End of the line, end of my rope, end of the world as we've made it

I've started to take the road less traveled a couple days a week now, religiously. And I don't speak about the road in my mind; that was always a strange, meandering path that only I could ever fully be friends with, and I venture down it continually. No, I'm speaking about my now firm habit of driving to the end of the line, just like in that Traveling Wilburys song, only...not in a train.

The road less traveled begins after picking up my daughter from preschool. Her brother's asleep, and I've stopped fighting his habit of dropping out of the bustle just as we go to pick her up. Instead I've taken to ambushing friends to watch the car while I dash in to fetch my little girl. I tell her to be very, very quiet (we're hunting wabbits), and then I throw some snacks and coloring books her way over her sleeping brother's golden head, and we start out.

I have a minimum of 45 minutes to kill. I could park and read, but inevitably my little guy will wake up, and then I'll have to pitch my newspaper aside with all due haste at that first cry and hush and drive, hush and drive, hoping to heaven he falls asleep again. So I drive the whole time. I drive in a minivan with a poor engine, squeaky brakes and a bad turn radius down a promising road, hoping to reach its end and always hoping for a good result. If the road just happens to have a fetching view of my beautiful behemoth, South Mountain, it's a bonus.

South Mountain as viewed from the south

(Yes, I'd probably prefer being home writing during my mischievous toddler's naptime, but it's a no go. He no longer makes the peaceful trip from carseat to bed without turning into a little goblin of malcontent. And I can never do without that peaceful midday break.)

Sometimes I'm disappointed with where the road leads. It ends behind a shopping complex or in the private roadway of some manufacturing facility or it curves and merges with another thoroughfare. Once I was scared, because I took a lonely road west, and I had a fantastical feeling it was going to smack into the side of some sheer and intimidating mountains. Instead, the street merged onto a highway headed south into the emptiness of this desert where the Sonoran plants thin out and things get plain and ugly, and there were no stoplights anymore and no streets to turn around on, only a few fast, soulless vehicles going around my hesitant van. For the world, I couldn't comprehend where they were headed to clutch civilization's last straw. For my part I felt I was being swept away from all human warmth, from my family and my home, led astray out of Phoenix by a highway from which I couldn't escape. On that day, at last, I ended up turning aside onto an Indian reservation's private lane.

Sometimes, though, the buildings drop away, and it's not at all scary when the stoplights become less frequent. The saguaro rears its proud head, other cacti dot the brown earth and the desert scrub kisses the road. The pavement is lonely, and the road noise keeps my young one asleep. Best of best, I'm driving toward more mountains, and I just might reach their flanks before I have to pick up my eldest kids from school, or at least before my baby wakes up. As for my precious preschooler, I glance back her way in the rearview, wondering if she's satisfied with the silence, the books and the journey and whether the scenery captivates her at all.

I found the foothills of South Mountain on a naptime excursion. There the road ends; here the hiking trail begins - no wheels, just feet please.

I had hoped in such a way to approach the mountains behind South Mountain. They little resemble its friendly, expansive slopes. I don't know their names, but I look at them and think Sheer Rock; they rise with purpose from the earth's floor, peaks like arrow heads. Their color is different, less earth tone, more sky reflecting blue. To reach them I began on a fairly young highway which turned into a road with human construction on the north and nothing but desert to the south. Stands of trees with yellow blossoms lined the middle of the divided street, stark against the smoky grey of the mountains and the unusually overcast sky.

I drove west (it's my new east) until I saw an all too familiar reflective barricade with a sign that read The Road Ends and No Stopping. The mountains were still a long way distant, the end of this road several miles shy of my destination - wilderness.

Dad off the ground, way off the ground

On the turn around back to the highway, I contemplated  power lines, their tall towers far removed from the road and their poles adjacent to it. I recalled how my parents told me that on the day Mom went into labor with me, Dad was out seeking work, and he found it in building power lines across these Western United States. That was also the day he stopped shaving and began growing out his hair, because he worked "light to light" and was often exhausted with no inclination to maintain a smooth face or a cropped mane. I never see power lines against the vast open sky or silhouetted against mountains without thinking about my Dad hanging out way above the earth with a smile on his bearded face, about the stories he told of that dangerous work, some hilarious and some sad, and of the great friends who shared it with him. The names of those friends inhabit legend for us kids because of Dad's storytelling.

A drive to the end of the road is a perfect retreat for exploring the wilderness of such memories and reflections. So thank you, my little son...for the nap, the memories and another quiet drive to the end of a line.

A post in pictures...Beautiful Behemoth

Beautiful Behemoth is my pet name for a mountain that I adore called South Mountain. I would say its proper name is uninspired, a directional label that does not attempt to encapsulate the humble, friendly spirit of its scrubby, cacti-dotted slopes. But I consider everything pertaining to this mountain, including its pedestrian name, to be special by association.

