A HOT SPOT IN THE MOJAVE

If you like the kind of inky blackness found in a cave, the night was perfect. My friend Melissa and I hurtled down the lonely desolate road through the Mojave Desert joking of alien abductions and constantly checking the navigation app on my tablet. The beams from our bright headlights barely cut into the darkness and only confirmed what we already knew – we were way the hell out in the middle of Nowhere.

The rare Black Supermoon, just a tiny sliver in the sky of bazillions of tiny diamonds, was only an accessory – a promise of light rather than light itself. As the miles spun below us, we began wondering if we took the right road to Tecopa Hot Springs Resort, our destination for the night before driving north to Death Valley.

We passed a sign next to the road announcing a “Mission” but could see nothing but the sign itself surrounded by giant clumps of desert grasses. Another less tidy and hand-lettered sign announced the Desert Resort for Naturalism which we figured meant ‘nudist colony’. Makes sense. This patch of empty desert is the perfect place for the au natural set. Nobody would care if they saw a naked person; they’d just be glad to see another human being at all.

Finally we came to Tecopa, California, an intersection among a few older houses and slightly newer corrugated buildings – perhaps temporary at one time but now fixtures in this Desert road junction. We spied what appeared to be an active fire department and the remains of boarded up businesses. At least there were signs of settlement. Absolutely no one was about and no door had the welcome mat out.

Our nav system directed us to turn north and in just a few minutes our high beams illuminated a sign announcing “Tecopa Hot Springs Resort.” We were at our destination, a thermal area with bubbling hot springs in the middle of the inhospitable Mojave. I had emailed the proprietors and Amy had emailed back letting me know to just come on in and find a spot – we could settle up in the morning. We found the small building which serves as the Office with a hand-drawn map of the place showing the general layout of the RV and tent sites posted next to its door. But the hand-drawn map couldn’t convey that this rather casual grid went increasingly UP.

I’m really not the judgey kind so I guess ‘resort’ could describe the property before us.  The collection of modest RVs and truck trailers surrounding a few ancient ‘cabins’ and slightly more modern buildings certainly had that casualness that defines resorts.
We happily spied a few heads through the windows of the transient structures laid out in a grid. Some of the resort guests clearly had made the Resort their home, decorating their ‘pads’ with Casper the Ghost and other unworldly statuettes. Giant flower pots lined the boundaries of the pads, providing some sense of tidiness but mostly acting as warnings of imminent danger of the drop-offs behind them.

We drove up and then up again, passing what we determined was the shower and hot tub block for the campground, all the way to the end of the graded, graveled road. The whole place was basically gravel and rock, bladed out of a rocky hill. I’m sure it crossed both our minds that most of our friends and certainly our families would have turned around by now. Instead, the general shabbiness of the place seemed perfect for our adventure into the Mojave Desert, a place of myth and mystery, a good start for our excursion into Death Valley in the morning.

Although seemingly impossible, the dark thickened, the tiny sliver of a moon having sauntered beyond the horizon. Having readied our tent shelters for the long, cold night, we dragged our weary bodies down to the clean and welcoming tubs where we soaked until our bodies felt warm in the chill night. Returning to our camp, we unfolded our camp chairs to eat supper and wait in the darkness, a small ‘campfire’ of electric votive candles for company. We wrapped ourselves in our warmest clothes and blankets and waited, trying to keep warm as the temperatures dropped even more.  Deserts like cold, crisp nights.

We had left a badly penciled map on the door of the Office for our friends Deanna and John and hoped they would be able to find us on our lonely aerie above the other inhabitants of the Resort. Once the silence was punctuated by a lone vehicle lumbering down the vacant road but the sound continued down the empty road below. The blackness seemed impenetrable.

Finally, late in the night, we heard the sounds of a pickup hesitantly making its way up to our rocky perch. Although it was too dark to see even the outline of a truck, I jumped up and waved at the occupants of the vehicle, assuming it just HAD to be our friends. Deanna and John were equally happy to see us as we exchanged our delight that we had all actually found each other in the vastness of the Mojave. Melissa and I then quickly disappeared into our tents to sleep the sleep of cold and weary travelers.

I always awake with the dawn. I like to greet the morning and watch Brother Sun frugally lend his light to the day. I crawled out of my warm sleeping bag wondering what else I would see of this tiny settlement - a small gathering of RVs, mobile homes and older structures of every type seemingly thrown on the desert floor as if tossed like jacks. Clearly, no zoning laws impede the progress of development in this place.

Tecopa Hot Springs would make a great set for Twilight Zone. Old cars, RVs, broken down buildings – a place the ‘future’ has left behind. I’m guessing its few permanent residents like it this way. Perfect for the desert; a reminder that there are still wild places people can get lost on purpose in the American West. The tableau that seemed haphazardly laid out before me down the hill along the road was nothing I had really ever seen before except in my imagination when reading John Steinbeck or Hunter Thompson or in pictures of the days of the Dust Bowl. The hillbilly in my blood helped me fit right in.

