Again, September

Once, we were there....
 

Not at all like a thief in the night but perceptibly, on Monday evening, August 21st, a good week and a half before the calendar announced ‘September’ to us, the season turned the corner. Already there had been blackberries fermenting on the stem, wafting their sickly, drunken perfume abroad, and goldenrod putting forth its brilliant pyrotechnical displays, but that Monday evening, as friends and I were finishing up the pizza they’d brought for dinner, which we’d been enjoying outdoors in the shade of black walnut and basswood trees, all at once the temperature dropped and we agreed to have dessert on the porch. The calendar didn't say so yet, but September had come. 

U.P. "home away from home" in the old days

Bessie and Heidi

Superior Hotel, Grand Marais

September used to be the time the Artist and I would take a break after our summer in the public eye – my bookstore, his gallery -- and drive up to the U.P. for a few days on Lake Superior or, the last couple of years, over to Lake Huron, where his grandfather had farmed long ago. All traces of the old farm are gone, but we hunted out his grandparents’ graves in a little country cemetery and one time ran into one of his shirttail cousins having breakfast at a lakeside diner...

... and we ventured down to the tiny crossroads of Glennie and little Vaughn Lake, where his parents had rented a cottage for a few years and for a while owned a lot that David fondly imagined, as he, a boy, cleared away popple trees with his little axe, would be his someday. When a neighbor on the lake became more than a little nutty, however, his father sold the lot. 

“Tell me a story about when you were a little boy in Detroit,” I would say when nighttime found us both sleepless. “Or the time you buried the chartreuse bop cap [his most regretted fashion faux pas] at Vaughn Lake.” Sometimes he would protest, “Oh, you know all my stories,” but I could prime the pump and weasel him into a storytelling mood every time. He was, as all friends and family will attest, a wonderful storyteller. I only wish I had recorded some of those sessions, because he was never interested in writing them down. He sometimes made brief notes for stories but never went further. Maybe, though, record his storytelling would have put a crimp in his style, and I need to be content with the memory of our intimacy and not yearn for wordy details….

I’ve been reading a very dreamy book, Pamela Petro’s The Long Field: Wales and the Presence of Absence, a Memoir. I live daily with "presence of absence” since the Artist died, but the idea she describes of having more than one sense of “home” is familiar, too, and has been since David and I went out West and I encountered and fell unexpectedly in love with mountains. Oh, and then there was Paris – and the Auvergne! I recommend the Petro book to all dreamers, but for now I ask you at least to follow this link for an introduction to the Welsh concepts of hiraeth and hwyl.

 

I did not grow up in the place where I was born, and the place where I grew up is one I longed to leave all through my childhood and youth. I love France, and I truly love Cochise County, Arizona. But Midwest, mountainless, English-speaking, Great Lakes-surrounded Michigan is my home, mon chez moi, and I cannot imagine giving it up. My own life stories are here.

Here, where every mile holds memories

 

A third echo my own life finds in The Long Field is the author’s love of stones, of rock. She writes not only of mountains but also of megaliths, rocks made to stand upright by ancient humans for reasons lost to time. The mystery of them.

 

We know we can’t live forever, but stones can, almost. Right up to the threshold of immortality. So we prop them up and carve them. We make cairns and temples and snuff bottles. Sometimes we shape them to look like us. 

 

I wonder if she has ever read David Leveson (whose name I see I spelled wrong in this old blog post). Stones, rocks, mountains – their “innocence” (as Leveson sees them) and their vast age (Petro’s focus) as compared to our own brief lives combine to make them endlessly fascinating – to those of us fascinated by them, I suppose. Perhaps others are left unmoved. Probably. Chacun à son gout, said the old lady as she kissed the pig.

Hiking Arizona rocks with a neighbor

September, though – ah, September! No more going back to school for me, either as student or teacher, and no more rambles with my love in our familiar home-away-from home, Grand Marais, with its hollyhock-lined, grass-carpeted alleys. (Here was our getaway in 2015, and another the following year.) The haunting music of the song “September When It Comes,” by Johnny and Rosanne Cash, fills me with hiraeth and the bittersweet, unquenchable longing evoked by the presence of absence.

 

On a lighter note, if you’re in Ohio and you visit these people, tell them Dog Ears Books sent you. They came to Northport and visited Dog Ears Books on August 29, 2023. 

