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| View from semi-swanky hotel. After three weeks of Days Inns, a Hilton is seven or eight stars. |
Weds and Thursday 16 and 17 October – With the ‘resort fee’ waived I
went a bit wild and had a fancy dinner on the hotel’s patio, perusing the menu
of classes available, as many as I want, for free at the spa. There’s Zumba and Muscle Mix and yoga of
several varieties and T-fit. I want
Pilates, yoga and Effortless Power. Who
doesn’t want Effortless Power, though?
Awaking on Day 24 feeling more civilized than I have for several weeks –
I booked two nights at this
resort hotel thing – what I wanted most was to explore the rocks. Bell Rock is a bit more than a mile up the
street, and I decided to leave the car at the hotel and walk. There are several trails connecting near
the base of the rock. I’m not sure which
one I took, but I looped around for about five mostly-flat miles, marveling and
happy. At some point I realized I would
miss the Pilates class, and at some point not long after that I realized that I
didn’t mind. The trails are governed by
various rules, including limiting vehicles (bikes, mostly) to certain paths. There’s also a request that people keep
groups quiet and small – no more than ‘twelve heartbeats,’ so you can’t claim
the two dogs and three babies don’t count.
A group of four cyclists – two struggling, two not – made a good bit
more noise than I like, what with shouting encouragement to each other. There was also a small mob of Aussies, who’d
split into sub-groups. The first one I
encountered demanded to know whose boots I was wearing. He thought they were French. Confused, I said, “I don’t know,” while
thinking, ‘They’re mine.’ He explained a
bit further: he owns a pair of the same
brand, which he was sure of on closer inspection of the logo on my boot
tongue. He hadn’t brought his on this
trip, but he was still unusually excited to see someone else, on another
continent, wearing boots made on another other continent, that are the same
kind he wears on his continent. Or
something. I did not know what to
say. In the second group, one woman
wished me g’day and when I excused myself for passing her she said, “No
problem.” I’m not certain there wasn’t a
“mate.” If she’d been in a movie I
wouldn’t have found the character convincing.
Mostly, though, I got near silence.
Back in NoVA, I spend time in the woods – and there are some glorious
woods there – but silence is hard to find.
Even if you can get far away from the roads, there are always planes flying
overhead, to or from two commercial airports and who knows how many military
and State Department and executive and congressional and and and
airfields. But planes here are few, the
road is lightly traveled and a few miles away, the wind is low and the animals
are under cover as the sun rises higher and hotter. Deep quiet brings an awareness of how much is
going on. I always think about this in
the desert, but it remains fascinating:
even under these strenuous conditions, there are dozens and scores and
maybe hundreds of kinds of plants thriving.
I rarely see animals in the desert, but I’m very aware of their
presence, somewhere hidden. (And
frankly, I was delighted when one of the hotel managers pointed out that
October in Sedona is a bit chilly for snakes.)
The silence, and the sights, and the occasion exotic smells are, at
least momentarily, transformative.
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| Deliberately brought the phone; deliberately left the camera behind. |
I chose not to bring my camera today.
I mentioned in one of these posts that photography used to be a very low
priority for me when traveling. Given how
often I unslung the Canon yesterday, I wanted to revert to that earlier mode of
experiencing my surroundings only with my native senses. It’s definitely different; I was faster and
lighter, for one thing, with no camera to carry and protect, and no stops for
photo opps. I had to make a point of
stopping anyway, and spending a moment absorbing my surroundings. Perhaps I ought to change my name to
Pangloss, but both ways seem perfect to me.
I do like having photos, though, and grappling with light and angles and
framing, so with-camera is my preference.
 |
| Better than a pedicure. |
Back on the road, I am aware again of the blisters-on-blisters
situation. I’m pretty sure my small
right toe is more abscess than toe at this point. If the hotel offered a reasonably-priced
pedicure, I’d get two, but $45 for the basic is just silly.
Missed Pilates but made it to Gentle Flow Yoga. The classroom was packed; the teacher was
great; the workout was wonderful.
Journal and hot tub and then back to the patio for dinner. Suddenly my camera wouldn’t work. I thought about panicking and then decided to
pay attention and hope for the best. The
drinks are good and the food is good and there are worse things than a dearth
of photos.
The restaurant had a guitarist this night, and he played quite beautifully,
with all the propane flares going and people applauding from their
balconies. Occasionally he turned his
drum machine up a bit high, and the clicking got annoying, but mostly the
guitar dominated and sounded very gently appealing from my slight
distance. I shouldn’t have wished,
though, to be right in front of him. I
wonder why so many restaurant musicians choose to bring a drum machine along.
The two 60’ish couples at the next table quickly got to their second or
third cocktails, and when I tuned into their conversation they were guffawing
enthusiastically about the idea of watching an earthquake from a helicopter: “and the little Chinese kids... trying to
hang on to their mothers... and people going over the edge...” har har har har har. Note to self:
as one ages, one’s tolerance for alcohol declines. Start cutting back around 50. I outlasted them and enjoyed dessert with a view
and some disquieting thoughts.