I wandered down to the hot springs, the main attraction of this scrubby salt pan of a valley. A ‘regular’, a semi-retired gent who weekends at Tecopa, explained all the sites and must sees – well THE must see – of Tecopa, a large mud pond just outside of town which purportedly has healing powers. He chatted about the more modern resort of the four that offered hot springs in this tiny berg – it was called Delights. Apparently an enterprising proprietor had somehow managed to strike up a bustling trade with Korean tour companies which added a little worldliness to the place. Globalization in the Mojave. He told us ‘our’ resort was the ‘coolest’, attracting more artists and hippy types. I like being part of the cool crowd, especially if cool means weird and unusual to the max.
 

He told us of the great anomaly of the place. One of the owners, the guy, is a highly renowned chef who brings people from all over the valley to his gourmet dinners every Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights. Artists and prospectors and hippies and survivalists as well as guests at the four hot springs resorts converge at the Tecopa Hot Springs Resort’s extremely small and mostly closed restaurant in order to eat like kings and queens in the middle of the Mojave. I like that. Gourmet food in the desert without having to get dressed up. Heck, without having to even wash up.

Honestly, if your gold standard is no less than a Holiday Inn Express, you might just want to skip the drive down the long, lonely road to Tecopa. But if you crave something REALLY different and you are a big fan of hot springs, give it a try. Just make sure to stop by on the weekend when you can get a hot gourmet meal for $20 served by a chef who chooses to run an unlovely but funky ‘resort’ in the middle of the most inhospitable desert in America.

 

MOTHER'S WINTER CLOAK

I love sunsets. I love mountains. I love snow. Sometimes, if I am really lucky, I can have more than one of these at the same time. 

Last week it rained a lot down in the Tucson Valley. Right around the start of the storm, I realized this just might be my best chance to have a little snow fun in my own state. Although Arizona ALWAYS is blessed with at last SOME snow, the past few years have been particularly barren. For a cross-country skier like me, that makes me seek trails in other states. But where there is rain in the valleys, there’s a fair bet there will be snow in the mountains.

I quickly talked a friend into carpooling (he’s a downhiller but likes Sunrise Ski Resort and is willing to split the ride) and off we rolled to the White Mountains. Sunrise has been around for ages and has three mountains for apparently all levels of skiing. The mountains are lovely, rolling things but it’s the area under the base on the way up the ‘ski road’ that invites me – a charming, sun-dappled forest where the trees grow tall and straight.

During the summer this area is a campground for Apache Sunrise. During the winter, the relatively maintained campground roads and high elevation provide a wide, open often snowy lane for Nordic skiing and snowshoeing. Or your best winter boots. Probably enough snow, too, if the skis were mine. Outfitters can be peculiar about their gear.

Being in a snowy forest is a treat too few people get to experience. Particularly alone. But cross-country skiers and winter hikers often crave solitude (that’s why we like to hang out in the forest and desert). An open forest, where the sun has the opportunity to cause the crystals of snow to sparkle, is particularly agreeable. Even though there IS a marked trail, if you don’t have to worry too much about running into something under the snow, taking a sans-trail walkabout in the deep, crusted stuff is very relaxing. It is hard to get lost since you have left your own breadcrumbs (ski or snowshoe track or postholes) to follow back to the car.

If you are lucky, the snow lies unbroken in sparkling mini-meadows. You walk through a beautiful, glistening carpet of white stuff. Birds whisper about you; tell-tale prints through the pines remind that other animals are watching. An open, snow-covered forest is toward the top of my list of places to enjoy in which one can safely get lost alone. You can always follow those breadcrumbs back from where you came.

When I am clearly the only person left on a particular patch of the planet, I like to find a place to sit on a sunny stump or convenient rock and breathe. In. Out. When I breathe in, in my head I send the oxygen directly to whichever body part sends signals it need a lot of help. Usually my neck. When I breathe out, my body feels like it can release into just a bit more space, giving my bones and joints just a little more room.

Ouija breathing gets me started on merging my full breath with the rhythm of the universe – local or otherwise. I hear the air whistle past my tongue with a sound like an ocean wave. Ebb. Flow. Out. In. Pretty soon my ears tune in to the din of the forest. Every forest has a din - peculiar sounds made up of noises like water trickling, birds chirping, wind blowing, leaves and needles quaking, bugs crawling and twigs snapping.

Breathing deeply, my hearing becomes acute. I might breathe silently or I might find the rhythm of the forest and breathe with that. Today, I found the perfect perch and deposited my daypack on the stump next to mine. The snow had generously accumulated on the long dark pine branches the day before sufficiently melting to freeze into small hanging icicles at their tips. Plenty of snow still hung all along the pine branches and cones but the crystals were becoming water, providing a slide for larger clumps of snow. In my meditating, I heard a large snow clump loudly plop on the fabric of my daypack.