Destination: Clear, Running Mountain Water

The day's goal --

[Note: This is the second of two outdoor adventures from February, the first having taken place on Saturday, February 18, and posted on Monday, March 6. We made this hike featured in today's post on Saturday, February 25. Sunny and I also made another expedition, mostly by road, but that one also included a walk along (and, for her, into) Bonita Creek) on March 1. Soon another batch of photos will take us on Cochise County's Ghost Town Trail, and then there there will be a trip to Italy. You won't want to miss Italy, I'm sure!]

 

Today I give you the payoff right at the beginning, in the top image, rather than beginning with a road shot, because the objective of Friday’s hike, Dragoon Springs, required first of all finding the way into the section of the Coronado National Forest where the springs are located, and that took us longer than anticipated. 

Getting to the beginning

After a couple of false starts, however, we found our trailhead. The morning was overcast, my friend bemoaning the lack of blue sky, but the dogs didn’t care. As always, they were happy to be together and ready for adventure. 

It didn’t take long for Sunny to find her first bone of the day. It wouldn’t be the last for either Sunny or Yogi. 

 

Where the road branched, we eschewed the direction leading to the old stagecoach station (there are some old stone foundation walls and the final resting place of the only Confederate soldiers to die in Arizona, which you can see here), because it was running water we wanted to see. Our destination was only a mile away – but remember, these are mountain miles. We also had to get by a big bull and several curious cows (no, no photos of the cattle -- I was otherwise occupied), but employing leashes and sticking to the road, we passed by safely. The bull moved off the road when Sunny barked. And our road curved through beautiful hilly grassland.

BIG FIND! ...Maybe too big?

 

Next dog treasure was a seriously exciting find, but Sunny decided it was too big to bring along. Anyway, the jackpot lay yet ahead….

Jackpot! Deer leg!

Now the dirt road began to twist and turn. A deep cut down below to our left held the creek, which we could glimpse now and then from our lofty edge, and you wouldn’t expect to reach a creek by going upslope, but we were going to its source, the place from which it flowed – or at least as close to the source as an old lady (moi) would be able to get. 

Twisting road

Looking over the edge...

...to water far below.

And now, here is my friend, as far along as she’s been before, which turned out to be far enough for me. We stopped long enough to take some nourishment and rest and enjoy the sight and sound of the running water….

We are there!

It is cool and beautiful!

I love it!

But then (not my idea) we went some distance farther on what quickly became a veritable goat path: a very narrow trail, all loose stones, and no “shoulder” whatsoever, which meant that one slip or false step would mean a precipitous and painful downhill slide. I managed a few photographs (largely because I was so much more comfortable stopping and standing than forging ahead) but finally admitted I needed to turn back. Thus a full day’s expedition was truncated to half a day. 

"I'm not afraid of heights. It's edges I don't like."

Looking over the edge, I was ready to turn back.

I was happy with everything I’d seen, though, not only the grand mountain vistas – always thrilling – but also the little things along the way. 

 

And the next day, Sunday, brought high winds, cold, wind-driven sleet and horizontal snow, so it was good we used the grey morning to seek out the springs. It was a beautiful place, a beautiful hike – and I have an idea for taking a new and different direction the next time we go.

Beautiful day!

Beautiful scenes!

Good dog!

Of Rocks and Time and Little Knowledge

It is hardly an accident that the city of Tucson, Arizona, is home to the largest gem and mineral show in the world. The West in general is a geologist’s dream. Everywhere, earth’s bones confront the eye or lie hidden a mere scratch below the thin, poor soil. But don’t ask me much about such matters, because the little I know of Arizona’s plant and animal life is a wealth of knowledge when set against my geologic ignorance. 

There are simple, basic divisions — sedimentary, igneous, metamorphic — and the at-least-theoretical “rock cycle,” hardly as obvious or observable or dependable as the hydrologic cycle but providing an intellectual template for making some sense of stretches of time otherwise boggling to the human mind, eternities in which humans appear a few seconds before midnight on the clock of All Time. So while I read about plates and faults, veins and dikes, when I look up from my books to the mountains themselves I feel as awed by them as Moses must have been when spoken to by the burning bush. Except that the mountains are silent and still.

Rockhounds focus on smaller, transportable pieces of the mystery, on miniatures, rocks and stones rather than whole mountains, but even these small, mysterious bits baffle me. Gordon S. Fay suggests the following minimal equipment: magnifying glass, knife, penny (copper), file, small piece of quartz, small piece of unglazed porcelain, and small bottle of hydrochloric acid (The Rockhound’s Manual, 1972). Well, I have the penny! Then there are hammers and chisels, goggles and gloves, picks, rakes, shovels, and screens. Too much! I am never going to become even a rockhound, let alone a geologist.