Still, I bounded out of bed on Thursday, aware of check-out time
looming, wanting to walk, curious about
Effortless Power class, hoping to wedge
in swim time or hot tub time, eager to see R.L. in Albuquerque at the end of
the day’s drive. Oh, so much to do. First world problems, ladies and
gentlemen. First world problems.
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| Oak Creek - you call this a desert? |
All the opportunities added up to arrival at Cathedral Rock as the sun
was still coming over the rocks. My
camera was still defunct, but I brought my phone and used that for several
dozen photos, available here. The
trail started by taking me to a creek; how odd.
I heard the water first, then the ducks, and had to negotiate with
myself on exploring further or making it back in time for spa class. The internal debate reminded me of these
classic lines:
But always at my
back I hear
Time’s wingèd
chariot hurrying near
And ducks. Though ducks, in fact, in front of me
Quacking quite
delightfully.
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| Down. Often trickier than up. |
I climbed part of a path that ascended a gently sloping rock wall, but
it was a little too sloping and not enough gentle for me this morning. This trail, or amalgamation of trails, was a
lot hillier than yesterday’s, and a bit wilder.
Five miles was sufficient to send me pell-melling into Effortless Power
class two minutes after it started. It
turns out to be a tai-chi-inspired workout, with gentle choreography and lots
of attention to the flow of energy through the body. It’s much less demanding of the muscles and
tendons than yoga is, but very mentally stimulating.
No swimming, no hot tubbing, just shower and re-pack and get out of the
room – it’s a ‘big turn’ day for the hotel, and they could only give me 30
minutes of late-checkout time. Joke’s on
them, because I wound up camping in their lobby, with devices plugged in hither
and yon. I’d been thinking about my
camera, you see – how to fix it. An
internet search yielded answers to other people’s camera problems, and I
considered buying a new one, but Best Buys were few, and that’s an expensive
solution. Even if I could find a repair
shop, I wasn’t sure how long they might need, and I couldn’t grapple with the
idea of leaving my camera in Arizona for shipping to Kansas three days
later. Of course, I could just keep
using the phone, or give up photography for the rest of the trip.
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| This perma-cairn is a guidepost from the park rangers, or from the universe, as you prefer. |
Nothing felt right. I don’t know
when the answer came to me, but it did:
I bought the camera at Calumet, a photography specialty store, and they
would be able to help me. There aren’t
any Calumet branches in the southwest, but I phoned the shop in Virginia where
I’d gotten my camera for advice. The
woman who answered the phone, not my salesperson, did troubleshooting on the
spot, had me try a few different things, and it was the third or fourth one that
worked. Everything worked, just fine,
again. In my still-young effort to pay
better attention to what the world is teaching me, I think I see a few lessons
here. First is that I have resources
beyond the obvious. Camera doesn’t
work? Use phone. Use eyeballs.
Look for fixes. Second is that
there’s help available, and no need to give up.
Whacking and twisting and pressing and turning on and off and hoping don’t
work? Ask an expert; get advice. The expert isn’t necessarily the obvious one,
either; I remember Aaron Corbeil
in Fairbanks, hotel clerk and expert photographer. Probably someone at the Hilton Sedona would
have had some ideas if I’d needed them.
Trust others. And, of course, don’t
shop at Best Buy. Imagine calling them
and having someone with real expertise spend twenty minutes on the phone with
you, the same model device as yours in front of her, until she’d solved your
problem. Yuh huh.
Repaired and happy, I collected my scattered possessions from their
various resting points around the lobby, and in two or three trips re-loaded
the car. North to Flagstaff (7,000 feet
elevation, the sign says in this direction) and then east again toward New
Mexico. There are more furry corpses on
the highway-side, and I wondered whether there’s something specific to
Flagstaff that results in all these bodies.
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| No cluster of human habitation I could see; just a power plant. |
Descending again, I realize that I’ve never seen an all-sand desert-scape,
as in an old movie. Maybe that’s what
the Sahara or Mojave offer, but here there’s grass and bushes, albeit small and
sparse, and the ground is flat flat flat, albeit with mountains on the far
distant horizon. That’s around Two Guns, Arizona; by Joseph City there’s the sudden, eerie intrusion of the Cholla Power Plant, a different kind of fantastical formation dominating the view.
Near the New Mexico border, the shrubbery got denser, trees came into
play, and buttes and mesas started to break up the flatness. The ‘Welcome to New Mexico’ sign was decorated
with one red and one green jalapeño, and there was a nearly-full moon rising over
a mesa.
The half-light of sunset and moonrise barely affects the desert. There’s not much shadow to lose, nor much
color variation to be bleached and dulled away.
It does seem less stark, though; softer by the softer light. And I like that the billboards vanish in the
darkness, rather than being lit by incandescence and neon.
And I like that Albuquerque is in a bit of a valley, so I can see the
whole city as I approach it, glittering like a split-open quartz geode,
surrounded by black desert. R.L.’s home
is just north of the city, and I’m eager to get there, despite the promise from
some highway-side motel of, “Free breakfast.
No train noise.” I believe I
crossed the Rio Puerco three times today, and passed through a town of the same
name.
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