Outside there's a grey sky and intense desert breeze, bringing in the only rain of spring. The darkness feels luxurious in a place that only ever gets sun. I've been in Arizona now for several weeks and am starting to feel the spirit again, the thrill of pausing while passing through, of walking the same paths but taking different turns.
A couple of weeks ago, I was coming down from a 3-hour hiking excursion in dad's backyard (which butts up against South Mountain Park and Preserve), exhausted and waterless, when I spotted a young man walking toward a bush. He turned around and laughed and said “nope”. “Trying to find the path?” I asked. “Yep,” he said. “Do you know where it is?” “Nope, I said, I was hoping to follow you.” We were headed the same direction and talked the whole way back to the cars, where we exchanged numbers for future hiking excursions.
We went to the Superstition Wilderness a week later to Massacre Falls. The wilderness is east of Phoenix and stretches more than 160,000 acres across a mostly barren landscape, spotted with cacti and painted with gorgeous yellow wildflowers between the dry brush. Away from bustling South Mountain, the 5.4 mile hike led us along dirt paths that mostly gently rose to an elevation of more than 1,000 feet. There was only a trickle of water at the "falls", but the hum of hundreds of buzzing bees sipping nectar and big birds nosediving, and so much green after all I’ve seen is brown.
We talked about dancing and how he's into salsa and swing, and I told him I've always wanted to try. We talked, too, of all the places we’d traveled and where we were going next, and how he’s thinking of buying a second home or a van. In the parking lot after the hike, we chatted with a couple that had one of those Mercedes camper vans; they pressed buttons for the beds to come down, and they tugged at a shower curtain to show us where they kept the cassette toilet. It was cool, and I used to daydream about that camper life, of building a getaway car and going anywhere, but I realized I'm not an extremist: I love big comfy beds and hot showers and making last-minute hotel reservations that, in the end, likely add up to a fraction of the cost of purchasing and maintaining a van. My Subie has taken me cross country and treated me well.
After the hike, Doug made a U-turn at an “Art Show” sign, and we followed the signs until we found ourselves in expensive homes and yards, with tables of art set against the backdrop of the Superstitions. The crowd was mostly retired and wine-sipping away from the scorching sun, fan-breezing themselves and laughing about their own leisure–it’s hard work, they mused. I bought some cool cactus earrings from a woman who was also selling one of those turquoise bear claw necklaces that reminds me so much of Mom’s. The last house we went to looked like a compound, with multiple buildings and an art studio with lots of porcelain and paint. There was a man there sitting next to wind sculptures under a shade umbrella who told us he was designing a shirt with stick figures of all these men doing “manly” things, and the catchphrase would be “real men define themselves”. He had one of those bellies of older men who eat too much and say something snarky when their wives call them fat. I looked past him to the lemon tree and the man across the table, young and stoic under the brim of his Amish hat.
This past weekend, we drove north to Payson, a little more than an hour outside of Phoenix, to hike the Barnhardt Waterfall trail. We took Subie up a long dirt road and to an already full parking lot, but the trail wasn’t at all crowded. The views were gorgeous the whole hike, big sloping mountains with undulating crevices in the cliffs. We passed a couple of bearded handsome hikers who told us a previous group had spotted a mountain lion on the trail (!!!) and I thought for sure they were messing with us, only to run into the group later who confirmed that it was true! I often worry about bears without giving too much thought to other beautiful predators lurking around; but since I was hiking with a friend and not alone, I spent the rest of the hike scanning the panorama for sleek movement not out of concern but out of curiosity, really wanting to see one from afar.
We finally arrived at the waterfall almost three miles in; it was flowing only a little but way more than at Massacre Falls and made all the stone a cold slick; we climbed on some rocks and took pictures and hiked further until we reached small pines. Doug realized we’d passed the end of the trail at the waterfall and now were following the 12-mile Barnhardt Trail. The “top” of that trail seemed close--just a couple miles farther than what we'd already hiked--but five minutes turned into ten and then fifteen, and finally we decided we should turn around and have some lunch. We found a perfect little place with a few big boulders, so we spread out and talked for a long while, a lot about relationships, both our own experiences and our theories. I ate half my PB&J and lounged, enjoying both the quiet and the conversation that filled it in.
After the hike, we drove to Payson for some food and ended up at the Beeline Café where we ate delicious burgers and fries and talked more about my potential plans to work remotely in Germany. "You have to do it," Doug told me; I looked at him from across the table and realized he was right--it was that moment when you think of something for months and months and other people say it's a good idea but then somebody is the last person to say it before it's like you know what, why do I keep putting this off. It's that whole idea of meeting people at random intervals along their respective journeys, and how happenstance inspires both new and overdue action.
After the burgers, we went to an antique shop, bar, and then frozen yogurt shop before heading back. Inside the ice cream shop we saw “Missy’s crepes” on the menu and of course had to try it–it was creamy and full of not-quite-sweet strawberries, but still a delight. The owners gave us a free “anything on the menu” since they were new in business and trying to promote themselves, so we ate a few spoons of street corn and I doodled on the dry erase board on the wall and got RickRolled with a suspicious URL.
The drive back from Payson to Phoenix is so gorgeous at sundown, when the clouds sling pink across rocky mountain vistas and the whole sky glows an impossible orange, and so I stayed in the right lane the whole time and didn’t even speed.
It's nearly dinner time now and the pavement outside is a very rare wet, and South Mountain is bare and glistening; there’s a distant chirping amid the windchimes and loud, heavy breeze.
To cap off the weekend, I went salsa dancing for the first time with Doug yesterday. I put on mascara and acid wash jeans, heels and a crop top. I pressed my palms against strangers and let them lead me around the open-air room, spinning and pulling and pressing and nearly crashing so many times into everyone else. I kept my gaze on them, remembering spin pole and how you can’t look away or you’ll get dizzy, so dizzy, and it worked; they touched my back and waist and red-painted nails and brushed against my hair and dipped me and tried to teach me things and came back for me even when I nearly stepped on them and lost my rhythm time and time again. I sipped on an only-okay Moscow mule but totally stayed sober; there was such a lightness and joy and buzz in all the sweat and salsa.
Afterward, we rode home with the Mustang’s top down. The streets were dark and had peculiar smells–trash, then something sweet like flowers. We listened to Swedish House Mafia as I closed my eyes and felt the cool breeze. "Thank you for this weekend," Doug said as my fingers hovered near the heater vents, "I haven’t thought about work at all." I'd forgotten about it, too, and about all the other little things that occupy my mind, that fester and stagnate when I haven't given my brain space to breathe. It all reminded me of one of the first things he and I talked about: that for life to happen, you have to walk out of your door.
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