SAMPLING SEDUCTIVE SEDONA

Sedona – the sensuous center of Arizona vortexes and sweeping scenes of lush red-walled canyons and natural arches. I’ve been to Sedona many times in my years living in Arizona – visiting Sedona’s seductive spas, art galleries, eateries and vortexes. This time I was intent on ignoring the sensuous pleasures of Sedona to focus on sampling Sedona’s wonderful hiking opportunities and the tasty beers of Oak Creek Brewery.

I’ve hiked Sedona before. One of my favorite spots before a damaging flood in September 2009 was Red Rocks State Park, where a short hike along Oak Creek would deliver me to a field of impossibly balanced stone towers constructed with magnetically charged rocks and pebbles. It was magic. The last time I was there, those rock towers had been swept away by the flood but I could see that the Park’s many visitors were beginning the slow process of rebuilding the hundreds of cairns, returning the field once more into a place that could easily cause the child in you to envision tiny mystical people. Magic reborn.

If it weren’t for Sedona’s magnetic rock, Sedona might still be here but it wouldn’t be Sedona.  The red in the rock is its higher than average iron content, which not only causes the rock to be magnetic (hence the small rock towers everywhere) but is also purported to be able to effect brainwave EEGs (Sedona Anomalies). These electric anomalies, called vortexes where they are most strongly felt, are said to have healing properties and provide the perfect environment for meditation.

Although I experience the magnetism in the rock and my inner child enjoys building stone towers, I can’t honestly say I have ever felt a vortex. I meditate, and sometimes even well, but even though several of my friends have ‘felt the charge’, I never have. I sit quietly, in muktasana (seated posture) with my hands in chin mudra (index and thumb joined in a circle on my knees with palms up) and wait for the charge, and wait, and wait and then……..nada.  My monkey mind keeps asking all sorts of questions – how does this work, exactly? I wonder if I am an upflow or an inflow vortex person (if you clicked on the link above you would know what that was already). Are my palms really feeling warmer? That bird song is nice – wonder which bird it is. I’m feeling like Indian food. Where is good Indian food around here?

To the point, if you are in Sedona, you should visit a vortex. Period. Even if, like me, you wind up only feeling the wind on your face and keeping your monkey mind busy.  It’s a thing. Like going to New York City and visiting Lady Liberty. And on this trip, we could hike AND visit vortexes since some of the most stunning places in Sedona are conveniently vortex sites.

We all have friends that we choose to do different things with.  My usual Sedona friends have been more the pedi/mani artsy kind. This time I took four of my dedicated hiking friends with me, staying at Diamond Resorts Sedona Summit, a lovely property in West Sedona on 89A at the intersection with the Red Rock Loop Road to Red Rocks State Park.

Sometimes you just have to call out the experts. The two friends who I drove up with and I were intent on starting our Sedona sojourn by taking a short hike before we settled in to our suite. The greater Sedona area has an excellent web of hiking trailheads leading from its main and side roads, including the in-town trails where the Coconino Forest sneaks right onto 89A west at the Adobe Jack Trailhead, just a short distance from the “Y”. (The Y is the major intersection between West and North 89a and Highway 179.)

This is where my friends and I started our hiking vacation with a pleasant hour hiking the loop around the Adobe Jack, Coyote and Crusty Trails in a light sprinkle. It was lovely. These women would gladly exchange a little moisture to spot an unusual flower, bush, rock formation or animal along the trail. I think I’m in love with them.

The next day, joined by two more hiking buddies, the group decided to hike in Dry Creek Basin, which is an absolute hiker’s heaven just beyond the edges of West Sedona. We missed the unpaved road to the Devil’s Bridge Trailhead but found ourselves a few miles further along on the paved Long Canyon Road which had an actual paved parking lot and trailhead to the Bridge. Missing the unpaved road probably put a couple miles or so onto our hike but if a destination is too close, this group doesn’t feel like we’ve been anywhere.  Yes, I definitely think I’m in love with them.

Devil’s Bridge is a very popular hiking destination in Sedona and rightfully so. The hike from the jeep trail is a little less than a mile and as you approach, you have to climb up to the Bridge but the path is well marked and in good condition.  The Bridge itself is large enough and wide enough for mothers to feel safe about letting their kids jump or balance on one foot for family photo ops. Not this mother you understand but I did witness this. We spent an agreeable half hour before retracing our steps to Long Canyon Road.

Our original idea was to drive up the unpaved road after visiting the Bridge to a place delightfully called Secret Canyon. Its secrets are still secret since we determined that the unpaved road was a bit too bumpy and the time it would take to slowly drive the rest of the way over that rocky road we deemed would take too much time from other planned hikes. We turned our attentions to Fay Canyon and the promise of another arch and the crème de la crème of hiking attractions - a set of ruins. We like ruins; we like to poke around and take pictures of ourselves through tiny rock windows or peeking over rock walls.

We spotted the arch up and along the walls of the canyon but since one of our party was in the middle of a family crisis, we chose to avoid long or difficult hikes up the steep hill to get to it, staying closer to actual phone service. We followed the lush and beautiful Fay Canyon Trail back to where an enormous rock fall had closed off the rest of the canyon.

Though we did not proceed around the rock fall, a few of us bouldered up the rocks to see if it was possible. Fay Canyon is very, very lush and from the top of the rock fall I was able to take gorgeous pictures that put me nostalgic about old Tarzan movies. I wanted to be Jane. Not that I lusted over Johnny Weissmuller. My lust was more primal – I have always liked real estate and I wanted his treehouse. The canyon past the rock fall is now on our list of places to go because most likely we would find very few people there. Solitude is seriously attractive to avid hikers and backpackers.

Later that evening we visited Tlaquepaque, a gorgeous shopping and dining area near the Y. We wanted to stop in at the Oak Creek Brewery restaurant but it was chockablock full. I’m fonder of tap rooms than crowded busy restaurants and got the directions to Oak Creek’s small pub and tap room in an ‘industrial’ area of Sedona behind West Sedona’s main drag. While the others sampled the tasty food, my friend Melissa and I shared a generous sampling tray (10 2-oz glasses) of microbrews. We liked the Amber Ale and I think I liked the King Crimson a lot (it was one of the last of the 10 we tried and I’m a little fuzzy on the details). The tap room is very basic but has an excellent outdoor patio which is very relaxing and surprisingly quiet. It appears to offer live music during the evening, too.

