GENE PERRET'S WIT STOP

hike of the month

A Fall Stroll Through SANDYS CANYON Retraces ANCIENT FOOTPATHS

THE HARVEST MOON WAS expected to rise that night. A few weeks before, I had seen Orion already up in the eastern sky. And although I could not actually feel the Earth tilting away from the sun, I could sense the shortening days and changing light. I'd already stacked firewood, cleaned gutters and harvested heads of sunflowers from the garden. It was fall, time to go down into Sandys Canyon in the Coconino National Forest just south of Flagstaff. The Sandys Canyon Trail hike is a 3-mile round-trip that stays on level ground for the first half-mile, passing big yellow-bellied ponderosa pine trees with spiraled lightning scars. They shed their leaves this time of year, sending down a rain of brown needles with each gust of wind. Steller's jays, blue as the sky, flashed through the tree branches.

The trail skirts a massive tumble of car-sized basalt boulders, then swings around the head of Sandys Canyon and steps down into it, away from the thrum of the vehicles out on the road. This small, intimate side drainage is lined with wine-red sumac, burnt orange rosehips and a pocket of golden aspen trees, shining like a beacon. At the bottom, the trail enters Walnut Creek. Walnut Canyon National Monument lies a few miles downstream, known for its small pueblo dwellings built into limestone ledges. The early inhabitants of these homes Were called the Sinagua, who lived here a thousand years ago. The name Sinagua, meaning "without water," says it all. On the day of this hike, there was not a soul around. The sound that kept me company was the castanets of grasshoppers popping up out of the platinum grasses. A few butterflies dipped into purple asters and goldenrods, sipping drops of sweetness from those last snatches of summer. A turkey vulture teetered on an updraft, and Abert squirrels nibbled pinecones to nubbins.

In the north country of Arizona, autumn is precarious and unpredictable, a time of movement and change. Hawks migrate, bears search for dens and people scurry to get in one more outdoor excursion before winter arrives. The clouds and sun came and went that day, and I was glad I had stuffed my windbreaker into my pack at the last moment, just in case. In a mile and a half, the Sandys Canyon Trail officially ended where it meets the Arizona Trail, the 790-mile route that will eventually stitch the state together from south to north. The Arizona Trail drops in from Marshall Lake along peach-colored sandstone cliffs. I proceeded down the canyon, through an open stretch flanked by ponderosa pines and silvered with grama grasses. After another half-mile or so, the trail entered a big meadow. Off to my right at the base of a high cliff is a cave.

Ahead was a sign that indicated 1.1 miles to Fisher Point. To reach Fisher Point, follow the Arizona Trail as it switchbacks up the side canyon and out onto the point, with splendid views back down that cliff into Walnut Canyon.

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