As journeys go, this one started under auspicious conditions. It's been a while for me to post....for too many a reason to get into here anymore. I'll just say that life has changed, once again. The effect is that I've been riding so much, I don't have time to take a photo. I don't have time to stop and smell the flowers as they say. I'm driven by a desire to complete something that I promised myself last year and was unable to complete because of mortal forces beyond my control. I am determined to complete that promise to myself and to her......she wanted me to get it done, and I shall. She was ashamed that her circumstance held me back....she was embarrassed in her moment of clarity, outside of her weakness and delusion, of the burden her sickness put upon those that loved her. She wanted me to be happy....she wanted me to reach my goals....she wanted everything for us and at the same time realized that she could no longer provide any of that. In this drive....I've driven all....and all that propels me...into dirt.....which is ironic that on the dawn of a 2-day bikepack, I find myself in the shop rebuilding my hub instead of riding into dawn. The very thing that converts what I propel into movement....the thing that converts desire, sweat and muscle into revolution....has been corrupted by quartz, feldspar, mica and other alien materials otherwise known as.....dirt.......
After rebuilding my hub....and by extension, my piece of mind, I move on. Flowing through the warm spring day, the sound of song birds calling in the gentle breeze which smells of honey and creosote; I'm halted by a fellow citizen of the desert. This one had a problem with me riding on his trail. I had a problem with him blocking my path. He voiced his opinion in a sticatto rattle which I answered in a whisper....."Go on child, pass on your way, I mean you no harm". On his way to acquiescence, I snapped a few pictures to remember the most polite Western Diamondback I've met in a while.....
This trip I was on was to be a 100 mile, 2-day bikepack from my home into the canyons north of Phoenix, into the lushness of the riparian oasis of the Spur Cross- 7 Springs area......lush is what I found....
Climbing out of the drainage at the head of the Spur Cross ranch, I find myself heading into the Sonoran desert highlands.....a place transitioning from the lowland desert scrub into a rich zone of mixed grasslands and juniper lined hollows. The wind here blows strong off of the mesa, a mesa lined with ancient irrigation channels and fortresses built by the ancient Hohokam Pueblo people. I imagine what it must have been like to make a life in this valley....hauling water from down below up into the mesas above....surely, they would have appreciated the bike.....
....and equally cursed the crumbly nature of the terrain which makes foot traffic preferable to the two-wheeled variety.....Out here, you gotta bring your own flow, otherwise be disappointed.
Attempting to keep it real, I kept pedaling beyond hope on many occasion, trying to "clean" many of the sections....until I fall into a prickly pear rendering two fingers swollen beyond use. A clean "In-and-out" puncture still smarts.....I chose to walk more after that....
Late into the afternoon, still finding myself shy of my goal; a goal which was nothing more than a circle on a map, I called it quits. The horizon was turning ruby, the sound of water was growing closer and the smell of a riparian oasis was drawing me in......
After pounding 900 calories of Don Miguel "Bomb" burrito into my digestive system....I wandered into the magic hour.......the rim above me started to glow....
Laying my bags down in a side canyon on a flood channel sand bar, I set up my bag overlooking the northwestern sky off of my left shoulder....my feet facing the sunrise of tomorrow.....
As the sun grew low and the temperatures took a nose dive, I drew closer to my bag.....there is no insomnia on a bikepack.....I was in the bag by 6 and fell asleep by........
Throughout the night, when I woke, I heard the sound of waters flowing......time captured in a sonnet.....I passed back into the dark until dawn........
Waking early, I found evidence about my camp of a much higher waterline.....
Cattails of summer remain from last season, casting off their seed in the adiabatic winds of dawn....the hints of sun touching only the highest mesas at first....
I sat for a time in my bag, drinking my morning coffee, watching the craggy ridgeline to my northeast expand in the light reminding me of the tomato shaped pincushion I played with at my grandmothers house as a child.....the tops of saguaros glowing white hot as the initial rays of dawn illuminated their bodies from right to left, then growing longer until their full bodies are illuminated in the magic glow of the day.
Turning my attention back to cattails.....I followed their seed down to the ground where the subtle reminder of the feast and famine reality of the desert exists. Water here is transitory.....here now in abundance, gone tomorrow.........
I am the most obvious reminder of the transitory nature of things.....I stick out like a sore thumb...but I'll be gone in a few minutes....and the desert won't even register my presence.....
The driftwood that formed my pillow the night before exhibits such a curious and regular fracture set, I'm obliged to document. This cottonwood limb is older than I...and will most likely still exist in this environment after I am gone.....
They say it takes between 50-70 years before a saguaro grows it's first branch....and a mature saguaro can be 200 years old......I think it's fair to say, that I slept under the watchfull arms of a king that night....
Below the saguaro, fields of yellow flower were abuzz with the springtime hum of bees.....
Climbing back out of the canyon for the second time on this trip; my ride took a turn as they often do with the rising sun....a new angle of light, perspective and nutritional indulgence brings newfound perspective to what otherwise was a slog the day before. California poppies glowed like nuggets of gold along the trailside. The ferrous dirt glowed red and pink in the warm low light of dawn, the songbirds of the canyon echoing calls off of the walls below. I ride on, creating my own song composed of the pleasing soft crunch of gravel beneath knobby tires.
Indian paintbrush glowed cosmically in the low morning light against the sharp V of the canyon slopes and azure skies...
Sycamore groves leave a carpet of giant leaves....fragile in nature, preserved through winter, through the grace of spring.....
As I take a break before leaving the canyon for the desert lowlands...I look up at the pure white bark contrasted against a clean blue sky.....soon these branches will hold olivine colored buds which will consume the sky above....this is the winter view that comes only once a season.
Nearing the end of my journey, I'm nonetheless enthralled by the world outside the paradigm we've managed to shut out and minimize as a species......
I left the heart of civilization and rode into another world....as always, I'm a little bitter to be back.