The next day was Easter Sunday and three of us awoke at an ungodly hour to attend services at the church we thought might have the best view. (I know, kind of self-serving and I would apologize but the picture I took across the altar to the gorgeous morning sun on the red Rocks east of Sedona got over 30 Facebook ‘likes’. ) After some breakfast back at the resort, we all hiked the very urban and doable 3.6-mile Airport Loop Trail which is called that because it circumnavigates the Sedona Airport. The Airport sits atop Airport Mesa (which makes me wonder what the mesa was called before it became an airport – but then again, maybe the ETs who were attracted to the vortexes made it their landing zone as well). Actually this is a pretty satisfying hike with 360 degree views of Sedona if it’s not summer (not much shade) and you have never really been to Sedona.

While we were on top of the Mesa, we stopped at the Airport Vortex, a rather disappointing affair near the Masonic Lodge Memorial Cross but with terrific views to the north and west. Of course I tried meditating to see if I could be one with all things vortex and of course I failed. All that meditating did, however, cause me a great thirst which we satisfied at the 3-year-old Mesa Grill quite close to the actual airport runway. It felt, well, swanky being so close to the airplanes flying in and out of sexy little Sedona.

After two of our group left for Tucson, three of us returned to Fay Canyon to find the ruins which Melissa had discovered are right underneath the arch (the internet is so wonderful). We hiked back to the rocky scree-filled route to the arch, entranced by the delicate play of sunshine and shade on the arch. We stayed around to play around under the arch and in the ruins trying to figure out how the Mother made the arch and when, why and how her human species took up residence there.

Finally, heading back to the car, not really ready to call it quits for the day, we decided to hike one more trail. (I swear the Dry Creek Area is like a smorgasbord - you just have to have one more.) The parking lot to Fay is shared by a series of interconnecting trails, including the Aerie Trail. Aerie is aptly named because after wandering through the flats, it climbs slowly to traverse a ridgeline from which we could see stunning views of the rocks and sweeping views of Dry Creek Basin as the sun set behind us, relaxing on comfortably large rocks to watch the red rocks glow in the fading light.

The next morning, even after three days of hiking, we were reluctant to just drive home. Each way out of Sedona heads right through more abundant hiking opportunities. We exited Sedona via Hwy 179, stopping to hike the 4.3-mile Courthouse Butte Loop Trail. At the base of prominent Courthouse Butte, the trail is relatively flat and offers a lot of interesting washes and rock features which beg to be photographed. Be warned, however, the heat bouncing off the red rock can be brutal in the summer. Even in April we could feel the heat. The Butte is also a vortex site and whether you are a vortex devotee or a hiker, Courthouse Butte can deliver.

I can now attest that whether you are craving adventure or relaxation, Sedona is a good place to look. No matter if you have a few days or a few weeks, it’s worth your time to sample seductive Sedona.

New Frontiers!?

It's been awhile since I last posted but the need to take up the pen (of course that is a euphemism since I am writing this on a computer) is getting strong again. This blog started out to be about adventure and here I am ready to relate to you why I feel like the last few months have been an adventure even though I haven't done anything remarkably 'adventurous'.

This morning I started the day by seeking knowledge - how to remove reeking cat spray from inside the closet of a rental I have. Unfortunately, Ace Hardware isn’t open at 7am as I had hoped and after sitting in my truck YiHa a few minutes, sorting out what I would do with the half hour I had before I had to be somewhere else, I realized I had enough time for an outside meditation.

I like outside meditation.  I try to meditate at least a few minutes on every hike or backpack or schlep out to the wild. But this meditation would be different. The venue would be the labyrinth behind my church.

OK, I’m coming out of the closet. I admit to being an irregular church goer. Sometimes I’m kind of embarrassed to admit I actually attend church but this morning was beautiful and the mountains behind my church are beautiful and my church family is beautiful and they often think beautiful thoughts. So, lucky me, church can be a really good place to be on a Sunday – or any day actually. Sometimes it occurs to me that this Sunday thing is one of the downfalls of organized religion – it doesn’t happen often on other days so it's easy to forget.

My church (St. Francis in the Foothills United Methodist Church if you really want to know) has a labyrinth. I know because I have sometimes helped to keep it tidy. A labyrinth is a special place which can be a focal point or even a playground for your spiritual self. It is a maze, usually built with stones that one proceeds through step by step, moving further into meditation with each step. The maze itself, however, winds further away from the center before heading back into the center – an appropriate allegory for our spiritual lives. One’s slow, repetitive and thoughtful steps through the maze are a metaphor for the journey for your soul. At its best, a labyrinth can be a tool to calm the mind so that Spirit can get through the obstacles our busy thoughts put it through.

But I have this monkey mind you see. I would love to say that I can easily find my ‘meditation seat’ and let my mind wander off to play with Spirit. More often though my mind starts making lists or gets riled up about what some ‘stupid pundit’ said on Fox News or wonders if some animal will think I'm a tasty morsel. To calm my monkey mind, I often use mantras – very short phrases that are used when one breathes in and out. One of my favorite is “I know your greatness (on the in-breath) and I feel your love (on the out-breath)”. I tried it today but my monkey mind wanted to listen to the birds or take a peek at the cute Sheriff who I finally realized stopped by my church’s somewhat secluded Sunday School classroom bathroom to use the always open facilities (my monkey mind was ALL OVER that one).

My monkey mind just wouldn’t come to center like it is supposed to.  That’s the trouble with monkey minds; they don’t – mind that is. My monkey mind was particularly adventurous this morning. Aware that my monkey mind was in complete control, I decided to tire it with what I hoped would be a particularly difficult task. Sometimes this helps; a worn out monkey mind is not as agile.

I find a Yoga breathing technique called ‘alternate nostril breathing’ to be quite useful, especially when I need centering or I’m all stuffed up with allergies. I thought it might be interesting to see how my monkey mind handled my pilgrimage through the labyrinth while employing a form of alternate nostril breathing. Instead of 'breathe in-breathe out', this Yoga technique entails breathing OUT first followed by the breath IN. Try it. It's a head trip to keep it going. Exactly opposite what we have learned since we screamed our first breaths at the mean person in the white coat who forced us to leave that incredibly comfortable womb.