I listened to the forest changing around me, the snow becoming part of the life-sustaining watershed feeding the rivers that feed the rivers that feed the rivers flowing to the Sea of Cortez and on to the Pacific Ocean. It sounded like rain taking its time in the falling. I heard the sound of the trickle of water under the snow’s crust. I swear I heard the pines drinking in the moisture. I may have heard the fish flip their fins in joy at the replenishment of their rivers.

This is what brings me to the Whites – or San Francisco Peaks – or the Bitterroots – or the Ozarks – or the….. Although I’d rather visit snow than live in it (as I have on occasion), I love Mother Nature’s Winter, to feel its icy kiss on my cheeks. Especially when there is snow to ski or hike or snowshoe, laying before me Mother Nature’s most beautiful cloak.

RIDING THE RAILS

Agatha Christie wrote about a murder on a famous one of these. They have fanciful names which evoke romance and history. They have been the subject of songs and poetry. They carry goods to market and family and friends to their loved ones. They delivered thousands of soldiers to the front. They’ve been the venue of many movies. Some think they are dying relics of a time gone by in a world searching Mapquest for ‘the fastest route’. We’re talking trains here. And I’m on one this moment.

I am traveling to Kansas City from Tucson to visit family. I could have flown from Tucson-perhaps not directly but certainly within five hours or so. That's how long it took me just to drive to Flagstaff to get on Amtrak's Southwest Chief at the ungodly hour of 6am. So why choose a slow-moving train instead of fast-moving jet?

Once, on another visit to Kansas City, I was blessed to see a herd of antelope prancing alongside the train. Can’t see that from the air. On that same trip, somewhere in Kansas in the middle of the night, I awoke at a small town depot sparkling in the light of streetlamps from recent snow fall. Very picturesque. Can’t see that by air. When I arrived at Union Station in Kansas City, a beautifully decorated and massive hall greeted me with elegant Holiday decorations and music from a grand piano. Don’t see that much in airports.

In train dining cars, it is custom for the host or hostess to seat complete strangers with each other at the same table with instructions to 'get to know one another'. Yesterday I had a delightful breakfast with two other women, mother and daughter, traveling from LA to Albuquerque to visit a son and brother.  They had nice egg, potato and muffin breakfasts and I had the tasty French toast with real butter and syrup. All served with real silverware, plates (albeit plastic) and lots of coffee refills. We chatted about our kids and jobs and retirement.

I don’t think I have EVER had such a nice breakfast on an airplane, even before they switched to the cold, tasteless, boxed meals you have the privilege of buying now. The closest thing to this kind of indulgence was on a on the late night maiden flight for British Airways from Osaka Japan to Hong Kong. The attendants treated my ex-husband and me, along with all the other passengers, to an open bar – all night. Good thing we sobered up a bit before we reached Kai Tak Airport in Hong Kong.

You could say I am a fan of trains. Yes, they have their limitations. In addition to the 5-hour drive to Flagstaff and the several hours I napped wrapped in my sub-zero sleeping bag in order to snag one of the rare and free parking spots for Flagstaff’s Amtrak station, I had to commit an entire 24 hours to riding the rails to my destination. Maybe I’m odd. I see that as a plus.

I find I sleep better on trains than on jets. First, the seats on Amtrak are generous and comfortable. The liberal leg room allows nearly all 5’4” of me to spread out a little, even when slumped into the cushy seat in sleep. Most of the time when I travel Amtrak alone I have two seats all to myself. Each seat is equipped with a hideaway footrest which, when pulled up parallel to the floor, provides sufficient space for a sound, sound sleep. And then there is that lovely rumble that encourages slumber, the constant drone of metal on metal as the giant wheels roll down the track. The vibration reminds me why parents place their fussy babies on the dryer to be lulled to sleep.  A vibration in a plane just makes me worry.

Every once in a while, another train will pass – quite close - and you can hear the ‘conversation’ of the engines as they signal their presence to each other. This rail route, which starts in LA and goes all the way to Chicago, carries a lot of consumer goods, fuel, food and other freight. A lot of trains pass by.

Right now, as we pull into Albuquerque, I can hear that very unique and lonely hoot of the train whistle, letting the tiny towns and villages on our way know that Amtrak is passing. I am watching high chaparral fly by on the north side of the train. To the south, a wide golden plain in its winter dress is bordered by mesas and mountain ranges.

Soon, we will pull into the historic but modernized Albuquerque train station which includes its version of fast train and is part of a greater transportation hub of the metropolitan area. Navajo and Pueblo craftsmen and women will undoubtedly have spread out blankets on which all kinds of jewelry and other items are laid out in tidy displays. Can’t EVER remember anything like that in an airport.

