It is mid October and it feels like Autumn everywhere except here. The desert oven that is Phoenix is still too hot to truly enjoy the changing season, and Colorado is too far of a weekend drive to quickly get to cooler temps. So I settle for someplace closer to home, a trip to the high country, in and around Flagstaff AZ. My only plan for this three-day road trip is to get in lots of hiking, and to interrupt each hike with many stops to take pictures of the colorful changing leaves.
I am not the only one with these plans. Flagstaff during the fall is usually packed with Leafpeepers. We are all there to enjoy the fall colors and to bask in the camaraderie of the pleasant weather. Included among the crowds are Snowbirds from the soon to be frozen tundras of Madison and Minneapolis, Chicago and Cheyenne. This year though, there are very few Canadians because our borders are closed. The crowds don't deter me. Rather, in the days leading up to this trip, my excitement builds similarly to when I'm getting ready to go to a concert. But this time the aspens and maples will be the stars of the show. Their amphitheater is the Coconino National forest, aglow in the glorious light of the autumn sun.
I must confess that my fantasy leaf-peeping destinations lean more towards the back-country roads of New England or a slow drive along Carolina's Blue Ridge Parkway. I'll also throw in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley, or the entire state of Colorado for good measure. But, in the years when Arizona's high country decides to burst out its fall colors, she is no one's second fiddle. Rather, she's more like a fall festival queen in her own right. Her ball grown flashing all those chill-pepper reds, hot-burnt oranges and feverish yellows.
For years now, the second and third weekends of October usually find me in the Flagstaff. And this year, it was a place I had hungered for since spring, since the start of this soul sucking pandemic. AZ's stay-at-home orders had parked my wanderlust in a bad spot. After a while, working from home had lost its shine. Every day became Blursday. But hooray to October. This hiker with a photography habit has fallen off the wagon, it was time to go catch a tequila sunrise up at Snowbowl. I was on my way.
I love driving to Flagstaff in Autumn. It gives me the opportunity to combine two of my favorite activities in one trip - traveling, plus slow hiking with a camera in my hand. Flagstaff is about 120 miles from home, around a few bends, through Black Canyon city, over the Mogollon Rim, down the Prescott Valley, across the Verde River and up towards a strong closeout finish as you approach the towering San Francisco Peaks that anchor this beautiful region of Arizona.
Humphreys Peak is the tallest of the foursome of summits that make up the San Francisco Peaks. It stands at 12,633-ft in height and is Arizona's highest. The other peaks are Agassiz, Doyle and Fremont. Humphreys Peak is home to the only tundra region in Arizona. I have climbed its treeless summit many times. It's a lung searing, calf burning incinerator of a climb. One that can inflict pain on the body but brings much pleasure to the brain - after you have reached the peak. However, if you climb it during summer, you will want to reach the summit by noon, because the afternoons usually bring spectacular but scary thunder and lightning storms. My past experience has been that before a lightning strike, the air becomes charged and smells of sulfur. The hairs on your neck stands on edge, your steps quicken as you make your way down before getting hit. Nonetheless, on calm clear days, you linger longer at the top, you can see for more than 75 miles in all directions, the red rim of the Grand Canyon often visible in the distance. It's a bucket list checkoff, rite of passage destination for many of Arizona's hikers.
The earliest known inhabitants of the region were at various times, the Hopi, Navajo, Sinagua, Tonto Apache and the Yavapai native peoples. They hunted and gathered both in the foothills and valleys, and most likely witnessed some of the explosive volcanic actions that shaped this landscape centuries ago. The Hopi people believe their Kachina Gods live within these mountains; the Navajo people hold these mountains sacred, a blessed boundary to their homeland. Indeed I’m walking on hallowed ground.
The 18th and 19th centuries brought the Europeans, the railroad and later the famous Route 66. During the late 1890s, Flagstaff was the largest town along the east-west continental railroad line that stretched between Albuquerque New Mexico and the west coast of the USA. Today, it's a high country college town at heart, home to the Northern Arizona university Lumberjacks and about 75,000 other residents who live within the city limits. Blending natures' beauty with the best vibes of a college town, a skiing village, a hiking and mountain biking mecca, Flagstaff is very outdoorsy cool. A smaller scale version of Boulder Colorado, some might say. The cooler mountain air entices many desert dwellers into buying cabins and second homes in the area, providing a restful retreat from the oppressive heat of the Phoenix summers.
My 3-day itinerary includes many stops along Hart Prairie, Locket Meadow, the Inner Basin, Snowbowl and the sunset crater loop. One of my aims this year is to take more pictures with my drone rather than with my DSLR. My thinking is that the drone will give such a different perspective. For the most part I think this was the case. What do you think?
On the first day, as dawn gave way to an urgent daylight, I was halfway up the backside of Humphreys Peak heading towards Lockett Meadow and the inner basin trail. The road to get there is steep and narrow, dusty and sometimes hangs off a cliff. The occasional pullout, is the primary way that 2 vehicles can pass, else you better be good at driving in reverse. On weekends in October you need to get here early, else risk being turned away by park rangers, due to overcrowding and limited parking at the trailhead. But I'm here on a weekday and I make it to Lockett Meadow and hit the inner basin trail without any problem. There are only a few cars at the trailhead and the campsite is only 1/3rd full. The weekend warriors are still at home on their Zoom calls no doubt. The air is pine-scented clean and my backpack is heavy as I haul myself up the trail. It's packed with cameras, drone, tripod, a small safety kit, a knife, a lighter and a medium jacket. Water, lunch, snacks and a light dinner that I hope I will not need, occupy one of the outer compartment. I was once a cub scout and these days I watch a lot of wilderness survival shows, so I tend to over prepare. The plan is to hike, shoot pics and fly my drone for most of the day, and hopefully make it back to the car before dusk.