I began by stepping forward on my breath out and then drawing up my left-behind leg square with my leading leg on my breath in. Then, as my body was letting go of its breath, I would lead with this same left-behind leg repeating the process. Monkey minds have to be quite quiet when doing this because otherwise not only will you screw up but there may be risk of serious falls.

The whole point of this exercise was to provide my mind with a completely different experience and see what happened. Would I experience any insights worthy of my time at the labyrinth? The other day I posted on Facebook that I have decided to live my life in a way that makes the phrase “adventure of a lifetime” redundant. I’ve been pondering exactly how to do this lately and it seemed likely my monkey mind might like to think about that during my labyrinth meditation. I was ready for this.

Now, I’ve had a couple very nice adventures since my last writing.  I’ve made a promise to myself to start writing again and I’m sure I’ll write about that wonderful hiking trip Sedona or that terrific weekend of cross-country skiing in Glacier and Whitefish Montana or that incredible New Year’s Eve in tangy Terlingua Texas soon. But I’ve also been working very hard on completely orienting my life in the direction of CHANGE. CHANGE is a big scary word sometimes but I kind of like it and I’m a bit of a planner so I’ve been taking ‘steps’. My monkey mind has found this inner discussion fascinating and wanted to think about change this morning instead of calming down to sit in the dark corners of my mind so Spirit could visit.

My monkey mind sometimes acts as my Greek chorus – laughing at my ‘certainties’ and providing witty and sardonic commentary on my most important questions. My question this morning – what exactly does “New Frontier” mean? You know, the Star Trek thing “where no (wo)man has been before”. Does it have to involve travel or bear spray? If your life takes off in a 90 or 180 degree angle, can you classify that as adventure? I looked up adventure in the dictionary (I still have one of those really old dictionaries one turns pages to find the word they are looking for). “Adventure” according to Webster, is “an exciting or dangerous experience”. I would suggest that this covers a whole LOT of circumstances, including change.

Running away to Yellowstone is undeniably adventurous - much like running away to the circus. I’m pretty sure I could get most of my readers to agree with that.  Spending a year to reorient my finances so in the near future I can work and live in National Parks and still have a very nice townhome in Tucson’s Catalina Foothills to come home to might not be considered very adventurous. But I can attest that changing your life in order to change your life is an adventure. Hence the title of this post “The New Frontier”.

Moving to Yellowstone felt very much like stepping on a cliff and hoping that the winds would provide enough loft to sail.  Changing my life so that I can take the radical step of working seasonally at National Parks seems an adventure of a more tedious nature – more like going back to school than setting off for a distant planet. Yet, it definitely feels like a cliff and I am learning new things every day as I adjust my life and my finances to suit my goal of living off the meager dregs of pay meted out by the concessionaires for the Park Service. Let’s face it – they don’t have to pay a lot because they have the most priceless employee benefit known on the planet – you get to wake up to and live in beauty EVERY DAY.

So I am, as I have explained to my friends, turning every asset I have into a ‘profit center’. I have listed my beloved townhome with VRBO.com (Vacation Rentals by Owner) and have successfully begun to host 'guests'. I have sold stock and acquired and renovated two rental houses to provide additional income. And to help through the transition, I now work as a contract bookkeeper for three non-profits and still act as CFO for our real estate development partnerships. I've been busy.

Honestly, I don’t mind being paid wages that barely provide a sustainable life in order to live in incredibly beautiful places but I don’t really want to LIVE just a sustainable life. I haven’t seen Indonesia or India or the Acropolis yet and I can’t get there by walking. Traveling around the globe takes some money – maybe not much if you travel light but at least some.

So I am learning how to remediate cat spray in a bedroom closet. Or that you can buy replacement hinges for your garage door but they come in a bunch of different designs so guessing from memory may mean a second trip. Or that ants really love dog food the previous tenants left under a refrigerator. Lots of different things. I am also learning that when you really want something, obstacles can be overcome and thinking of them as mini-adventures is the most pleasant way to get through it.

Just in case you think my life is boring, while I am working on freeing my financial life in order to run back into the woods, I also am researching and writing a love story about two neighborhood children who, during and after WWII, wind up courting via the military mail of the Pacific theater and then getting married and raising five wonderful kids (one of whom is me). I am learning to live with the decision of my son to go a direction that frankly left me gobsmacked when he called to tell me about it (definitely I’ll be writing more on that one after he actually takes that giant first step). I am living a somewhat itinerant life, moving from one house to the next as my ‘profit centers’ are rented or remodeled. I have rented and remodeled an office tastefully and beautifully so it is now a real pleasure to work in. I am working on my own website.

Life IS an adventure and as long as I can wake up in the morning with enthusiasm and the knowledge I will go to bed knowing more than I began, I’m satisfied with my ‘adventure’ for now. OK, all those long weekend trips to really cool or wild places help of course. And it helps to know with certainty that I am working on getting back to my wilderness, to those trails I didn’t get to because of Yellowstone’s summer fires and the new ones I’ve never encountered. But for now tramping into totally new life paths and learning lots of new things along the way will have to suffice. I’m convinced it is possible to find adventure every single day if you look for it.

That’s not exactly right. It is possible to find adventure every single day if you are open to the possibilities of it. And maybe it means trying old things in brand new ways. Sometimes it requires one to step away from one's comfortable aerie in the hills. If you think about it, on Star Trek, discovering New Frontiers was always about the journey anyway - rarely about the destination.

TUCSON'S BEST BICYCLE RIDE

Big fat raindrops pounded onto my skylight sounding like a staccato snare drum. My east-facing bedroom, which should have been showing signs of dawn from the window, was dark and gloomy. It was El Tour day, the one day of the year when all of Tucson experiences this huge event call El Tour de Tucson. And I lay snuggled in my bed, mentally preparing myself for what was to become the most challenging El Tour out of the eight I have completed.

 

El Tour de Tucson, for which upwards of 9,000 riders pay an entry fee in excess of $100, is a charity bike race with four distances – this year 111, 85, 60 or 42 miles long. The first riders, for the 111-mile race, were scheduled to start at 7am. I’m guessing most of these riders had been awake for some hours before the start. The 111 is the race for the biking elite, attracting professional and semi-professional riders from all over the world as well as dedicated amateurs.