Let’s face it. The history of train travel in the United States is just plain sexy. Our country would not have been so easily developed if the railroad barons (and barons they were – refer to my blog post Of Pasties, Prostitutes and Politicians) hadn’t invested millions of dollars to build the rail system that would eventually carry miners to Montana, wheat from Kansas to the coasts, and legions of soldiers to the European and Pacific theaters.
Pullman cars, the first really comfortable ‘sleeping cars’, became popular after Pullman loaned one of his uber luxurious cars to the government in order to carry the body of Abraham Lincoln across a grieving nation to his final resting place.

In 1869, Union Pacific and the Central Pacific railroads met at Promontory Summit Utah, forming the very first intercontinental rail route. It could be argued that this one historic event is one of the best analogies of the development of the US West. The story of this joining includes blood, sweat and tears of the workers working by hand to build it; lives and fortunes won and lost; the necessity of collaboration between two corporate and distrustful railroad giants; and literally several acts of Congress. In a very real way, the railroad was a cooperative effort that included every socio-economic segment of society. Its completion opened up markets and provided workers and material for the development of the West. The route I am riding was established by the Sante Fe Railroad and named the Super Chief, bringing stars and the possibilities of adventure in the Wild West to the city folk as far east as Chicago.

Back East, railroads built beautiful stations with grand architecture, including New York’s and my own hometown’s Union Stations. In the West, railroads got involved in the development of the National Parks as they built quality hotels to lure Easterners to visit the Grand Canyon and Yellowstone on their rail lines. Those beautiful hotels, like the El Tovar in the Grand Canyon, remain some of our most visited and popular historic hotels.

Railroad history intersects with the history of the labor movement as the railroad workers struck for not only better wages but higher safety standards in the early 20^th Century. My father’s father, a switchman, was struck down in the huge Kansas City Kansas railway yards. The railroad called it a ‘stroke’ and my mother’s father, a co-worker, claimed it was an industrial accident. The railroad refused to accept any responsibility or pay out any survival benefits forcing my grandmother, since welfare programs were still far in the future, had to provide for her seven children through church and charity.

My father worked briefly for the railroad as did many of my uncles. And some of my fondest childhood memories include laying in the steamy hot and tiny guest bedroom at my grandparents’ house up from the rail yards where Grandpa worked, counting not sheep but the number of cars being bumped together to form a long snakey line that would wend its through the country bringing needed goods to both coasts. I could legitimately claim that my family history has been deeply shaped by the railroads.

As I watch the pueblos of Northern New Mexico fly by, I can’t help but feel nostalgic about the grand days of the railroads.  Honestly, I’m really more of a journey than a destination person. Planes are ALL about the destination. Trains are about the journey – enjoying the changing scenery, chatting with your neighbor. So when I have time and I’m not taking my trusty truck YiHa along, I choose to ride the rails. Then from beginning to end I can honestly say my trip has been an adventure.

I DID IT!!!

I did it. I got off the bench and entered the game. I’d been sidelined by injury but even though the event was slightly premature to have healed completely, I just had to do it. But right up to the start, maybe especially as I was standing with over a thousand other riders at the 40-mile start line, I found myself reconsidering my decision.

A few months ago, somehow I managed to reinjure a ligament and develop tendonitis in my left knee. I’ve been resting, icing, using compressions sleeves and elevating as much as I could given my busy life.  I’d downed anti-inflammatories and gave up dancing. For me, these things are a big inconvenience. I’m an active adult who needs to stay active or it’s whine time.

Often when I am recovering from an injury, I have a focus for my healing – a backpack or in this case, a bike race. It was the ninth year I was scheduled to ride in El Tour de Tucson and the race was not an event I was prepared to give up – even just this once.

The El Tour is special. Cyclist of all levels, including semi-professionals and complete novices ride together along one route with four different starting points. Although each route’s riders start separately, at some point each new group of starters merge with other riders who have already been riding for hours to the colorful, noisy finish line in downtown Tucson.

And there I was, at the 40-mile start. I had signed up for the 55-mile route but in a rare moment of sanity, I decided to downgrade my expectations for a knee that still twisted at odd times bringing ringing pain. The 40 might still be a stretch. Wearing my bike shorts and jersey, a black copper compression sleeve over my knee, I slung my leg over my bike and tucked my foot into the pedal cage.

BANG! And we were off. The 40 attracts a lot of first-time riders and it often shows in the number of accidents, both major and minor, that occur in the first two miles. The ride starts up in Oro Valley, a comfortably posh townlet in the northern suburbs of Tucson. Haven ridden the route before, I knew the first several miles is the hardest part of the race, proceeding up a long hill before dipping back down into a wash and then repeating the effort another mile or so for another wash.

The first 10 miles or so of the race basically traverses the end of a bajada created by the Tortolita Mountains, a lushly rolling and washy desert with many water courses, significant (Honeybee Wash) and insignificant. This means the route, after leaving the excessively well-groomed Rancho Vistoso master-planned community, tends to gently rolling terrain over Moore Road, made bumpy by heavy vehicles, horse trailers and lack of maintenance.  I like this part of the race. Mountains are all around and few houses can be seen. But I especially like what comes next, the long 7-mile glide down Tangerine to the Interstate.

