement behind fallen logs or shapes among the boulders. There is nothing, yet I can't help but wonder about skinny, winter-starved mountain lions and cranky, insomniac black bears.

 

Leroux Sunrise, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, January 2012

Sunrise approaches and I step out of the relative shelter of the trees into the vacuum of the old Leroux burn where I can look up at the mountains. It is good to be out of the murkiness, although in the open the windchill is very low -- single digits at most -- and my fingers ache and burn and go numb as I ready my camera.

When the austere January dawn finally breaks upon the mountain it is thin and cold and beautiful.

Is there any better way to spend a Sunday morning?

On Wilson Mountain

Wilson Mountain Summit, Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness, December 2011

My sometime hiking buddy and I spent one of the last days of 2011 exploring the upper reaches of Wilson Mountain in the Red Rock - Secret Mountain Wilderness area near Sedona. Wilson is a vast flat-topped mountain that juts out from the Mogollon Rim and forms part of the western wall of the infamous Oak Creek Canyon that is so popular with tourists and daytrippers. The Wilson Mountain Trail begins at the Midgely Bridge on Highway 89A just north of Sedona and climbs up a steep canyon through Pinyon-Juniper woodlands onto a high "bench" before switchbacking another thousand feet to the top of the mountain and spectacular 360-degree views.

Wilson Mountain Trail is one of the most popular trails on the Red Rock district, which is why I've been avoiding it for all these years. I think Wilson Mountain fills much the same role for Sedona as Mount Elden does in Flagstaff: It has a difficult trail on it with reasonably good parking and it's close to town, so trail runners and tourists flock to it. The day we went there weren't many other hikers due to the mud and snow above the first bench, but I suppose at more favorable times of the year the chances of having an actual wilderness experience up there are pretty slim.

 

Wilson Mountain, Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness, December 2011

The human-caused Brins Mesa Fire of June, 2006 slicked off much of the Ponderosa and Douglas fir forest on top of the mountain, leaving behind a wasteland of charred trunks, parallel logs, and clusters of rampaging Gambel oak and thorn bushes. Not all of the trees are gone, but it was still a pretty serious fire. In the future I think the top of Wilson will have large grassy meadows, a lot more Alligator juniper, and patches of beautiful oak forest with all the associated wildlife and birds that go along with that. But for now the mountain is still sorting out the aftereffects of the fire, so be prepared for the shock of seeing plenty of dead trees up there.

 

Wilson Mountain, Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness, December 2011

Because of the snow - quite deep in places - we had to posthole much of the way to the summit where we could look out over Oak Creek Canyon and back towards Flagstaff. We ate our lunches perched on a log, suspended mere feet from the edge and screaming weightlessness. I admired the view of the San Francisco Peaks, some thirty miles to the north, while shots of adrenaline spiked my peanut butter and jelly sandwich with blue electricity. In hindsight I probably wouldn't have chosen that spot for my lunch had I been hiking solo, which just goes to show that having a partner along with you doesn't necessarily make you safer.

 

San Francisco Peaks from Wilson Mountain, Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness, December 2011

Hours later and a thousand feet lower on the first bench we stopped among a stand of Alligator juniper and spiny agave. Before our eyes the glaring bright afternoon sun slowly transformed the patchy snow into sticky clay and trickling rivulets, the trail vanishing beneath a quagmire of mud and ten-pound platform shoes. While we were sitting there discussing some philosophical question - perhaps the relative impacts of primitive societies on the environment versus contemporary ones - a pair of tattooed hikers approached us to ask directions to the summit.

 

Wilson Mountain, Red Rock-Secret Mountain Wilderness, December 2011

They were wearing thin summer-weight clothing, running shoes, and had no visible cold weather gear along with them. We cautioned them about the steep, icy trail and the deep snow above, yet incredibly they continued on. Dressed like that and with only a couple hours of good daylight remaining it was dangerous for them to do so. They were so confident and so utterly clueless that I doubt we could've worded a warning strong enough to dissuade them from their late afternoon summit fever.

I guess we all have to learn our own lessons.

Eulogy for Unwanted Trees

Unwanted Trees, December 2011

Over the holiday break the forces of progress took the little patch of ponderosa trees behind the building where I work on NAU campus. A 45,000 square foot office building will be going up back there and, well, those trees had to go. But unlike another recent tree-cutting project on north campus, there was no effort made to save the trees, no facebook campaign, no twitter alerts, no "trees are people, too" posters, and no forums with the President attended by concerned employees and students that I am aware of. Instead there was only silence and a sense of crushing inevitability. A few of us grumbled and lamented the coming loss, but most greeted the news of the impending clear-cut with yawning indifference or were glad that there would soon be more office space on campus.

 

Unwanted Trees, September 2011

And so, with little forewarning on a day when the university was closed and most employees and students were away for the Christmas break, the contractors arrived. They were armed with a feller-buncher and a skidder and in less than two days' work the trees were gone, replaced by too much sky and a flat, brown plain of disturbed earth. Around the periphery of the plot the cutters spared a handful of the largest and oldest pines and a few clumps of younger trees, presumably to keep some semblance of a natural forest setting when the construction is complete.

 

Unwanted Trees, January 2012

I'm sure the University has very good reasons why we need another office building, why the last patch of undeveloped green on west campus was not worth preserving. No one asked them about the grand plan so they didn't bother telling, I guess. And after all, it's their land to do with as they please. But you know what? That reasoning is beginning to wear thin with me. Maybe I've spent too much time in bruised and burned wastelands these past couple of years, studied the aftermath of too much destruction and found too little hope in the ashes and the stubble, because I doubt they could've said anything that would've convinced me that those trees were less valuable than an office building. I think it's getting to be too late in the game to be cutting down healthy trees lightly, no matter who owns them or where they're growing.