 

On the other side of the bicycle wheel is the 42-mile race which attracts all kinds of people at all skill levels - dads and moms riding with their kids, dads and moms hauling their tots behind them, individuals looking for a challenge, weekend cyclists, church groups, business associates and groups of friends out for a good time, groups of riders riding for a cause like my own group Riders for Recovery. One year I followed a rider dressed as a pirate wearing a gaily colored blouse and spiffy pirate boots, sporting a tricorn hat adorned with skull and crossbones, and playing Commodores music out of a small cassette player strapped to the back of his bicycle.

 

But in El Tour’s entire 31-year history, it had never rained on race day. It just doesn’t rain that much in the desert in November. But this year was to be different and not only would we have rain, but a whopping 2.5+ inches starting within the last few hours before the race, equivalent to about 20% of our annual average rainfall. The dry, dusty roads in Tucson can become quite greasy during a heavy rain preceded by a period of relative drought. With this year’s monsoon season a bust, surely the roads of Tucson would be slick and easily flooded during the race. And the riders would be further challenged by the very real potential of hypothermia.

 

Of the eight El Tours I have run, this is the only one in which rain would bring cancellations by the hundreds – even though no one gets their money back. Forecasters had been predicting heavy rain and chilly weather Friday through Sunday all week. But I knew I was going to ride – my friends and I had thoroughly discussed the possibility of crappy weather, everyone with their phones constantly updating various weather apps. Because I am a backpacker, I was perhaps less concerned about the weather than some of the others at the ritual ‘carb-loading’ party at my friend Margaret’s the night before the race. I’m used to walking in the rain with 30-pounds on my back. How bad could riding 38 miles in the rain be? Besides, it's nice to be able to get some use out of rarely used gear.

 

But the sound on the skylight reminded me just how much rain had poured from the sky the day before and what was predicted for Race day. I began to check with El Tour’s Facebook page, its website, its Twitter feed and my own Facebook page for any changes in the route. The 111 had two water crossings which could be exceeding dangerous for riders caught in fast-moving water. The first crossing, the Santa Cruz River, was a go but El Tour officials said ‘stay tuned’ for updates on the perhaps even more dangerous (because it is right below the Santa Catalina Mountains) Sabino Creek Crossing which would be taken by the 85-milers as well.

 

And then there were worries about my own short ride – the 42 which had become 38 just a few days earlier when part of the 42 was scratched. I was not at all unhappy about the change – the portion that was scratched was over an incredibly pot-holey road in rural Marana with the steepest hill of the route leading riders up and then down into surburban Cortaro Farms. Instead we would be following the relatively smooth Frontage Road – far less scenic but imminently more rideable.

 

On the other hand, Moore Road, the northernmost part of the route, would be ridden by all riders and was close to the canyon drainages of the Tortolita Mountains. Moore is not particularly hilly but rather rolling as it coasts from one drainage to the next. Surely there would be water and debris in these drainages.  I was glad I had elected to ready my hybrid (a bike not quite as heavy and fat-tired as a mountain bike but steadier and more stable than the skinny road bikes many would be riding). I had had time for exactly three training rides, the longest of which was only 12 miles, after I had returned from my 5-month summer sojourn in Yellowstone, the roads of which are notoriously narrow and dangerous during the busy summer months. Except for my three training rides on a level bike path, I hadn’t even been on a bike for nearly six months.

 

As the morning progressed, I made my final choices for riding gear and stuffed additional, warmer clothing in a dry bag just in case I became hypothermic. No doubt, this Tour would be a challenge! I stayed in touch with my biking buddies, all who were making similar decisions or who would in the end decide to scratch. For me, there was never a question of scratching. I’m the kind who would rather try something and fail than fail to try. And frankly, having successfully completed six of these shorter rides before successfully completing the 60-mile last year, the now 38-mile route needed a bit of extra challenge. I was actually excited about riding in the weather.

 

My housemate Annie thinks I am a little nuts about dangerous activities. Our danger meters are set completely differently. As Annie watched me prepare for the race, she said “I’m not comfortable with you riding in the race. It could be dangerous.” repeating all the facts of the hazardous road conditions, the hazardous weather, the likelihood of novice bikers being totally unprepared for the riding conditions. I calmly affirmed I had every intention to ride, would do so carefully and would be prepared for all but the freak accident. Freak accidents happen. I can’t control for that.

 

She watched me pack and continue to view the Twitter and Facebook feeds. “The first riders are off and the Santa Cruz crossing wasn’t changed.” I excitedly told her.  About 9 am I looked up the wash behind my house up toward Sunrise Road. “I see the first riders coming down Sunrise!” I posted on Facebook. “This is getting exciting.” I told Annie.

 

Annie, who had been even reluctant to shuttle us in the rain to our start site, eventually came to tell me that she ‘got it’. This would be a historical race, one that would be the ride we all will be talking about for years. She understood that I wanted to be part of it. “I’ve decided it’s not that you have a death wish; you just prefer to go out in some rather spectacular way.” Annie really does get it.

 

Eventually four riders and bikes plus our Support Person Annie piled into my truck Yiha for the rainy ride to the 38-mile start line.  When we arrived the site of our start in Oro Valley, we sought parking under sheltered spots in order to unpack the bikes and dress for our ride. It was still pouring down rain and about 50 degrees. Everyone was in good spirits and seemingly as well-prepared as I was. No reason to worry…yet.

 

Eventually we caught up with one more member of our group – our friend Mike who had started his cycling that morning not far from the 60-mile start in order to meet us at our 38-mile start. Mike was very nearly hypothermic by then, thoroughly wet and chilled after being beaten by the wind and his own draft. His extremities were downright cold to the touch. And the longer he stayed with us, the colder he became. As soon as the signal to ride was sounded, Mike took off to raise his body temperature through the physical effort of riding.

 

Since I had very few training rides and was on my heavy, stodgy bike I knew I would hold back the others. But because I somewhat uncomfortably live with asthma, my riding companions had agreed to stay with me for the first few miles to make sure I made it past the only really challenging inclines of the route. Once we all got past the last challenging incline, the rest took off – the less time spent in the rain the better.