My bike, a pretty ivory-colored racing bike I creatively named Ivory Pearl, loves hitting speeds in excess of 25 miles per hour down this stretch. I have been known to let out a few yeehaws here. Sometimes, Ivory is going so fast I no longer can peddle, having no gear wheel big enough for that size revolution. Gotta fix that. I’m sure Ivory can hit 30 mph with bigger gear wheels.

Seventeen miles into the race, a line of portapotties and an entire platoon of colorful riders and their bikes announce the first really big ‘rest stop’. Here you can fuel up on bananas, oranges and maybe some cookies or other sugary treat. You can also drink orange juice or fill up your water bottles. And you can take advantage of the portapotties. I stopped to check out the portapotties and my knee.

Portapotties were as I expected them to be; the floor was suspiciously sticky.  Portapotties need bull’s eyes in the urinals on the walls. At least it didn’t smell too bad. I was reminded why I often prefer finding the nearest bush. My knee? Doing good I thought. But just to make sure, I downed some more anti-inflammatories and rubbed my ear in the spot my acupuncturist assured me was the pressure point for that pesky knee.

Then off again, this time going under the Interstate and onto the frontage road from Marana, the northernmost suburb of Tucson, all the way to Downtown. Eight miles from the finish line, for as many years as I can remember, the last rest stop has offered richly chocolate brownies with enough carbs and sugar to get the weariest rider those last few miles to the finish. My knee, really hurting by then, needed tending and, after grabbing a handful of brownie (I have my priorities), I limped over to a folding chair with a footrest. I spent several valuable minutes massaging my knee, rubbing my ear, and pressing the pressure points for my knee in rapid staccato before getting up to finish the race, hoping for the best.

Virtually a few blocks from the finish, the route turned west, away from the Downtown area, leading us riders down through Rio Nuevo (Tucson’s somewhat deservedly maligned redevelopment project), circumnavigating the eastern base of ‘A’ Mountain (named so for the University of Arizona) and then on to 22^nd Street for the short incline up to 6^th Avenue. My knee, more than a little sore by then, was signaling me it was time to quit. My brain was having a pointed discussion with my knee – something about it being a wussy - all while my reason was trying out various combinations of gears – low/low, high/high, low/mid, etc. trying to find the combination that would cause the least pain with each revolution of the bike gears.

Finally! That blessed gold spire of Santa Cruz Catholic Church, a landmark that screams just a few BLOCKS to go! I was peddling slowly, trying to figure out whether peddling slowly just prolongs pain or eases it overall. But when I turned onto 6^th Avenue and adrenaline took over, somewhat blunting the pain, I adjusted to high/high gear to get more road per revolution and rode to the finish line like a champ.

I’m not the least bit competitive. I don’t golf or play competitive sports. I don’t ride, or hike, or climb mountains in order to best someone else. I do it strictly for myself – to remind myself of the physical limits of my body and my will. Sometimes, as in this ride, it is my will that takes over and my body must do its bidding. I suspect that’s true of most athletes, whether in competitive sports or sports like mine in which the journey is often the prize.

I am left wondering which is best – mind over matter or matter over mind? I suspect that mind is what really defines champions and heroes. But does it really matter as long as that precious journey has been worth it?

LET'S MOVE ON

My neighbor is a kind and compassionate senior. He used to travel regularly to Agua Prieta, just south of the border, to help build small block houses with concrete floors and roughed-in plumbing for impoverished families who needed warm shelter. He rescued a Chihuahua from a puppy mill. Just the other day, I asked him his opinion of a ballot measure which would allow terminally ill persons access to unproven meds and appliances. I counted on him to give me a considered answer.

One of my brother-in-laws is probably the best father I have ever known. He is generous with his time, has coached basketball and volleyball teams for his kids and has done his fair share of staying at home with his sick kids so my sister could go to work.

Another brother-in-law is a thoughtful and generous partner to my sister who suffers from arthritis. He makes sure things are done so my sister doesn’t have to. He married her many years ago, becoming more of a father to her two boys than their ‘real’ father. The boys, men now, look to him for the model of who they want to be. He was unbelievably loving to my mother as she suffered her last years with a horrible form of dementia that finally claimed her life. That last year, when Mother was barely able to move by herself, he nightly lifted her wasting body out of her wheelchair and tucked her in for the night. It was ‘their’ ritual.

I used to work with an organization dedicated to relieving the suffering from malnutrition, TB and malaria in Africa. I knew I could count on one of my US Representatives here in Arizona to introduce and follow through on appropriations to fund health and food measures for Africa. I knew he was aware of his privilege and deeply cared about those who had less than he had. I voted for him term after term.