I do, however, enjoy casual reading about geology and, to a lesser extent, about rocks, and am occasionally driven to reference books on my shelves when a different-looking rock presents itself to me out in “the field,” as it were, i.e., in my case this winter, the dusty high desert and washes outside our cabin door. Quartz is everywhere, and I hear again the words of a young geologist who remarked drily that amateurs pick up “pretty” rocks, while geologists use more demanding criteria. Well, I appreciate the “interesting” as well as the “pretty” but have nothing like the discerning eye of a geologist. 

To identify a rock, geologic engineer Fay writes, one must study its “mineral habit” and the form of its crystal (latter most often invisible to the naked eye). The phrase “mineral habit” is charming, is it not? I think right away of plants. A plant may be upright or branching or creeping or dwarf or whatever, and those adjectives describe the particular plant’s habit. Similarly, the habit of a mineral applies to its typical form.

If a particular mineral is found to occur time after time in the form of, say, a radiating cluster of needle-like crystals, we say that this is the habit of this particular mineral. If another mineral typically occurs as a kidney-shaped mass, this is the habit of that particular mineral. Thus we have mineral habit, an extremely important aid in the identification of many minerals, especially when the crystal system of a specimen found in the field cannot be determined by inspection. 

“Mineral habit” is a nice general concept, the kind of thing that should stick in my mind when whatever specifics I briefly encounter have fallen away.

Not aspiring even to amateur standing, though, I come in from my desert walk, newly found tiny rock in hand, and reach first for the National Audubon Society Field Guide to North American Rocks and Minerals because, like Audubon field guides for birds or wildflowers, this one presents photographed specimens organized by color. Is it possible I have found a bit of turquoise? Wouldn’t that be exciting? Turquoise, the Audubon tells me, 

…can be distinguished from variscite only on the basis of blowpipe tests; chrysocolla is softer. 

Okay, thanks for that variscite tip, but I won’t be doing any blowpipe tests! How about chrysocolla? A minor ore of copper, it has been found all over Cochise County, I learn, and it was chiefly copper that was mined here in Dos Cabezas back during the town’s short-lived glory days. Fay confirms, “found in copper deposits,” and gives me a test I can try with no equipment whatsoever: 

Chrysocolla usually sticks to the tongue, and this is perhaps its best known distinguishing characteristic.

How sticky counts as sticky? All I can do is try another rock and compare the two.... Okay, yes, I’d say that, compared to something else, this small blue rock does seem to stick to the tongue. And I like that kind of test -- so much less destructive to a sample than dropping chemicals on it or hitting it with a hammer to watch it shatter and fly apart. 

When attempting to identify a tree or bird or wildflower, something common to the area is much more likely than a rare bird. I would have liked my little find to have been turquoise, but here in the copper-bearing mountains of Cochise County, I’m going to bet that a blue rock that sticks to my tongue, however lightly, is chrysocolla. And since I’ve never even heard of such a rock before today, it’s been a memorable occasion for learning, just as common, weedy little corydalis, blooming now in the wash, was an exciting for me five years ago. I’m satisfied. Once again, my books have helped.

Online searches reveal other ideas. Here, for instance, I learn that chrysocolla is a "supportive goddess energy stone" that will aid me in finding the "right words to speak to aid emotional healing in others." Who would have imagined so much power in such a tiny stone picked up at random in the dusty desert?

Happy Mountain Trails: I Passed the Test!

Reading, Beforehand the Challenge

Back in spring of 2015, my hiking guide from the Dragoon Mountains adventure and I set out to explore the old Fort Bowie road, planning to hike in from the road to the ruins of the fort. Sadly, a flat tire and a long wait for road service (a “donut” tire would not have gone far in the mountains!) ate up much of the morning, and as she was no longer confident on the unpaved, washboard road, full of sharp rocks, we went back to the highway and continued southeast to Chiricahua National Monument. The biggest error of that day, though, was taking Sarah along. Let me say only: dogs on leashes — not good for hiking in mountains! 

So this year, when my neighborhood dog-walking companion and I made a date to hike in Chiricahua, we agreed: no dogs! This was one adventure Therese and I would have without Buddy and Mollie and Sarah.

I was up before the sun on St. Patrick’s Day Sunday morning, with absolutely the perfect pre-hike reading, a copy of Range Roaming: A Birdwatcher’s 65-Plus Year Love Affair with the Chiricahua Mountains, by Betty Jones, published by the family after the authors death. I’d left off reading the night before at the end of the chapter just preceding the one on the Chiricahua National Monument, and so with my pre-dawn, pre-hike morning coffee I read about Betty’s camping and hiking and birding in the Monument itself (the Monument being only a small part of the entire mountain range), continuing after the sun had risen to the next chapter, on birding in Patagonia, where friends of ours wintered for years and where we visited them in their last year of life. That brought a few sighs, I must say, as I inspected the map closely to locate Jim and Linda’s house with respect to the creek we had forded to get there on our first visit back in the 1990s….