 

I chugged along, much like the Little Train that Could, up Rancho Vistoso to Moore, up the slight incline at Moore and then with all the others along a soggy, wet and slightly dangerous route. Dip after dip prompted riders to yell “water!”, “debris!”, “mud!” or to use the customary hand-signal – pointing down toward the spot that might be the cause of a serious accident. At one particularly high water crossing, several emergency vehicles blocked the traffic lane but it was not clear whether a rider had gone down or whether they were there in case one did. I said a little prayer that it was the latter and kept slogging on.  I was actually having an excellent ride.

 

I rode in the pouring rain down Thornydale and Tangerine to the Interstate but I was warm and relaxed, my preparations sufficient for the weather. My full-fingered bike gloves were keeping my hands warm although not dry. My cashmere socks were keeping my feet warm even though I felt I could wring water from my socks and pour out the accumulated drainage water from my shoes. Eventually I stopped to do just that and to refuel for the next 20 miles to Downtown Tucson. I always ‘see’ myself at the end of my ride, or hike, or other adventure and this time was no different. Despite the adversities, I was already there.

 

As I continued to ride, I noticed there were many, many riders, especially of road bikes, pulled off to the side with flat tires. Way more than usual. I guessed that the debris littering the road surfaces and under the water in the crossings was taking its toll on the more fragile tubes, tires and wheels of the road bikes. I was later to learn that two of our own riders had to scratch because of problems having to do with twisted bike tires, broken spokes and flats.

 

About half way through the ride, I also noticed my left knee was beginning to really grumble. My knees are not exactly the most cared for in the world and they occasionally remind me that my youthful (and not so youthful) activities have shortened their lifespans a good bit. As the rain let up, my attention turned toward the growing pain in my knees. Would I make it on this tank of a heavy bike?

 

Hybrid gears are much smaller than road bike gears because they are designed more for ease than speed. Hybrid gears assume you are going up, not down. The gears are simply not designed to zoom down the highway. The bikes are more versatile in some respects but riders may peddle many more times due to the smaller gear sizes. More revolutions, more effort for the knees – on frames that are heavy enough to stay together even after several bad spills.

 

At the last support stop before the Finish Line, riders can always find gooey chocolate brownies. My favorite ‘go food’ for the last seven-mile dash. After chomping down a brownie, I learned Ibuprofen was available. I grabbed several and chugged them down. Now if only I could last until the pills took affect on the last long incline up to the Downtown Finish Line.

 

As I continued my ride, I noticed the other riders, even those with those beautiful sleek skinny-tire bikes, were slowing down. The wind, rain and chill were beginning to affect us all. I saw a man slam onto the pavement about 50 feet in front of me, having caught a skinny wheel in an expansion joint on the road.  Fortunately, no other riders were right behind or around him and his fall was not as serious as it could have been. He was assisted to his feet and he and his bike were led over to the shoulder. I slogged by wishing him godspeed should he decide to resume the ride.

 

At St. Mary’s Road at the northern end of Downtown, I felt the familiar end-of-race adrenal kick in. And, thank god, finally the Ibuprofen. I could almost touch Tucson’s Downtown skyscrapers. I was going to finish this amazing race! With adrenalin coursing through my tired body and blunting the pain in my knees, my pace picked up. Down to 22^nd Street along West Frontage Road I rode. Under the overpass and up the hill toward the blazingly white steeple of Santa Cruz Catholic Church. A church had never looked to good.

 

Then, finally, up the 6^th Avenue to the Finish Line, each revolution of my tires bringing me closer. At the end, when I see the people waiting along the barriers for their loved ones and friends, it is difficult to even think about the difficulties and dangers of the ride. Signs welcoming the riders abound. “Go Mom!” “Bill, you’ve done it” “Lopez family does it again.” “Cancer survivor survives another one!” El Tour is Tucson’s own brand of Olympic trial – except this one is democratically open to anyone willing to come up with the fee and try it. No particular skillset required.

 

I have made it once again, meeting this particular challenge and conquering it. Perhaps justifiably so, I have been accused of throwing myself at life and saying ‘bring it on’. For this particular slice of life, I know I’m glad this El Tour came with rain and water crossings. Regardless of the danger and discomfort, riding in the 31^st El Tour de Tucson’s means I will always have the pleasure of being part of Tucson’s bicycling history.

 

Note: Although El Tour is an extremely well-planned event, accidents happen. Several years ago an older driver slammed into 10 riders near Westward Look Resort leaving one of them with life-changing brain damage. This year, we also lost a rider to a driver crossing over the barrier cones and running right into the rider from behind. The rider was pronounced dead and the word spread through the riding community as we all celebrated meeting our challenges, blunting our own elation. My sympathies to the family and friends of the rider who died. Sport of any type can be inherently dangerous and we all know that we might be next. This knowledge does not stop us but it does humble our victories.

UNCOOPED: BECOMING A FREE RANGE HUMAN

God, I am writing this on a laptop that is so old is has Word 2003 on it. Internet Explorer grinds away and I have had to restart it because of too many open windows at least twice now. But part of being the person I want to become more fully, a Free Ranger, means not sweating the small stuff.

A few days ago in my doctor’s waiting room, I stumbled on an article written by Dr. Marianne Williamson, an author and spiritual life coach (she’s the “our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure” author). In the article, Williamson talks about the extra 20 years people my age (I’m 60) have added to our lives but she proposes instead of adding it to the end of our lives, we have actually added it to the waning years of our work life and especially to our retirement. That really resonated with me.

Having added these 20 years, Williamson posits, we are woefully unprepared to live them. My generation still grew up thinking we would retire somewhere between 60 and 65 and then we would live another 5 or so years before we died. But our lifespans have increased so much that not only do many of us HAVE that extra twenty years, but many of us are have no plan for how we want to live them. Some of us keep on working – way past the point in which we actually experience pleasure in what we are doing.  Most of us late baby boomers are not really prepared to sit in a rocking chair. Many of us like myself are still physically and mentally very active and have no desire to ‘slow down’ that much.