One of my best friends grew up in the military. She was born abroad and spent most of her young life in or around military bases. She’s the type that shares food with the homeless, sitting right down beside them to hear their stories while they eat together. She stresses about the removal of music from schools. She compassionately assists her real estate clients as they make the very difficult decisions to leave their homes and move into assisted living. Once, we had a serious disagreement about a US military action and nearly ‘broke up’ before we realized our friendship was way more important than our disparate personal views on what patriotism is.

When I grew up, my parents always voted for Howard, our neighbor, as our state house representative. They knew him to be caring, and thoughtful, and true to his sense of morality. Howard simply couldn’t be bought by special interests. When I was in college, Howard invited me to intern with his office, giving me some juicy assignments that really opened up my eyes to the world. Once he sent me to the local prison to research and write up my thoughts about the prison system.

All these people are Republicans. I am a Democrat – born and bred. But I have never believed, nor has there been evidence in my life that would cause me to believe, that Republicans are ‘the enemy’. I have admired the grit and the honesty of my Republican friends and family members. I have relied on them for their take on the economy, health care, education. Obviously, we often disagreed but I felt better talking to them just to get the alternative point of view. I hope they felt the same.

There is a lot of news out there this morning that might prompt my friends on the left to think of the Republicans as ‘the other’. I’m even guilty of hoping they fail in order to prove the Democrats right that they are the party of ‘no’. But that ‘little voice’ in my head reminded that my Republican friends and family, who I absolutely trust in my heart are good, kind and generous people, simply have a different perspective on what’s best for America.

On this new day, instead of hoping they fail, I choose to hope they can use their considerable intelligence and insight to come up with alternatives to Democratic policies that have provided results, but not results that have come quickly enough. A friend called me early this morning to ask me why I thought so many people voted Republican in this election. My words were “People are tired, very tired, of being poor. They are tired of not having enough money to buy their children decent clothes; they are tired of worrying about paying the mortgage or the rent. They are looking for change.”

I, too, want change. I want better education, health care for all, higher paying jobs, an economy that does more than struggle along. I want my gay friends to have the right to marry and I want to make my own decisions about what to do with my body. I have always felt these things are best handled by the Democrats but I’m willing to give Republicans the field and not obstruct their good ideas. Ultimately this is a democracy, thank God (or Allah or Yahweh or Great Spirit or…..), and that means we are all in this together. All of us. The rich and the poor, the well and the unwell, the 1% and the 99%, for better or worse. Let’s get on with this.

SIDELINED

I woke up pretty grumpy this morning.  I have been experiencing some problems with my trusty knees and I finally went to see the doctor about it last week. That’s why I was grumpy today. That and the fact I am sitting in an imaging center lobby at 6:30 am waiting for an MRI.

As a child I was always on the move. That is, when I wasn’t hanging upside-down in ‘my’ tree. Now that I’m 61 I’m still pretty much always on the move. I have learned over the years to honor my energy level by hiking, backpacking, bicycling, canoeing and, if I can’t be outside, by dancing or taking Zumba and yoga classes. So when something sidelines me, I’m just not happy.

Theoretically, I should be staying off my feet as much as possible. My very initial diagnosis (pending MRI results) is damage to the medial collateral ligament of my left knee. Injuries to the MCL may be made worse by activity, such as my usual hiking, canoeing, blah, blah, blah.  Well-meaning friends, researching this on the internet, have warned me of operations and even knee replacements, with long months of recovery. Long months of inactivity and RICE (rest, ice, compression and elevation). This is the point at which I stop listening to my friends and their words sound like blah, blah, blah. But when I really get grumpy, what’s my go-to happiness strategy? Get outside. Go for a walk. Go visit some trees in the forest.

This past weekend, trying not to project months of sitting on my sofa with my knee higher than my heart (part of the treatment strategy according to WebMD), I took myself and my friend Annie up the Catalina Highway to Mount Lemmon. The supposed purpose of the ride was to catch what we Tucsonans have to settle for when fall comes round. Small groves of aspen and a few lonely Arizona ash, gold and red respectively, high on the mountain at the top of Ski Valley. It was lovely. I hobbled the mile or so to The Meadow and felt revived. Although I certainly appreciated the fall color, the mile hike to The Meadow was my way of thumbing my nose at the pain and distress I was feeling about my injured knee. I also spent the rest of the weekend laying on my sofa with my knee higher than my heart.

My recent sidelining has given me a deeper appreciation for injured athletes. In November 2013, Lindsey Vonn, a world-class skier so pretty I would very much like to dislike her, was injured in a training run. Her injury was a knee injury. A few months later, Vonn had to announce she would not be competing in the Sochi Olympics. Now THAT’s a bummer. She is back at the Super G in Lake Alberta Canada in December, staying positive about her chances for the 2018 Olympics. And here I am, grumpy because I am probably out of El Tour de Tucson this year.

