Lessons From Camp

COLORADO PLATEAU Lessons From Camp

Here's what I've learned: Stay off the summits, steer clear of the water holes, avoid the big walled canyons with those Hollywood colors. Keep going. The place is always the same-the wind comes up from the beginning of time, the night falls like a hammer and when I look down there is more dirt than green, more love than dust. Someone will want to make a fire-stop them if you can. The flame beats back the night and robs the sky of stars. Of course, there is no tent. You eat, sprawl out on a bedroll and talk flows, at first fast, that city beat to the conversation. You half-listen, but really all that matters is the night breeze coasting through the creosote, the soft swishing coming off an ironwood that first poked up from the Earth about the time Columbus set sail in the deep waters that became us.But slowly the talk falters, not so much ceasing as ebbing. Then the real words appear because the silence makes it safe for meaning. I've found this place on the Colorado Plateau, under the brow of desert mountains, on the flats where the heat soaks the soil and fries the world deep into the night. By dry rivers, in the lightning flashes and blows of summer monsoons. But it is always the same place, that patch of earth where resistance and acceptance mix and blend into some state where words fail and yet the heart begins to speak and we hear a tongue we had all but forgotten.

The old man insisted on a fire, had to have his steak, but now the flame has died down and there is noth-ing but a few embers among the ash on the desert floor. He's been coming here for decades, knows every ancient trail and he's mapped hundreds of miles of them, footpaths lost to all but his keen ancient eyes. He's mired in the archaeology of early man, those ancestors we hear as whispers when we pick up an old scraper or hammer on the rock litter of the sites. For years he had a day job, then on the weekends hit the des-ert and did his collecting on his own. By the time he finished he fit the ground better than anyone had in maybe a century.

We'd camp, do nothing and then when the heat left the air and dusk arrived, sip a little mescal and wait for the ghosts to come. Sometimes the ghosts were thousands of years old as he conjured up stone-age folk who'd shared the same ground and sometimes the same campsite. He could imagine their hungers and late at night-not always but sometimes-he could whisper their very dreams. Of course, all of this was privileged, nothing like what he put in his scientific papers. And all of these whis-pers were gospel truth and I felt the shrouds of time fall down and the cool stare of the past in my eye.

All around was rock, often basalt. Dunes slowly loped across the land in places and wildlife was scarce as was water. In those nights, the stars hung low, barely clearing a man's head. I'd look up and catch a bat hunting maybe 8 feet off the ground and worry that it might bang into a constellation. This is the kind of country some call godforsaken and some of us find hard even to speak of without feeling we are violating some trust. Much of western Arizona falls into this realm of being godless to some and all but sacred to others. Low mountains, wide sprawling val-leys, rivers empty of water, the sky too big for a soul to bear.He's standing now, the air still warm, the moon not yet up, stars singing overhead. His face is lost in the blackness, that fine carved face with skin like leather, full thatch of gray hair as he bumps up against 80, the body lean, all these features bearing the sign of the desert days and nights that fashioned them. He's inventoried some of his losses, the beloved wife gone too soon, friends missed around the campfire, kids grown and out in the world. He's good with these things, after all he studies the dreams and loves of the long dead and digs up their bones and their tools and tries to slip inside their minds. And he knows at his age he cannot go on forever and this he accepts without complaint. But suddenly, out of nowhere, he lurches into this other thing. He's still standing, head slightly cocked back as his old eyes take in the stars and he says, "There's got to be more than this, something else, something the old boys who left their stone-age litter around here knew, something. Religion, immortality, not the right words for what I feel. Just something. I can feel it out here. I know it exists whatever it is."

I know it also. We were friends and like all friends we did not question each other on matters of faith. But I knew where he was headed that night even though I can't put a word on the matter myself. Just a place. That's why I go to that place, though that place can shift, be in different places at different times, still it is out there. It is hardly scenic, seldom noted, almostalways beyond the normal campground and if I took a photograph of that spot in the morning, no one would pay much attention to the image I brought back. The day has been sweat, the dinner good, the nighta blessing and then the stars and the feeling of being alone vanish and the dreams seem to walk the Earth close by the cooling ash of that fire. Always the coyotes cry out, and this feels good and right. Part of the place, part of what I can't put a name to, and neither could my late friend. But it's there, and can be known and felt. Over morning coffee, none of this is ever mentioned. That's the way of the place when you finally get to it.

Charles Bowden walks the line, whether it runs between a man and a beast, a city and a desert, the quick and the dead. Or the Grand Canyon that bedevils the human heart. His most recent book is A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior. He hunkers in Tucson with a malevolent tortoise, a witch and a poodle. He has lived in the Sonoran Desert since age 12, and, of course, has never recovered.

arizonahighways.com Jerry Sieve of Carefree feels honored to have spent the past 28 years exploring Arizona and discovering special landscapes. Photography has helped make it possible.

PINE CREEK FALLS Enviably Green

"Is this scene of greener-than-green mosses and lush ferns clinging to moist rock really Arizona? Arizona is known for desert. It can't be green like this, can it? But, yes, it is Arizona. This incongruously verdant spot offers a special moment in a special place. Pine Creek Falls ranks among the myriad intimate landscapes that make exploring Arizona such a joy."

To order a print of this photograph, see page 1.

ARIZONA HIGHWAYS 27

SAN FRANCISCO PEAKS The Snow King

"When I shouldered my camera pack in the dark that frigid morning, the temperature hovered near 10 below. Laboring up a steep hill through fresh snow, I paused to catch my breath and look back at my tracks-postholes in the drifts. Setting up to shoot, my fingers went numb fumbling with my tripod and camera. I intently watched the sunlight work its way down from the top of the San Francisco Peaks and tinge the tips of snow-covered pines. Momentarily forgetting the cold, I exposed several sheets of film before allowing myself to study the spectacle in front of me. Snow-laden tree limbs bowed to the mountain like subjects to their king. As I hoisted my pack to leave, I felt the subtle warmth from the rising sun and mulled the privilege of walking this Earth-even in 2 feet of snow."

robert g. mcdonald

A self-described "youthful geezer," Robert G. McDonald, 68, of Flagstaff, thinks he can shoot winter shots for a few more years by donning arctic clothing with hand warmers in the pockets. He dreams of hibernating in a warmer climate in future winters.

WEST CLEAR CREEK Clearly Paradise

"We all hold an image of paradise in our imaginations, of a place so full of grace we doubt it can ever exist except in our dreams. For me, West Clear Creek is the realization of that dream-the embodiment of the Lost Eden. Like any mystic land, it is hidden and hard to reach. For 40 miles it follows a journey of springborn water, shut in by soaring, golden walls. Surprises await me at every turn. A travertinemound spring that forms hanging gardens, lush canopies of alder and willow and waterfalls galore, from dancing plunges to ozone-producing torrents."

Nick Berezenko considers himself blessed to live in Pine, only 15 miles from West Clear Creek, which he calls a pure and elemental world of its own.

To order a print of this photograph, see page 1.

SUNSET CRATER Young Love

"I love Sunset Crater because it's so young. The volcanic eruptions that made the crater were among the last verses in the incomprehensibly long and eventful saga of Arizona's creation. Less than a thousand years old, this landscape is a work in progress. Scattered shrubs and trees mark the nearly empty canvas of raw lava and reddish cinder dunes as Nature continues filling in the blanks. It's our privilege to watch the composition take shape."

'Less than a thousand years old, this landscape is a work in progress.'

david wentworth lazaroff

David Wentworth Lazaroff is a naturalist, writer and photographer living in Tucson. He has been visiting Sunset Crater for more than a quarter-century.