Williamson’s idea got me thinking about this term Free Range I have been hearing about as it applies to Humans.  I’ve maybe always had a little Free Range in me – I have moved large distances multiple times, I took my 5-year-old son on a 5-day backpack trip across the Grand Canyon, I have chosen a career path which would give me the flexibility I felt I needed. But I am realizing that I have only been dabbling in Free Ranging, picking and choosing among its strategies like a gambler at a Las Vegas smorgasbord, without any real commitment or goals except how to deal with the problem right in front of me.

I spent last night researching everything I could find on the Web about Free Rangers which admittedly is not much. Most of the references to Free Range Humans lead to Marianne Cantwell, who was the first author to claim the title. She describes a Free Ranger as a person who has decided to live his or her life fully every day, not just on weekends. She also credits Free Rangers with figuring out how to make a living by doing what they love. 

One of my favorite sayings, particularly to my overly cautious doctors, is “I’m not afraid of dying; I’m afraid of not living.” I see myself becoming a Free Ranger because I put a high priority on living a really full life instead of ‘being successful.’ Matter of fact, the way I see it ‘being successful’, unless you carefully define your terms, can be a serious detriment to Free Ranging. Success can provide just the right inertia to keep you ‘cooped up’ in a life that no longer is in sync with your changing priorities.

Unlike Cantwell’s view that all Free Rangers definitionally find financially sustainable ways to engage in their passions, I think there are a lot of Free Rangers out there that USED to make a living doing something that at least didn’t make them take anti-depressants but who have broken away from the ‘work until you are ready for social security’ mold and are now doing exactly what they want, picking up work that suits their lifestyle instead of vice versa. That’s beginning to look a lot like me. That’s one of the lessons living in Yellowstone for five months taught me. Sometimes, it’s not about the work – it’s about the lifestyle.

In the past year, now that I’ve been thinking about what I want to do when I grow up and observing how people are choosing to live their lives, I’ve met a lot of Free Rangers. They might not know they are Free Rangers but I do.  Yellowstone and perhaps many National Parks are entire subcultures of them.

In Yellowstone, I met two sisters that left their highly lucrative corporate jobs in a law firm after a particularly scary mugging to move to a tiny burg in Montana and work in Yellowstone National Park. They’ve just retired because in their 70s they realized there are a lot of places they have yet to see and believe me these ladies have seen an awful lot of the world. I also met a couple who work for wages well below their earlier professions, just to live in a traveling home with their dog and spend the better part of the year living in beautiful places. My Meetup Backpack group, Tucson Backpackers, has a heap of Free Rangers although they might not recognize their Free Rangerness unless I have had this very conversation with them that I am having with you.

Free Ranging is not just available to older adults. I’ve met a whole lot of young Free Rangers in Montana doing many different things that support their existence in a place they love even though they may have to work three different jobs so they can bike, kayak, backpack or just step outdoors and say good morning to the towering peaks that erupt from the ground behind their apartments or back yards. They may have been initially forced into Free Ranging because of the lack of positions available in their professions after graduation, but many of them are beginning to view this as an opportunity for enlightenment – a way to escape being shackled by ‘corporate America’. My 24-year-old son Daniel has his own consultancy firm so that he can take part-time work and projects that feed his passions AND his outdoor lifestyle in Montana.

I suspect I was born a Free Ranger and just strayed a bit for a long while. I’m not saying that all Free Rangers are born, but I guess I am saying that Free Rangers have a certain lust for new experiences and distrust of institutions and structure that make them more open-minded about stepping away from what is socially ‘normal’ into new dimensions of how to live. My mother once told me that as early as 3 years old I would scurry out of doors at every opportunity in order to live outside. Fortunately, my Mother had two very kind old spinsters (that’s what Free Range Women were called back in the 50s) living next door that would keep watch for the escaped toddler next door on Saturday mornings when her exhausted parents were still sleeping. They would take me into their warm, sweet-smelling kitchen for breakfast. I was fearless at 3. Or already on to how to train the adults in my life.

I still like to wander outside on Saturday mornings. The best Saturday is one during which I wake up under the heavens, having slept ‘cowboy’ style without a tent. Of course, cowgirls do this, too, but it’s the crooning, socially misfit cowboy that gets the cred for sleeping under the stars. But I digress.

The point of being Free Range is that I no longer feel comfortable being COOPED UP. Cooped up might mean having a corporate job that seemed fulfilling at one point in your life but no longer suits you. Cooped up might mean being a spouse in a marriage that no longer is fulfilling but at least you have two cars and good-looking smart children and a membership at the Art Museum or Symphony where everyone can witness how successful you are. Cooped up could mean sleeping too late after a night of reading a really good book and being concerned you will be fired for lateness. Cooped up might mean having so many bills that you are required to continue your not so terrible but ‘in a rut’ life in order to keep up a lifestyle that you no longer find interesting. Cooped up could manifest in being so tired on Friday because you spent so much energy on being exactly what other people thought you should be all week that you have no energy to fulfill your need to go camping, or traveling, or star-gazing, or fishing or dancing or even taking a refreshing afternoon nap.

I must be osmosing all this Free Range stuff from the eggs I buy at the Farmers’ Market - eggs that are advertised as laid by ‘free range’ or ‘uncooped’ hens. Somehow, the idea that the chicken had an option as to where, when and how she would lay the egg I am going to consume makes a difference to me. The egg is the object but how the egg got into my basket is probably the most important aspect of my egg-buying.  If the chicken was ‘cooped’ in a tiny wire cage or had to trip over hundreds of other chickens in order to roost in a corporate hen house, I am certain I will taste and experience the difference. And if I am cooped up in whatever corporate cages are more typical, I expect I will experience the difference. 

I think Free Ranging is having ideas about what is good for you, without waiting for permission to carry those ideas out.  It is deciding on Thursday you will be spending your New Year’s in Big Bend National Park just because you have never been there and having the plan to do so in place by the following Sunday.  It is taking six months off to live in the wilderness of a National Park, working a job you would never apply for ‘back home’ just in order to watch elk cows give birth and their bull mates go through rut. Free Ranging is being less concerned about the wheres, whens and whos than the hows. It is being more concerned about the quality of your life than the quantity of the years you spend in it or the amount you have saved up for ‘retirement’.