This mountain brings me joy just to look at it, just to drive down the street nearly every morning toward it. When its gentle lines are smeared with the smog of this wide city or rare storm clouds obscure its shape, it disheartens me. My eye is always searching for it; it's my natural compass in a vast valley of human contrivance. Thus I am anxious for true blue of sky to carve it plain against the western horizon.

A couple days after Christmas, my family hiked its trails with a friend and her family, at last Matthew keeping his promise to take me up it. It was a post-Christmas celebration of nature in the Southwest, and I loved every minute of it, even when the shortest trails were closed for wildlife, even when for tactical reasons (in favor of future hiking) I relieved my husband of the hiking backpack with our youngest in it (Matthew warned me how heavy it was even as I stoutly insisted he give me a turn, my shot at the physical burn), and even as couples and solitary urban adventurers marveled and exclaimed at our bravery in traversing its crests and valleys with a gaggle of six children in tow.

In fact, I was glad to have the company of those children, especially of my own for whom hiking is a fresh experience. And I thought it fortunate that we had to take the long route and that our feet were forced in longer communion with the mountain. I was glad of the company of my good friend and her family, because without them, my husband would have paused at the first good rise in the trail, clapped his hands together, and announced with finality that it was time to go home. The company of my friend's pug Buster was a blessing, too, because my eldest son had the little dog's company on the hike among so many little girls, and it built his confidence when he was able to keep the eager little animal from nipping at the pounding feet of runners or from chasing the hypnotic wheels of the bicyclists.

It was a long hike for a family so foreign to the exercise. I am proud to write that our kids did not complain but instead were invigorated by the views and by the climb, eager to plan the next trip. Miraculously, my muscles did not squeal the next day when I attempted to walk. My husband's and my own shoulders ached a little from carrying our youngest, but they didn't cramp at all. Even more of a marvel, my husband said he was not adverse to doing a hike again, someday, if the trail was shorter.

This hike was meant to be, I plainly and gladly believe, the first of many up South Mountain. I can't wait to drive to its base another fine, clear winter morning, jumping with anticipation and ready for my visit with Mother Nature.

                            

Beautiful Behemoth

I've fallen in love with a mountain. Do you suppose that's normal? Is there a cure for it, do you think?

Obviously, this has never happened to me before, though I've heard rumors of others' infatuations. For the life of me, I don't know why it's happened to me now. The mountain I love is an old acquaintance; I've seen it every time I've driven west for the past nine years. But one day, I looked up casually over my dashboard, and for the first time I saw it, really saw it, my Beautiful Behemoth.

Now I head west on purpose just to make eyes at it. I catch my breath a little when the trees and buildings recede some, and I can get a fuller view of its expansive charms - its chisled face, broad shoulders, its bulk. It is at once mammoth yet handsome, its wide face highlighted in purple shadow. When I drive east, I glance repeatedly in my rearview mirror at its silhouette, pondering how its form morphs with each mile.

It is so bad that once Matthew, My Man, said to me sharply, "Keep your eyes on the road, Woman!"

But I could not help it. Even in the dim late evening light, it was fetching.

Last week, I took a little day trip to a dear friend's house across the Phoenix valley. I had to travel home on four different highways which always constitutes an adventure in my book. But you know, I didn't even mind, because first, I love my friend and see her too little, and second, I got to view my Beautiful Behemoth from the west and see how it swept majestically across miles of this valley floor. I practically swooned right there behind the wheel seeing it in all its afternoon glory.

Yes, it's bad. Bad, indeed. For wherever I go in town, I seek a glimpse of it. I disdain to travel farther east than home, because I am heading away from it. I want to be nearer it, to actually buy a house close to it, so that I can build a relationship with it. Not right at its feet, mind you. I don't want it to lose its mystique, become too familiar if I'm able to step out my back door right onto its heels. No, but I do long to see it from my home and not have its face obscured by all the city clutter between it and I. I want to see its shoulders slowly illuminated with the sunrise as I raise my coffee cup in cheerful greeting.

Oh, we could become glad friends, Beautiful Behemoth and I.

As my gentle reader can guess, this southwestern town, like so many western towns, is rimmed on every side by mountains of varying height and breadth. But I am faithful to my one and only. I cannot be swayed by the iconic shape of Cambelback Mountain. I cannot even be called astray by the rugged mystery of the folklore-laden Superstitions. And the rest? Well, I don't even know their names, nor do I care to. Some of them have the most ridiculous lumps and spikes as they heave in an abrupt hiccup from the desert clay. They are nothing to the graceful lines of my Beautiful Behemoth.

My husband Matthew is an extraordinary man, because, eschewing all jealous feelings, he has promised to take me hiking up Beautiful Behemoth's trails come fall when the weather cools. I cannot wait. I only hope that when I examine it that closely, when I'm able to see up close all the fissures and scrub on its face, I shall not love my mountain any less for its personality.