ALONG THE WAY

I wasn't always fond of Arizona. Like many recently transplanted Midwesterners, I didn't quite know what to make of the place at first. No reference points existed from my botanical past that I could compare to a cholla cactus. Is there anything green and growing east of Albuquerque that seems to glow in the dark? I doubt it. And the unkemptness of a sagebrush, the lack of planning in the landscape - a paloverde tree here, a saguaro there the disorder of it all! Midwest vegetation grows in groups: forests of trees, fields of grass, thickets of raspberries. The shape and color of the Earth itself were strange to an eye accustomed to rolling hills and grassy plains. In a land of painted deserts, petrified forests, and grand canyons, the bizarre and the dramatic are the norm. And such odd creatures inhabit this land: Gila monsters, scorpions, black widows, javelinas, cockroaches the size of Ohio field mice. I suppose we Midwesterners simply aren't used to so wild a place. Arizona positively flaunts her lack of civility. Such audacity of color in every sunset; such vastness in her unending blue skies. I was accustomed to a little more frugality, a little more reserve from Nature. In Arizona, she shouts, "Here I am. Look at me!"

Look I did. Before long, I became a gawker. I could not drive outside of Phoenix without pulling the car to the side of the road to gaze at some new spectacle. One December evening outside of Cave Creek, a friend and I waited out a magnificent half-hour sunset, watching as a hazy blue sky was consumed one molecule at a time by a marauding band of golden yellows, rosy pinks and, finally, increasingly aggressive shades of purple. A year after I moved to Arizona, I took my first camping trip. I had never enjoyed camping in Ohio. I always ended the evening shivering in a dirty, wet sleeping bag while unknown carnivores rooted around the campsite. But I decided to give dry Arizona a chance. Memorial Day weekend, my companion and I left the dusty desert behind for the Mogollon Rim, nearly 5,000 feet up. It was dark by the time we got there, so we took a side road off State Route 260 and stopped at the first level clearing. With the tent halfheartedly erected, we tried to start a fire. It wasn't easy. Although we were in a heavily wooded forest, a strong, cold wind was blowing from somewhere. In addition, it had rained the night before, and the wood was wet. We finally coaxed a meager fire out of bits of newspaper and semidry pine needles, hurriedly ate our baked beans before the fire gave up the ghost, and shivered our way to the tent.

The next morning, we woke from our sleep like bears coming out of hibernation. The sky was clear, and the morning's soft sunlight was already soaking up last night's wetness. Ravenous, we grabbed the cereal and milk and looked for a place to eat.

And then we saw why the wind was unusually strong the evening before.

Twenty yards west of our campsite was the edge of the Mogollon Rim. Below our feet, the rock face dropped 1,500 feet into a dark-green carpet of pine trees covering a valley that goes on for miles. We found a smooth rock that jutted out into the expanse and ate breakfast on it, the landscape spread before us like a banquet table. It didn't take much to imagine we were sitting on the edge of the Earth.

I was hooked on camping now. So one long weekend in July, my companion and I decided we'd pull out all stops. We had heard that "isolation" camping was allowed in the Apache-Sitgreaves National Forest so, our car loaded with extra blankets and sweatshirts, we took off for Greer. As we began our ascent into the mountains near Flagstaff, it became obvious we were on a collision course with a thick black thunderhead. I was excited; a real shoot-'em-up thunderstorm is the one thing I missed about the Midwest. Just as the storm was about to break, we pulled over. I got out of the car, nervously giggling like a kid on a roller coaster for the first time. A moisture-heavy wind whipped down the mountain and stood my hair on end. What was I playing with? The power that drove the wind so fiercely through that mountain pass was a formidable playmate, to be sure.

The weather was calmer around Greer. In the fading hours of daylight, we drove into the aspen and pine forest and made our campsite on a mountaintop 9,100 feet up, far away from other humans. I couldn't sleep that night. Perhaps there was too much silence for ears dulled by the continuous hum of city life, of tires skidding on pavement, refrigerators running, doors slamming, and low murmuring from the apartment next door. I decided to go for a walk. Unzipping the tent door, I stumbled into a land I had never seen before. Our fire circle, the log we sat on to eat, even the car were indistinguishable in this darkness that blends everything into the same shade of blue. Tall darkened forms were they trees? surrounded me. I was in an arena. I was sure I was being watched. By whom? Or what? Then I looked up and saw a sky overtaken by stars. "I see you." And I knew my companion and I would never come down from that mountaintop. This vast darkness would absorb us; we would dissolve into stardust, our bodies broken down to hydrogen and helium atoms, grist for some star out there trying to expand.

We did make it down, of course. And a month later, my car, now loaded with dishpans, bedding, and books, crossed the border into New Mexico en route to my new home in Massachusetts.

I've been in the East for many months now, and I don't know when I'll get back to Arizona. But in some ways that's not important. Because I have never lost that feeling I had while standing on that mountaintop, that feeling of being seen by a force much more powerful than I. Arizona taught me that I and the Earth are inextricably bound in ways I had not imagined, that we are dancing together to the same tune. In Arizona, I heard that song for the first time. It is still singing in my ears.