This year would be my ninth ride in El Tour de Tucson. Nine times, all but 1 of them in the shortest event, the one that varies between 35 and 45 miles. My 59^th birthday present to myself was a vow to complete the 60-mile, which I did and not dead last as I expected. ’60 before 60’ was my motto. I even rode in the rain last year. El Tour de Tucson is a touchstone for me. As long as I can ride, I can be confident this aging thing has not overtaken me.

Until this morning, I have been unable to accept anything but ‘yes’ as the answer to ‘Are you riding this year?’. I admit that last week, I already began to get used to the idea of dropping back from the 55-mile (a few miles got shaved off this year) to the 40-mile. But this is just a setback but not a forfeiture of my commitment to ride.

My friends continue to ask. Am I going to ride? The short answer is I’m unwilling to forgo the idea I can but day after day of knee pain for an injury that just does not seem to be healing, is poking little holes in my usual confidence. Maybe I can’t.

Lying perfectly still in an MRI is somewhat like meditating – except for the loud noise, of course. But to keep myself from fidgeting, I go straight to my ‘happy place’, the place where streams of thoughts come floating across my consciousness. One stream that I didn’t much care for this morning was my ruminations on how I can participate without actually riding. Just writing that makes me cringe.

Beyond the physical treatments-the operations, the physical therapy, the medications-injuries need positive thinking. I think Vonn is really good at that. World-class skier that she is, she has suffered quite a few injuries in her long career. And every time she is injured, she speaks positively about when she thinks she’ll be back on the slope.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Vonn this morning. About how her injuries don’t mean just a loss of fun and accomplishment like mine do. Hers also carries a big risk of losing lucrative endorsement deals.  Her injuries mean a potential loss of her standing in the ski business. A double whammy. At least I don’t have to think about that.

So I am hoping that my uninvited stream of thoughts about how I can participate without riding is actually a good thing – my brain finally coming to terms with the reality that I am not impervious to injury and that my body, at 61 years old, injures more easily and just doesn’t recover like it used to. Maybe, just maybe, I, too, am on the path to healing. I think you can’t heal what you won’t accept.

INTREPID

INTREPID

As the current swept me further away in my canoe, I held my breath, waiting for Gloria’s head to pop up from the latte-colored waters of the Rio Grande. Her capsized canoe, with two days gear bungy-corded to its yoke and thwarts, was too heavy for her paddling partner Jerry to pull over by himself if he could even see her behind the hull. I heard myself start screaming “Gloria is under the canoe.” John, quickly turning his boat toward the disabled craft, jumped out of his canoe and swam quickly over. Jerry frantically kept reaching around under the canoe trying to find a hand, a leg, anything that let him know Gloria’s whereabouts in the murky, chocolate milk water.

Finally Gloria’s hand found Jerry’s and he knew she was still at least alive. With Herculian effort, John hefted himself on the other end of the canoe to tip the opposite end up and out of the water so we could find our friend and paddling comrade. Gloria’s head was above the water, alive and well, having found an air pocket under the upturned canoe. And that ended the worst three minutes of my recent 2-day paddle down the Wild and Scenic Rio Grande, just east of Big Bend National Park.

I had been working on this trip for months. As an organizer of a Tucson group of adventurists, I think up trips I would like to knock off my bucket list and then I post them on the Meetup page of my group. Max, my organizing partner, and I have done several trips before – I do the logistics and he is responsible for what happens during the trip. It’s a good partnership. We’ve taken 20 people canoeing down the Colorado; we’ve backpacked 25-miles into and out of Shoshone Lake in Yellowstone National Park. But this trip – this wild and scenic trip – was the most remote and potentially dangerous of any we’d done before.

I originally felt confident we could pull this off without incident or injury. The usually calm, wide Rio Grande, the headwaters of which are three states away in Colorado’s San Luis Valley, winds its way down through Northern New Mexico, then past its verdant chili fields near Hatch, turning toward the enormous cattle ranches of West Texas.  Usually it is a pretty sleepy paddle – running generally between 200 to 400 cubic feet per second. Some stretches you might even have to help your boat over a dry or shallow part of the river.

Not this time. Recent rains had pushed the cubic feet per seconds (cfs) up well over 1500 the first morning of our paddle. High water is usually safer but certainly faster water. We were headed from our put-in at La Linda to our take-out a little over 11 miles downriver in Miravillas Canyon, part of the Black Gap Wildlife Management Area. I confess, looking at the quickly churning river from the overlook above La Linda, I began to question the advisability of taking 15 paddlers of differing abilities down the fast-running, muddy river. Was this insane? Was my need for remote, perhaps slightly dangerous experiences foolishly pushing me to drag 14 of my closest adventure buddies along with me on this trip? Would all fifteen of us come back safely?

Honestly, I am too much of a scaredy-cat to try this alone. The Rio Grande is not only CLOSE to the border; it IS the border between Texas and the largely wild and open northern part of the state of Coahula, Mexico. The canyon walls on the American side of Temple Canyon, just east of Big Bend National Park, are pretty dang intimating – enough to encourage me to rent a satellite phone just in case we suffered injury or worse on this stretch of wild river.

