Climbing Waterfalls

On a crisp sunny desert day I found myself on a desert ride with friends. We wandered windy roads in a truck that seemed mountain goats designed. It clung to treacherous mountain roads and carried us onto the truly beaten wild roads that tame cars shudder to think about and mufflers clench.

View of Apache Lake and Mountains from Apache Trail

We eventually settled on the more sedate Apache Trail past Canyon Lake and through Fish Creek Canyon. Those who've driven that road know the irony of using sedate in it's description. Generously it is a lane and a half of winding dirt mountain roads with railings that seem to be made from pizza boxes. Rusting wrecks on the side of the mountain inspire caution as you navigate the washboard and washout areas. There is the ever present wonder if you will come around a corner to find someone coming the other way too fast. Somehow you make it through. It is worth it. The views are of vast distances where geology shows off it's capacity for artistic beauty. Mountains molded by water and wind, shaded by the minerals within them. We parked at the bottom, at Fish Creek Canyon. I love hiking there when the water level is low. I love seeing the slender waterfalls dropping hundreds of feet on days like this one. Three waterfalls over hundreds of feet in height brought recent rainfall from the tops of the mountains down to the plants waiting here.

Within moments of parking, my friend Elan and I found a waterfall we could hike up. We could go in any direction. We both were drawn like magnets to the shining, gurgling water. We danced over rocks and water, weaving back and forth like human needles making our way from the pooling short falls at the bottom up around to where we could stand within feet of water coming straight down the mountain over a hundred feet before working its way down to the stream it would join below.

Standing in the remote wilderness, crouched under a thorn tree within inches of ice cold mountain water I realized something. I am the kind of person who climbs waterfalls. There are people who do all sorts of things. It takes all kinds. I love climbing waterfalls. Getting behind them, beneath them, standing in them. The sound, the feel, the beauty. It can be dangerous. It can be foolish. What kind of nitwit seeks out wet, potentially slippery rock and says "climbing that is a great idea!" I am one of those nitwits. Now, I am not going to go up a break neck two hundred feet free climb up a waterfall. But I am going to boulder hop my way to the top or to hidden areas of twisty ones with terrain that practically begs me to climb it.  It is always worth it. I could have walked to the creek. I could have looked at the view down the canyon. Others did. Many did. I went to the first thing that caught my mind. The waterfall I could reach. The waterfall I could climb, in climbing I would see more of the waterfall and more of the vista. Two of us were drawn that way. Danny watched from the road until we went out of view, his face showed that he wanted to feel less exhausted- he wanted to see what was up there too.

Days of paperwork, beaurocracy declaring in it's way the necessity of paperwork in generating meaningless jobs of communication and miscommunication. Of people being numbers and categorized, shelved and stamped. Through each page and meeting it was hard to hear, hard to focus because part of me is still there watching the water fall and listening to the song of it playing on the rocks.

Days of being different fictions, concentrating on each separate experience then discarding it to create and complete the next. Another journey next week, eight more people to be. Danny faces his next surgery, his heart is strong but they have to get the electric working right. It is frustrating to find out your house is beautiful but the electric needs work to work right. It's more complicated than just changing a circuit. It is flesh and blood, cells and genes that the electrophysiologist has to use to work on the electrical system within us. Hopefully after this surgery everything will heal right. Hopefully in a month we will go back and climb to that spot together.



We all face different challenges. The funny thing is that we externalize them. The barriers to our happiness we identify are outside of us. The reality is inside of us. The monsters in our own heads, assumptions and inaccuracies that our own personalities and beliefs arise from. The worst are ones that other people feed without knowing about. It is daunting to sit down and say to a friend that their words or feedback they've given to other ears that made it back around to you hit a sore spot. It is easier to slip away to the sound of birds and water, where the monsters have no footing and no one's actions or words to use against you. Eventually you can let it go or you face the tedious monsters in your head again, fighting each other with logic accepting it's painful assessments or disproving them. When life is going your way, it is easy to stay up. When challenges come up or you feel down it is easier for the monsters to take center stage. It is hard to smile past their non-stop unfiltered assessment of you; it can be hard to even hear or see what those around you are really saying or doing and they never see or hear the enemies they don't even know you're fighting.

I've learned to use meditation, to take time to myself to refocus. To reach out to friends who've made it past the walls and know the shape of the fiends. It is amazing how quickly one well placed quip or even the sound of a beloved friend's voice can turn the tide. These monsters, they aren't fought with violence. They are fought with patience, love and communication. I know as I tell you this that every day, in your head you face your own. I just want to you know, I understand. We are the most powerful weapons in the fight against these monsters. Giving each other time, respect, kindness, trust, a chance to communicate and destroy dangerous assumptions. Are you up for climbing waterfalls? Navigating past the tears and through the challenges of healing?

