Tumbleweeds and Desert Nights: Arizona

Monday I  dumbstruckenly found myself on another airplane.

No friends, I didn't high tail it to the airport and catch the first flight back to Europe, though the thought did cross my mind. No, this time I was headed for somewhere closer to home and also alien. Arizona.

After returning home from the great Croatian adventure I was bombarded by a deluge of mixed emotions. I was so happy to see my family at the airport, eat a bowl of real Pho (first meal back in the States), and see a lot of my friends over the course of the next few days. But I was also so sad to leave the program, the people, the project, all of it. I had coffee with my roommate from Croatia as soon as she got back and the first thing I thought was "Oh my gosh it was real!" Seeing her meant it actually happened! That it wasn't just a beautiful dream. 

As for deciding to come to Arizona? Well the conversation went something like this:

*Ring!*

Me: hello?

Mom: Hi, do you want to go to Arizona?

Me: What? Why? When? 

Mom: Yes, Arizona, because there are some extremely cheap flights, and Christmas Eve.

Me: Ok.

And thus it went that after a few Christmas celebrations,(including a fabulous End of the World Party) I once again found myself in that terrifying aluminum tube sailing through the sky to a far away(ish) place. 

The part of Arizona I'm visiting is called San Tan Valley and it's environmentally the opposite of the Pacific Northwest. It is flat, deserty, and dusty. Saguaro cacti that yes, are that big and spiky dot the desert along with mid sized bushes that often wear thorns; and 10-15 foot trees with twisty wide spreading limbs and little leaves. Because the terrain is so flat all the roads are laid out in almost perfect grids with little to no variation in direction. This area isn't centered around a main street or even a main town, so everything is spread out and it takes a long time to drive anywhere, in a very straight line.

The spread out nature of things makes it very hard to wander without walking on a highway, so it was easy for me to feel penned into our little house.

But thankfully in the last few days I was lucky enough to discover and explore some of the most unique terrain I've ever hiked in. Most of the hiking I've done is in mountainous, temperate rain forests. This was extremely not that and I was happy to find that on a moderately long hike with very little elevation gain I was privy to wide, sweeping views, dramatic mountains and completely alien vegetation.

The San Tan Mountain Regional Park is happily located very close to where we are staying. All the trails are hike, bike and horse friendly with bikes yielding to hikers and everyone yielding to horses. I found the park by typing "hiking near Johnson Ranch" into Google, was directed to the park website and discovered that they organize short Ranger-lead hikes in the desert during the full moon, and the next one was on Friday!

As the sun set on Friday evening, I found myself walking into the park with- to my surprise about two hundred other hikers. The moonlight hikes are much more popular than I anticipated; people of all ages, from babes in arms to the elderly with fancily carved walking sticks gathered at the flag pole awaiting Ranger Adam to lead us into the night. While we waited I took in the scenery visible from the entrance area.

With the sunset dulling into a low pinkish glow behind the mountains, a huge yellow moon rose above the horizon to the east. It lit the landscape before me so brightly that the high ridges in the distance had shadows cast behind them.

At seven o clock on the nose Ranger Adam, a tall, very young guy who looks exactly like a friend of my brothers' I had a huge crush on as a teenager came out and addressed the crowd. He went over a few basic safety points including that he had brought along a parks volunteer named Emily to feed to the Sasquatch if we should happen across him. He assured us that because of the cold temperature there was no way we would run into any rattlesnakes or scorpions unless we went looking for them. That brings me to the temperature, it was a solid fifty degrees out, about as cold as it gets in Arizona with a few freak freezing nights here and there. Surrounding me were people bundled up like they were about to go snowboarding; in sweaters, scarves, heavy jackets, knit hats, mittens and I swear snow boots looking at me like a crazy person in a hoodie and jeans. I admit, their puzzled looks did kind of make me feel like a BAMF, but on the flip side, when the temperature gets over 85 in June I'll be running for the ice bath.

After the little talk, Ranger Adam/ dreamy boy lookalike started off up the trail and all 200 of us followed him and the human sacrifice off into the desert.
The hike was beautiful with plants and hills drenched in moonlight casting long shadows. I caught myself reflexively looking away from it because of that little voice in my head saying "don't look at the sun, you'll go blind" was being activated by the brightness of the moon. The stars had begun to appear over the mountains and even with the moon high I could make out entire constellations hanging above the horizon.

The experience was lovely, it would have been magical, except for the fact that a couple hundred of us were thundering through the desert together and it was apparent that not all of them were as awed as I was. Especially a crowd of young, rowdy boys that kept tripping over/falling into cacti and yelping like coyotes for their moms. With all the people I couldn't really feel the desert over the burble of conversation, strobing of flashlights and stomping of many feet. So I decided to go back the next day.

The desert in the daylight feels very similar but looks very different. I wouldn't have recognized the trails I walked on the previous night at all in the light of day. Mostly because I could see so many more details in the sunlight.
It was finally an actually warm (by my standards) day, high sixties with a slight breeze and not an aggressive-looking cloud in the sky.

I wanted to be hiking for about 3-4 hours and one of the ladies at the park building gave me a map and highlighted a four and a half mile hike. I would start and end on the same loop I had done the day before but just take the next loop up in size around the first mountain into a valley then back to the start on the other side.

The first part of the hike was once again packed with people, a warmish sunny afternoon two days before the new year is valuable, even in a place where it is usually hot. Once I got onto the bigger loop though I was almost exclusively by myself, passing the occasional hiker and mountain biker along the way.

I loved the stillness of my surroundings; a soft breeze blew but with no quaking leaves or the kind of grass that rustles there was an overwhelming sense of quiet and calm. Most of the time the only sound was the wind in my ears and my steps crunching in the sand between two mountains. The horizon is cut jaggedly by the peaks, looking like the earth was accidentally thrust up into an unfinished but beautiful line.

 The saguaros are extremely dramatic, the largest I saw stood at about 18 feet and that was without leaving the trail. In a place so dry, they look fat and full of life. And speaking of water; even though the sand was dry, there is evidence of water everywhere, every low spot has a channel where a temporary stream had cut through to lower ground. Sometimes very dramatically where big chunks of ground were washed away.

Dry stone walls ftw!

I enjoyed the desert so much more once I was alone because once I wasn't surrounded by the distraction of other people it allowed me to take in my surroundings with all of my senses at once. I let imagination wander and inspiration come freely caused by everything from the sound of my steps to the vistas laid out lavishly before me. It feels like danger, adventure, and also stillness and balance all tied into one dramatic and vast landscape.