Looking back, I realize I have been planning for Free Ranging for a couple years now. I have been retiring debt; getting rid of ‘things’; trying to go digital in my financial life so I can pay bills, look at statements and balances wherever I am; getting a roommate so I feel comfortable leaving my house for months at a time; refusing new responsibilities once old ones have played out their lifespans. And that is just MY journey. The thing about Free Ranging – only the Free Ranger can determine what has meaning to them and how to get it because the process IS a very large part of the goal. 

So here I am, continuing to restructure my personal and business lives in order to be able to leave whenever and wherever the wind calls my name. It will take some work but I’m worth it. Stay tuned.

SPIRITS OF OUR PAST

Traditions twist together like grapevines sometimes.  Harvest festivals morph into Thanksgiving. Local spiritual traditions are syncretised into Christian rituals. And Halloween, now mostly a fun spooky festival, erupts as a zombie from the grave from its roots as a Gaelic holy day of Samhain, a liminal time where the veil between life and death is thin and souls can more easily visit the living world.

Although some scholars dispute this interpretation of Halloween, others insist that the Eighth Century Catholic holiday to honor All Souls (or All Hallows) on October 31^st followed by the next day’s festival honoring All Saints evolved from the Gaelic festival.  Regardless, the commonality in these two origin stories is natural season of Earth moving from light into darkness in the Northern Hemisphere, the birthplace of both Gaelic spiritual rituals and the foundation of post-Christ Christianity.

Along with honoring the harvest, the theme is also one of honoring the people that came before, a time to honor our ancestors and recently departed elders. I’ve lived now in Tucson for nearly 30 years and the Hispanic cultural tradition of El Dia de los Muertos offers some of the most colorful rituals around All Hallows Eve. This is the day for honoring family members who have passed on before you. It is a time to do a little housekeeping at their gravesites, sweeping and cleaning the graves and headstones and then decorating them to let your ancestors know your living family is celebrating their importance to present day lives.

Some Southern Arizona cemeteries erupt in color, with the smaller and more traditional cemeteries beginning to take on the feeling of someone’s living room. South of Tucson, in Tubac which was part of Spain not so very long ago, families gather to sing and talk in and around the gravesites of their ancestors at the old ‘cementary,’ founded in the 1700s. You see giant coolers, grills and sofas among the historic gravesites. You hear guitars and violins as family members serenade their dearly departed. It’s a family reunion in a graveyard.

Tucsonans also have the unique All Souls Procession in which to publicly express appreciation for those who have gone before.  The All Souls Procession is a grassroots event, drawing around 35,000 participants, some dressed in creatively wild costumes and others simply holding pictures of those they want collectively honored. No judgment here – whoever the participants choose to honor is exactly who deserves honoring.  The 2013 All Souls Procession starts at the southern end of 6^th Avenue and winds up and through Downtown Tucson. Its emphasis is on creatively honoring your departed while supporting others’ grief and love for theirs.

Today in church (yes I actually go to church every once in awhile), our entire service was dedicated to honoring our loved ones who no longer are with us, recognizing that we are who we have become not only due to the influence of our parents and grandparents but also those family members who choices and decisions created cultures of education or enlightenment or sense of family or rural living that have impacted who we are today. We were asked to share our stories of remembrance – a beautiful way to honor our dead.

The first story I thought of is still too fresh to speak out loud so I chose another equally important story in my life. Here on this page, I don’t have to worry my voice will crack or tears will stream down my face. Here I can tell my stories of the dying days of my mother and father.

My father died first, way back in 1993, of Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma when he was still in his 60s. I was living in New Zealand but traveling often back to help my Mom care for Dad. In the last few months, my small son and I moved into Mom and Dad’s house. At one point, after it became obvious the chemotherapy was not slowing the progression of the cancer, my father became increasingly irritable, sometimes outright mean. My mother came to me in the hallway after a particularly unpleasant interchange with my Dad and directed me to ‘talk to your Dad’. “Uh, you mean about the whole dying thing and him being to mean to us?” I clarified. My mother nodded, tears in her eyes.

I took a deep breath and walked into Dad’s sick room. “Hey Dad, I need to talk to you. You’ve been really unbearable lately. I just wanted to let you know that if you are being mean to everyone in the hopes we won’t miss you so much when you die, you are doing a really good job. You DO know you are dying don’t you?” 

With that, my father and I talked about death and dying and finding spiritual meaning in death and how we, my four siblings and my mother, would cope just fine when he died.  After that, Dad seemed a little less irritable, a lot of his meanness about anxiety over how my Mother would fare and whether we children would make sure she was ok. I was honored my Mother chose me, the second child, to have ‘the Talk’ with my Dad. I found joy in helping ease my father’s sense of helplessness. Not too many weeks later my Dad died, his last days surrounded by a tag-team of his children.

When my Mother’s dying from Lewy Body Dementia began, nearly 20 years later, I was living alone in Tucson. I got to know the Dallas airport pretty well in the intervening months from the time she was provided hospice and the nearly 12 months before she died. Every time I left my Mom’s sick room in order to fly home I knew that moment might be the last moment I had with Mom. I cherished each one of those leavings but the one right before she died is my most special memory of her dying.

Every time I visited Mom, I would read poems and stories and People Magazine to her. And even though she could not really track what I said, the cadence of my voice and my hand in hers seemed to bring her joy and peace. One of her favorite authors had been James Herriott, the Yorkshire country vet who wrote fairly maudlin but endearing stories of country life. As the weeks added up to months, I read James Herriott to her again, out loud.

On my last visit before her death, Mom was very close to the veil, not eating, speaking or moving most of the time. I read anyway, out loud again, even though I had no sign from her that she could even hear me. I read for four solid days. I reread to her Herriott’s love story about meeting his wife and of their first date and honeymoon. I read until I was nearly hoarse. And when the moment to drag myself away from her bedside and into my rental car came, I put the book down and told her how much I loved her and that I knew Dad and her sisters and brother were waiting for her in that beautiful place and would be okay if she decided to go before I got back. As I left her bed, tears streaming down my face, I once again croaked out “I love you Mom”.  And as I walked by the foot of her bed, I heard her rusty voice tentatively and softly say “I love you too.” For a moment I almost thought I heard it in my mind; my mother had not spoken for days. But her day nurse looked up and confirmed what I knew – my Mom had said her final goodbye to me.