Brittlebrush Flowers Brighten the Winter Desert 

Desert Views and Meditations

Today was at first about driving. Further and further along the road, through worn mountains and angular green desert plants. Past copper mines, faded store signs, and beyond Roosevelt Dam.

We took it slow on the unpaved washboard road. Dust was a cloak behind us, curling slowly back to the road. After what seemed to be an eternity of narrow ridged dirt, we found the Apache Lake Vista.

We decided to make our way to the water and picnic there.
A houseboat came into the bay. Danny went to investigate as it looked brand new, and the guys on it had docked and were taking pictures of it themselves.
Turns out that they just finished constructing the boat. This was it's maiden voyage. Danny properly greeted them by telling them to leave, which drew laughs from both men.

Sadhu was with us on his leash and let me walk him down to the lake. He jumped on the boat and did his own little inspection before jumping off. He had fun climbing and lazing in a large Pale Verde tree like a mini panther.

We also had the luck of watching a couple set up a tent tipi hybrid. It went up quickly and simply. The couple mentioned being able to use a heater in it too. It looked very practical.

I had my headlamp in the car. We left there and took a drive through Fish Creek Canyon. We got out and admired the abundant, gorgeously designed mountains.

We made it to the top of Fish Creek Hill, which seems to wear the title "hill" as a joke like large men called "Tiny."

We stood silently admiring the many patterns surrounding us. Vast empty space and untamed desert landscape in every direction.

The headlamp, a small item that is easily overlooked. Sometimes it can be the difference between a night on a mountain and a night in your bed.

Sunday we faced the Flat irons hike again. We didn't pack heavy. Water, snacks, oranges, hiking boots, warm layer and off we went. Danny packing light means he still has a backpack with two emergency blankets, a rain poncho, knife, spoon, two or three headlamps, toilet paper, and more snacks as well as a first aid kit. His father was a Marine.

We hit the trail around noon. We took our time going up, admiring the many breathtaking views we earned through sweat and tired limbs. We reached the basin and rested near the small pool of water. We were sad that the pool was full of fetid orange peels someone left behind, sadly orange peels do not become orange trees when you put them in water. I wish they did!

There were about twenty people resting in various patches of shade in the basin.

It was a very hot day. Many people were coming down the mountain, sometimes it was like a parade you had to wait for before going forward. I noticed no one behind us. We were the last going up the mountain. We passed the point we had turned back and felt we should reach the top in a little while. Soon, we would crest the mountain. In a short distance we should see the top. I kept telling us this for several hours. My absolute certainty was absolutely found to be preposterously inaccurate although it did help morale the first dozen or so pauses we made.

We climbed higher and higher, up loose gravel and steep hard cliff faces, scrambling up and over large boulders.

Occasionally, exhausted blue trail markers stared at us as we kept going up. We began to run into less people. Many muttered about getting off the mountain before sunset. We were headed for the top. We had a goal and it was going to be met. We were prepared. Well. Danny was. I brought extra optimism, which is never really practical on a strenuous climb.

We made the rim. Two guys were just relaxing at the nexus point, watching others come and go as their trance music played quietly. They nodded as I came up onto the top of the mountain. Babies get a doctor and a nurse, hikers get a couple hippies and their dog. Both suck as much air into their lungs as they can and call out to be heard. No one knows what babies call out, but hikers call to their group an affirmation that the destination is here. It was here the whole time, but now the hikers are here as well. There is a feeling of exhausted satisfaction. Your feet maybe sore, you may be tired and sweat soaked but you climbed a mountain.

It was 5:22 pm as we took a few minutes to enjoy the view from the top. The world spread out below us. Cars moving like tiny bugs, houses just specks with rectangular rooftops. How large we feel our lives are, how important; when in perspective they are not. The issues we weigh ourselves down with are mostly ones we fabricate or give inflated importance to. Wants, desires, drives, excuses all fall away. There are real needs and real skills, luck and experience. You can teach a skill. You can't teach experience.

Danny looks at me and for the third time since the basin asks "Why didn't you bring your headlamp?"

For the third time I answer, I thought about it. I did the hike last year, we were down by four. My experience told me unlikely in needing a headlamp. My experience was wrong this time.

We turned and raced the shadows down the mountain. We were careful. Two guys who saw us on the top called out to us, they didn't know where the trail down was. Neither of them had a flashlight. They passed me once we got back to the top of the mountain. They moved liked mercury over the rocks. I hoped they would have the luck they needed.