In addition to the extremely wild and remote nature of this stretch, several paddlers originally interested in this trip canceled because this particular river, the Rio Grande, has a long history of being the swim for a better life between Mexico and the United States. But the Mexican side of the Rio Grande in the Temple Canon area rises high above the river, defying the most desperate undocumented immigrant and even the most avaricious and determined drug dealer. We were safe from above, I was sure. But were we safe from below?

The rains had made the ‘road’ into the La Linda put-in soft and clayey. My truck, Yiha, as faithful and as good of a truck she is, might get stuck and tow trucks are pretty darn far away. The outfitter providing the canoes would only take the trailer with our 7 shiny red canoes part-way down the alternately powdery or slick, rutted clay path. We had to carry the heavy canoes and all our gear about a tenth of a mile to the actual muddy bank that would serve as our put-in point.

Finally, we were all in the water and headed down river to the beautifully rugged canyon called Temple. Thank goodness the river was wide and smooth for a few miles. Even though most of us had been paddling before, our usual gig is backpacking. Many of us had never paddled with our particular paddling partner for this trip and we all took time to learn paddling together and relearn how to make the boat turn or even stay bow first in the water.

Most importantly, we had to be confident we could keep our craft from crashing into the tall, sturdy and grasping reeds lining the river. And that’s what happened to Gloria and Jerry. When they hit the reeds, Gloria reached up to protect her face, moving slightly up and off her seat and the canoe, precariously perched on the reeds, tipped over, depositing Gloria and Jerry into the river.

Gloria and Jerry’s unplanned swim in the muddy water had the effect of calming us all down. We started to get serious about our paddling – just in time for a series of riffles which call for some hard and coordinated paddling in order to avoid being pulled into the reeds. And then, the magic happened. We began to relax and enjoy the extreme beauty of this rugged patch of Mother Earth.

 

 

 

Max had spent some time studying the satellite images of this stretch of the Rio Grande and, confirmed by our informative shuttle driver Tim from Far Flung Outdoor Center in Terlingua, Texas, already had an idea of where he wanted us to stop for the night – atop a wide grassy shelf above the water on the MEXICAN side of the river. Yeah. Mexico. But with no Border Patrol to question our motives. No Park Police to even check our permits. Just us and the Rio Grande and the rock and the sky – and the pissed off wild burros and black-tailed rattler who usually consider this stretch of grassy bank exclusively theirs. We were in heaven.

We all pitched our various tents and prepared for a warm night on the river bank. Shortly after most of us retired, flashes of light crept over the cliff. Somewhere, people were being hammered by lightening. Would we be? Close to midnight, when most of us had gone to bed and just a few were up swapping stories, the wind picked up, pushing the walls of our small dainty backpack tents in and out like bellows, startling even the bugs that had crept into our tents for shelter. Whatever would be would be. We had faced all kinds of weather before; we certainly could live through this. We slept.

In the morning’s overcast light, we checked the condition of the river-several inches higher and it seemed much faster. With only 4 to 5 miles to go and without further incidents, we could get to the take-out lickety split.  Or we could have another boat overturn on the briskly running water and be late to our outfitter’s shuttle.

A third very real option was that we would miss the take-out altogether. Unlike our other paddling trips, if we missed our take-out, a very narrow and steep stretch of mud in a heavily reeded stretch of river, we would be faced with a very long and ill-prepared 98-mile trip down the rest of the Lower Canyons. Ninety eight miles of rugged canyon with no roads or helio pads. No help. No cell service. Miss the take-out and we were pretty much toast.

Back to Max. I am his organizing partner because I fully trust his knowledge and planning on a river or a trail. Every time we passed a likely take-out point, however, I admit to thinking “it THIS it? Did Max miss this?” Then my rational self would kick in and I would remind myself that Max is my partner for a really good reason. He takes his responsibilities to get everyone back safely very seriously. When I saw his red canoe pull over to a tiny, barely perceptible split in the reeds, my trust in his abilities was once again verified. We were at the end of our journey. And as soon as the first canoe was pulled up and out of the water, our canoe shuttle and my trusty YiHa with her ‘driver on loan’ arrived and backed up to get us. Our two glorious days on the Wild and Scenic Rio Grande were over. All that was left was the celebrating.

One thing about this group – they are intrepid. They are the ones you want on speed dial during the Apocalypse.  They have your back and expect you to have theirs. They have fun in the heat, the pouring rain or a blowing windstorm. They have gone with me to other remote and supposedly dangerous parts of this magnificent planet. And as long as I offer the right remote places, they will happily join me again where few others dare to tread – or paddle – or ski – or…...  In language my son would be embarrassed for me to use, they are my ‘peeps’, my outdoor family. Without these particular peeps, I would be in a constant state of wilderness deprivation. I’ve already planned next year’s paddle and they have already hit the ‘yes’ button. They are intrepid.