 

Unwanted Trees, January 2012

And so this is my little eulogy, my little lament for those unwanted trees, the ones sacrificed for an office building. Before long the construction will be complete, a platoon of fast growing non-native scotch pines planted, and no one will remember that a little slice of forest survived there into the second decade of the 21st century. Even now, only days later, my memories of those trees are beginning to fade and take on the golden hues of the good old days.

Onwards and upwards.

Trees in the Key of LED

Weeks ago I heard a rumor that in the city to the south there was a place where for ten dollars you can watch binary trees flicker and glow in all the moods of heatless neon. It seemed an obvious falsehood, the demented whisperings of television journalists and late-night commercials. Glowing trees! Puuuleeaase! But still, such talk often contains a kernel of truth so like tardy magi we undertook a post-Christmas journey to see for ourselves.

 

Trees in the Key of LED, December 2011

When we arrived at the Mecca of light we discovered that others had also made the pilgrimage and that just a hundred feet from the gates they’d created a kind of purgatory for themselves. We waited an eternity in lines of lines and queues of queues, shuffling our feet and muttering dark oaths and incantations under our breath. When at last we reached the gatekeeper we swapped hard cash for printed tickets and were ushered inside where all the rumors were proven true and more.

 

Trees in the Key of LED, December 2011

Inside were the great wondrous trees of fever dreams and James Cameron movies, their trunks and limbs sheathed in shimmering digital radiance and coursing with kilowatts of unseen power. Vast networks of chaotic branches arched high overhead, outlined in red and green and blue light. As I stood rapt beneath them they flickered and danced and sang the song of the body electric against the starless night sky.

Jesus H. Christ, imagine the electric bill, I thought.

 

Trees in the Key of LED, December 2011

At the feet of the great scintillated trees a crazy carnival of vendors sprouted like mushrooms. The pungent odor of movie theater popcorn and cotton candy mixed with the earthy smell of elephant dung. Children ran and swarmed like flies, wildly waving glowing lightsabers above their heads. Bored camels waited in a pen, slowly shifting their weight from one side to the other while parents opened their wallets and wriggling kids were hoisted up on their tall humped backs.

Many years ago on the other side of the world I'd watched similar camels dash across a lonely desert highway, their brown bulks floating weightless across the sand, barely touching the ground. Men dressed in robes and checkered keffiyehs had run after them, playing at a sort of tag that had been going on since time immemorial. My companion and I waved at them, but the desert tribesmen didn't trust our uniforms or our M-16 rifles or our odd ideologies and simply ran faster, prompting the camels to race ahead even farther.

I looked at the camels in their glowing fluorescent corral and wondered if they remembered the desert - their desert. When the last visitors were gone and the lights finally turned out, did the electric camels dream of sand and open vistas of shimmering heat?

 

Trees in the Key of LED, December 2011

When we’d circumnavigated the Lite-Brite world and found ourselves back at the beginning I noticed the waxing crescent moon floating overhead. It hung there in the blackness heavy and grinning with meaning. Whoever had placed it there had precisely matched it to the real lunar cycle, even positioned it so it would be visible in the western sky where the real moon would be setting this late December. Perhaps it was only a random coincidence, the workings of pure chance, but in that alignment I thought I smelled the logic of purpose.

 

Waxing Crescent Moon, December 2011

Around us the children laughed and adults snapped final blurry pictures with their camera phones and remarked at how beautiful the lights had been. Beyond the facade of high technology luminescence and carny commercialism the extravaganza of LED trees had perhaps tickled some lost genetic memory: we knew the glowing trees were beautiful and to be appreciated, that the lights were important, that there was something special and powerful going on in that place. I suspect few (if any) of us understood exactly what.

 

Trees in the Key of LED, December 2011

As we left I wondered what an eighteenth century Navajo medicine man would've thought of the flickering trees and their high-tech spectacle. Would he have marvelled at them as we did? Would he have feared them and their digital song of electricity? Or would he have simply shrugged and said that trees always glowed like that and that we were blind to think otherwise?

Blogging Hiatus

Forest on Fremont Peak, Kachina Peaks Wilderness, December 2011

I always hate it when bloggers I follow go into radio silence without warning, so as a courtesy to the handful of people who follow this blog: I've decided to take a blogging hiatus until at least after the holidays. I've been doing this for a long time now -- something like five and a half years -- and it's time for a vacation. So all you blog peeps have a merry christmas and happy new year's and all that!

Total Eclipse of the Moon

Total Eclipse of the Moon, Flagstaff, AZ, December 2011

It's eight degrees Fahrenheit in the deserted soccer field and my face and ears are frozen. I lean against the steel trunk of a street light to steady my shivering hands enough to take a few photographs. Beneath the sound of big rigs jamming gears on the interstate a mile away I can hear the muted buzzing of the sodium vapor light glowing above.

There is a long pause in which the world holds its breath before the last smokey sliver of the moon slips behind shadow. For a moment I am conscious of the tickings of vast clockworks and the mathematics of spheres and light. I glance around me at the slumbering houses and condominiums bordering the field.

"Hey!" I want to scream at the shuttered windows. "Where the hell is everybody? Wake up, this is really important! You people should be seeing this!"

But the shout never escapes my lips and the feeling of having glimpsed the workings of the universe fades. I sigh and put my camera in my pocket. 

The sun will be rising soon and it's just another day.

Moon and Spruce

Moon and Spruce, Flagstaff, AZ, December 2011

Tonight's nearly full moon rising over Flagstaff. I guess the actual 100% full moon doesn't come until early Saturday morning.