So on this All Saints Day, I celebrate my honored dead. I celebrate my father and my mother, all my beloved pets – Wolf, Cucumber, Tippy and silly Sonora. I celebrate my ancestors and cousins who did the best they could through the Great Depression, World Wars and Viet Nam. We may feel unique but we are all composites of our family. This is the day I honor them all.

ROAD TRIPPING

I really can’t imagine my life without long Road Trips in the American West. In the late 1970s I moved from Missouri to Colorado and fell in love with the West and its sweeping vistas, towering mountains and sparkling creeks and rivers. My then husband and I took a mountaineering class, started buying all the gear and began backpacking, snowshoeing and skiing around that beautiful state.

 

We moved to Tucson Arizona in the early 1980s and learned about the Sonoran Desert and its ‘Sky Island’ mountains. From there, we moved to New Zealand for a short time where my ex fell in love with all things Kiwi. In each place, we packed our vehicle and took long Road Trips, learning to appreciate the scenery and the people of the place. But I yearned to be back in the States closer to my family. Eventually I would bring our 5-year-old son back with me to the desert by myself. I continued the Road Trips, schlepping my son all over the Western US. Since then the only Western state my son Dan and I have not visited is North Dakota and it’s on the List.

 

Dan and I developed a deep understanding and appreciation for each other on those long Road Trips. The rules were simple: 1) rotate ‘primitive’ camping in National Forest or BLM lands, camping in campgrounds with ‘facilities’ and staying in inexpensive motels with hot showers and clean sheets; 2) never take the same road twice if you could help it; and 3) take no electronic entertainment devices except one tape or CD player.

 

My son and I learned to be a team on our Road Trips. We would share camping chores. We would take turns with the music selection and we would often mutually agree on a book on tape which we would listen to over miles and miles of open road. We would bicker about the merits of the book and its characters; we would argue about which band played the best cover of any Dylan original. On one Road Trip, we spent our time learning more about the Bible by listening to all of Ken Davis’s Don’t Know Much About the Bible, discussing which parts had meaning to us and why. My son told me if he were a juvenile judge he would insist that every family with wayward teens take a Road Trip without electronics because they would be forced to talk and cooperate as a family or be miserable. Fair enough.

 

Besides helping to build a relationship with my son that will last the rest of my life, Road Trips also gave both of us an appreciation for the quality and variety of landscape in the American West. We would spread our maps and Atlases out on the roadside tables searching for a new way to get from A to Z, giving any road that was NOT an Interstate a higher priority. We both still love driving through the tiny bergs and villages that make up the rural population centers of the West. You can park your truck in the local park and walk around looking for grub and never worry about a stranger messing with your things.

 

And then there are the views – the endless variety of colors and shapes. The first time I drove through Grand Staircase Escalante National Monument I was a danger to myself (since I had the road just about all to myself) because I could NOT keep my eyes on the road. Around every corner I spied the most beautiful scenery I ever saw – until the next corner. The thing about these views - even though I’ve been through Grand Staircase many times now, the awe the scenery invokes is new every time.  Mother Nature keeps changing the canvas so that each time has the probability of being a totally new experience.

 

I have been reminded of my love for Road Trips as I have made my way back to Tucson from my summer season in Yellowstone National Park. My friends have named it my ‘re-entry’, worried that I will find it difficult to be back in the city after spending five months living in expansive vistas and with entertaining wildlife. I have employed Road Trips before as a way to cushion big changes in my life. When I dropped Dan off for his first year of college at University of Montana, I took a 10-day circuitous route back to get over my sadness at being an ‘empty-nester’, wanting some time and distance before coming back to open the door of my now-empty house.

 

I really started my journey about a week ago as I drove out of Missoula following the sparking Clark Fork River along I-90 headed for Salt Lake. Montana is incredibly beautiful. Whether it is soaring snow-capped mountains or rolling grassy hills, the trip down I-90 then I-15 forces you to count your blessings. Maybe it is possible to stay grumpy in scenery like that but not for me.

 

After a few hours, I realized I really didn’t need to be in Salt Lake that night which opened the door to getting off the Interstate and onto a byway – much more desirable for a Road Tripper like me. So after sailing by the handsome gently undulating and productive farmland of Idaho, I turned off on US 91, hugging the Bear River Range all the way into Utah which is quite possibly the crème de la crème of Western river canyon country.

 

It is also the site of one of this country’s largest massacres of Native Americans in our history.  Standing atop a lofty and windy bluff overlooking the beautiful Bear River just north of the Idaho-Utah border at an educational memorial to the many Shoshone families killed in the valley below, I could understand why the Shoshone were angry at the loss of the land and the water of this verdant valley. Land and water – two of the West’s most common reasons for battle and integral to the history of the West. I was pleased that as a nation we are recognizing that not everything we have done in the past was honorable and that sometimes the victims are the ones that deserve the Memorial.

 

I grew weary near Ogden where I chose to spend the night. Ogden, the home of Utah’s Weber State University, hosted ski events in the 2002 Olympics and has become a western skiing hub with three downhill ski resorts in the nearby Wasatch Mountains. And if you are a railroad buff, you’ll be able to visit the train museum in Ogden’s historic Italian Renaissance Union Station and see the exact place where the western and eastern railroad expansions finally met up to provide transcontinental service to the US at Promontory Point.

 

I stayed at the historic Ben Lomond Hotel, an upscale ‘suite’ motel with soft beds, great amenities and friendly staff. I don’t normally allow myself the luxury of an upscale hotel on my Road Trips but I’m glad I did. The grand style of the Ben Lomond with its beautiful and soaring lobby, sumptuous ballrooms and many photos of early Ogden felt a little like staying in an unexpectedly comfortable museum.  I loved my stay at the Ben Lomond and I loved Ogden with its quaint historic blocks (25^th Avenue), public sculptures and beautiful mountain backdrop.

 

Not a bad day for a Road Trip. Road Trips start each day with the knowledge that the day is bound to be special – special because you are taking your time to get to know the area through which you are traveling, perhaps meeting some interesting people, learning about why this country is so great. You find out that people all over value the same things.  So while the scenery around you changes like an Imax production, the central core of what makes us great stays the same – productivity, generosity to strangers, a sense of place and history, a longing and reverence for ‘home’. A great reminder why I take Road Trips when making big changes in my life. It’s a comfort to know that there are some things that are timeless.