We took our time, racing in a slower manner. Taking time to breathe, stretch muscles and not to risk our lives recklessly on our descent. Mentally, I bargained with the sun. I understood why the ancients thought it was a god. On the side of the mountain, becoming wrapped in twilight, the sun was the difference between safety and steep drop offs.

We made it a third of the way down before the last red rays sank below the black horizon. The sunset was one of the most beautiful and unnerving I have ever seen. We kept going. Danny asked where the trail was. I led. This was my fourth time walking the trail, I'm usually good after the first time. My eyes adjusted and we slowly moved forward, each yard gained only after I checked for heavy foot traffic. We wanted to stick to the main trail going down. An off shoot could be perilous.

We went slower and slower. Each time we crested a small hill and came out of shadow into nightfall it seemed so bright again.

We reached a point that I stopped. I felt the trail was pestering out and that I'd stumbled onto an off shoot. I requested Danny use his headlamp, thinking he only had one.

He got his headlamp out. I looked and five feet behind him, there was the trail. Ahead of me was a windy off shoot. We were at the backside of the steep climb up and down the mountain to the basin. I knew where we were. Danny recognized the point we had encountered rain and turned around. We were somewhat relieved. With one headlamp we had done the climb up to that point slowly, like two moths slowly circling a light. We communicated carefully, staying focused and neither took a step until their foot placement was verified by the headlamp.

I led. I read the trail. Doubts and fears snaked up. I have lived with them for a lifetime. I pushed them down and kept going down. I could see about seven feet in front of me. Beyond that was dark space. The rock was so steep that you couldn't see it until you stepped forward again. I wanted to sit down. I crouched instead. The path was here. There was no loose rock to read. The loose rock led here, led down. Straight down. We had climbed several straight up points. For every uphill, there is a downhill.

I stopped and stared. My mind played out us reaching a sheer drop off and having to backtrack. No ropes. One lamp. Danny kept me thinking, which kept me leading. He rummaged in his pack and produced a second headlamp. We had two headlamps. It was like finding out you are rich. We had double the light when we used them together. Or we could stumble around more confidently when feeling obstinate.

We reached another steep point. For what felt like a hundred or more steps, we carefully walked down the steepest surface we had found. Where were we? Had I missed the basin? The flashlight beam caught the glint of water. We were at the basin. The basin has the name for the bowl like shape, to climb to the Flat irons you climb the side of a bowl. Picture a giant rough version of your cereal bowl. We climbed it confidently in daylight, cautiously with creeping dread in darkness. It was on that surface that the sole of my boot began flapping, it had come unglued. It vanished in the dark. New boots, kept pristine for years only to malfunction on their first hike. The bottom still had enough padding to be functional, I was mindful of the limited traction I now possessed.

We had done it. We climbed to the Flat irons, we hiked down the mountain staying on the trail and without injury in the dark. We slowly made our way to the parking lot. It was after ten pm. We watched the large silver moon rise as we reached the car.

I've hiked for over twenty years, I felt foolish for disdaining my headlamp. We hike slowly, enjoying the experience rather than marching as if to a final execution. I will have a headlamp tucked away somewhere from now on.

Muscles fatigued and screaming at us that we'd overdone it, we relaxed and enjoyed the drive away from the park.

We were the last human beings on the superstition mountains that night. It was amazing. The night birds and crickets were the only sounds. We sat for a while on the way back and watched the lights of sprawling civilization stretching around the mountain as far as the eye could see. We watched the lights of planes landing and taking off. We saw patterns of red and green traffic lights, watched as red and blue lights converged on a location. It was all soundless and distant. It was all unreal.

The cactus was real. The desert wildflowers; bright yellow, orange and red that seemed to fuel the cricket songs. The stars bright in the black sky. What is real, what do we need? Meditation happens when you hike.

What do we want? What do we justify?
In the end, what determines the value of our lives? Where we go, who we choose to be, what memories we make and share, or profit margins and advertising campaigns? I think it is up to us. I think more people should step out, climb a proverbial mountain. Take an introspective look in and out.

Are you carrying your headlamp? Do you have a clue where you are on life's map? Did you know distances on the map of life are not really measured in dollars?

Meditation is important. There are many kinds of meditation. Tonight I meditate on the death of a friend. Amy Adams, laundress and sharer of wisdom died this week unexpectedly. I found out today when two unfamiliar faces were handing out quarters. I'm grateful that I got to talk with her again. I'm grateful for the wisdom she shared and the stories. My heart goes out to Pat, her husband as well as the rest of her family and friends.

Unexpectedly, life happens despite our many attempts to shape it and force it into our expectations. Sometimes for the worst, sometimes for the better. Sometimes it just is.

The best parts are the ones we get to share together, like two people working their way down a terrifying cliff face in pitch black with one headlamp.

Maybe there was a reason I left it home.