Range Roaming isn’t the easiest book to read or navigate, for a couple of reasons. One confusing feature is that the sketchy maps — and don’t get me wrong: I’m glad to have even sketchy maps — are not all presented in the conventional manner with North at the top of the page. In the various maps throughout the book, North can appear at the top, at the bottom, on the side; in other words, it might be anywhere. I kept turning the book around in my hands to put North at the top — but that meant trying to read the names of identified features (roads, paths, peaks, etc.) upside-down or sideways. As I say, not easy.

Another problem — for me — is that it’s obvious the manuscript preparation was not professionally done, and my inner editor and proofreader were working their fool heads off practically nonstop as I read. But that’s a personal comment, not a harsh complaint, because I am very happy to have this book, which is nothing like anything else I’ve seen on the area. It’s worth its cover price, even if the possessive its and the contraction it’s, among other little niceties of grammar and punctuation, failed to get sorted out before publication. 

Many of the hikes Jones took are no longer possible, and neither can people still camp everywhere she did, as land open to her in the 1960s and 1970s is now off-limits to the public, but other trails and campgrounds are still available, and her descriptions of the wildflowers, birds, and butterflies a visitor might hope to encounter are enough to whet the appetite of the least-educated amateur naturalist. (In fact, I can’t help regretting in advance that I will not be able to explore Chiricahua in the summer, during the exciting thunderstorms and when the bright red flowers and the various species of hummingbird that feed on them will be on full display.) I also appreciate the history of the Monument lands included with the author’s boots-on-the-ground adventures. Reading of work accomplished by the Civilian Conservation Corps, for example, I think proudly of our older Minnesota grandson and his summer work along those same lines. And while I knew the Buffalo Soldiers had played a large role in the history of southeast Arizona, I did not realize before reading it in this book that they “briefly occupied the grounds on what is now the Faraway Ranch Historic District.” This is the kind of history that means the most to me — very local history of specific individuals and groups, such that I can picture a place I know and imagine the people working there over the years.

One distracting but delightful surprise to interrupt my reading was a roadrunner on the railing outside the front door! That was a first! They come in the yard, but I’ve never seen one on a railing before. Of course, my camera was not near my reading chair, and the roadrunner fluttered down and ran down the driveway before I could try to capture the moment.

And Afterward!!!!!

Entering the Monument: Mule deer grazing

Words cannot do it justice, and photographs cannot hope to get across the wonder of Chiricahua, but words and photographs are all I have. 

The map above comes from William Ascarza’s book, Chiricahua Mountains: History and Nature, an excellent general introduction to the mountains, though without the personal tone and on-the-ground detail of the Betty Jones book. As you no doubt are thinking, the Echo Loop trail (just to the left of Massai Point) as it appears on the map doesn’t look like much of a challenge. It seems to take in a very small area of the Monument, which is itself only a small portion of the Chiricahua Mountains. A mere three miles? That’s the official distance given for the trail. A walk in the park, you say? Ah, but the first half of the hike is all descent into the canyon, the second half a return up-mountain to the parking lot, with absolutely no possibility of cutting the mountain goat hike short once you have committed to its entirety by reaching the lowest elevation. There are no roads down there, and the only way back is up, on foot.

Hikers who have commented online occasionally dispute the 3-mile official distance. One measured the Echo Loop hike as 4.1 miles, another as 4.3, and Therese warned me it would feel like at least four miles. I thought it felt more like eight — but then, I am in my eighth decade of life, and that probably makes a difference. 

Ah, difference! Difference in elevation is what really makes the challenge, and that you don’t see on the trail map. Officially, again, the change in elevation from top to bottom is given as 554’, but again, at least one hiker’s family was sure they had descended and reascended 750’ on the Loop. But I should add that Echo Loop is the Monument’s most popular trail, and no one who left a comment online failed to note its beauty and grandeur, i.e., no one was complaining! And I’m not, either, just kind of bragging, I guess, though younger, sturdier, most experienced outdoor adventure people don’t see this hike as bragging material.

Horses were here...

Okay, here’s a bit of what it’s like. The trail is narrow for almost its entire length, with dizzying drop-offs to the side. A few stretches have stone steps built in, others are loose rock and scree, while occasionally dirt or mud (there was a lot of precipitation this past winter) registered prints of horses’ feet. The evidence of horses on the trail amazed me, all the more the farther we went. The horses had done the entire trail, stopping to refresh themselves at the creek near the end. I kept thinking of the horse named Whiskey in the movie “Lonely Are the Brave” and told Therese she has to see that movie.

...on this very narrow trail!

(What would it be like to travel Echo Loop on horseback? It is difficult enough to take in all the scenery. A hiker has to watch his or her footing pretty continually, for starters, but one wants to inspect closely the beautiful lichens and weathered dead trees close at hand, as well as — of course! — looking up at the magnificent hoodoos and out across the long vistas that are sometimes all rock, sometimes forested slopes, occasionally a glimpse back down into the Sulphur Springs Valley. If, in addition to these desires, were I on horseback I would also have the distraction of wanting to pay attention to and praising and encouraging my brave, wonderful horse. It might be too much for me.) 

The “standing-up” rocks defy comprehension -- but so do the ordinary lying-down rocks. Thoughts of their origins and great age, the erosion that has created their present form over millenia, and the knowledge that millions more years will change them utterly from what they are today — all these things deepen the appreciation of anyone viewing their magnificence. What stories the trees could tell! Little lizards scooting about and sunning themselves probably think nothing of earth’s history, only of what they will eat next and how good the sun’s warmth feels.

There were parts of the trail where the wind was cold and biting, other parts, later, farther on, where we shed our jackets and basked in the sun like lizards. We enjoyed our lunch, for instance, in sunshine, and I never did put my jacket back on, as carrying it on my backpack, while burdensome, was the lesser uncomfortable choice. When my camera battery gave out before the halfway mark, I had to resort to my phone for photographs but took fewer even of those as we neared the elusive end of the trail. Luckily, the camera was still working when we saw before us this adventurous young woman on top of a high perched rock.

I could never attempt such a feat! Could I even make it all the way around the Loop? There is no alternative! Therese and I gave each other sour looks as a young jogger passed us on the trail. Show-off! “He’s only in his twenties,” Therese said to comfort me, as I insisted on yet another stop to rest and take in water. My hiking guide and companion, who knows the trail very well from years of experience on it, was very patient with someone old enough to be her mother. She was very happy that my enthusiasm, if not my energy, matched her own.

The rocks!

"Balanced" rock

Obligatory classic goofy pose

There were also cool, dark places, very welcome once the sun had warmed up the day. 

I was glad we did go all the way to the bottom of the trail, even though it meant having to go all the way back up, because thanks to all the rain and snow this past winter the creeks were running cold and fresh. This section of stream with a series of pools and miniature waterfalls was worth all the effort it took to reach it. 

The fact is, there were many people on the trail that day. It was a Sunday and spring break, and the weather could not have been more beautiful, so we let many parties of younger people go around us. One unexpected encounter with a couple from Quebec (while I was resting yet again) gave me a chance to speak French, always a spirit-lifter. But really, the scenery was spirit-lifting the entire time we were on the trail. We heard someone telling another person that the trail could be done in two hours. That annoyed Therese, who thought the estimate short of reality — and reality for us, because she had me with her, slowing her down, was that we were on the trail over four hours on Sunday.

Oh, the combinations of trees and rocks, each one more enchanting than the one before!

The farther along the trail, however, the more frequent my need to stop and rest, drink water and inspect every miniature landscape within sight, along with taking the long views outward. The last two-tenths of a mile, for me, seemed endless — or, at least I thought that was the longest, most difficult stretch, climbing ever upward (or should I say trudging?), until we were within sight of the parking lot again — and then I thought the last 200 yards were the longest distance I had traveled in my lifetime. 

Miniature landscape

But this old lady made it! She was not voted off the mountain but staggered on until the very end!

Of all the glorious and truly awesome views I took in that day, one that speaks volumes to me is this simple image of a manzanita sprawling and blooming on a large flat rock on the edge of the mountain. Its aesthetic Japanese, it is an entire landscape in itself and illustrates beautifully the plant’s tenacious perseverance, dogged survival, and adaptation to environment. 

One more thing I have to say. I kept thinking of Cochise and the other Chiricahua Apaches and how their homeland was stolen from them and they banished to, of all places, Florida. How could any people who called this place home ever be happy anywhere else? 

But also -- one more thing -- my hat is off to Betty Jones and all her miles and years of hiking and learning in the Chiricahua Mountains. Good job, Betty! I have a tiny idea now of the great lifetime you accomplished.