I love the way a forest can both overload and calm the senses — all at the same time. The sights, the sounds, and smells are all present here under the canopy of trees.
I silently watch as leaves, separated from branches by the slightest of breeze, float by and tumble away into crunchy golden piles. The ones that remain clinging to branches, like a first time mom to her progeny, make for beautiful photographs.
Ok, if you don't remember much from your grade school science class, here's a quick refresher. What is happening is that as summer fades into fall, the days start getting shorter and there is less sunlight. Photosynthesis - the process by which leaves turn sunlight into food, is gradually put on pause. This is a signal to the leaves to prepare for winter and to stop making their green pigmented, carbon dioxide absorbing, chlorophyll. Once this starts, the abundant green from the leaves fades and their once hidden reds, oranges and yellows pigments burst onto the scene. The leaves eventually fall and die, providing fresh nutrients to the soil, ahead of the gray-dormancy of a long winter. Springtime, with its abundant sunlight and longer, warmer mellower days, kickstarts the whole process of leaf regrowth all over again. But for now spring will have to wait. Get back to enjoying the photographs. Your science lesson is over 'cause I’m too giddy enjoying all these bursts of color and the sunlight streaming through these leaves.
When the wind blows, the leaves quake in orchestral unison. Together, they make beautiful music. What I hear is a kind of freeform musical fusion - the maples providing the melody, the aspens the down beat. I recall a line from a Bob Marley song that goes -
There's a natural mystic
Blowing through the air
Can't keep them down
If you listen carefully now you will hear
Such a natural mystic
Blowing through the air
I don't know what his inspiration was when he wrote those lines, but I can easily imagine that he might have been in the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, sitting under a breadfruit tree, with a strong Caribbean sea breeze blowing just like I heard and felt, about 3000 miles to the northwest on Humphreys peak.
I love aspens. Their typical origin story is of root systems that are formed underground and out of sight, laying dormant, sometimes for decades, patiently awaiting a disturbance. That disturbance in Arizona usually comes by either a carelessly lit fire or by lightning igniting the dry brush left scorched by our relentless summer sun. Either way, lately, Arizona summers often tell the story of uncontrolled wildfires scorching thousands of acres. After the heat of these infernos have cleared the way and all that nutrient-rich ashes have been laid, Aspens burst onto the scene. Growing at a rate of about 2-feet per year in the early stages, they grow fast and often take over large swaths of the forest. Reaching heights of about 70-feet on average, they are easily recognizable by their distinct grey-white bark. Aspens are powerful tools in natures' arsenal of regeneration and rebirth. Their growth signals new beginnings. Their riot of colors in October, a sweet feast celebrating the end of the fall season. They are also a huge magnet for tourists particularly out here in the West.
Aspens are also considered good wood. Friendly to artists and carpenters alike, they are easy to shape, soft, yet tough in their resistant to splitting. They make gorgeous sustainable furniture. In a nutshell aspens are excellent for shaping, gluing, screwing and nailing.
The forest also smells like an Autumn-scented candle, except what excites my nose is real. This is nature's perfume bottle with its well balanced fusion of fragrant notes - of earth, dry leaves, lavender, musk, pine, grass, wood, resins, the interior of a drawer made of cedar, of a freshly bathed amorous companion.
My good fortune holds on this trip. The weather is photographically perfect. Puffy white clouds slumber across a sky that is a deep, strong-willed blue. The air is crisp, expectant with winter. The same chill that turned these leaves into yellows and reds, also make my bones feel old, so I keep moving, searching for that perfect picture to memorialize the experience. But, unlike photographing people, I can't ask a tree to move, to turn and pose for me. I have to move around them. I have to position my torso, bend my knees, arch my back, strain both neck and eyes, in order to best see and capture their grandeur. And sometimes I get lucky - a trunk disappears into the heavens, its skyscraper top a canopy of leaves, a bulbous sunburst streaks through its prism of leaves. The wind settles for a moment. I press the camera's shutter. I look at the view finder, and say to myself, "man that's a great shot." This is fun. I stand in awe at both the artistry and architecture of the trees that are in front me. But I need to work on my core though, because after awhile my back aches a bit. Yet, I pick up my tripod, move and try to find a prettier picture. I'd like to think that I'm creating beautiful photographs, in a sweaty, hardworking, honest kind of way. In one day I will take hundreds of pictures, each one unique in its own way, but 99% of which I will delete and never see again. Some of the few that I do keep, you are looking at them now. Nonetheless, I hold the labor of the effort and the love of the outcome in balance, because at the moment I can't think of a better way to spend a morning.
Before I know it, a whole morning has passed. I sit for lunch on a dead log, under a pine tree, some 80 feet tall and close to 10,000 feet above sea-level. My apple and PBJ sandwich taste especially sweet because I have been up for a while and I'm hungry. Perhaps it’s the location or maybe just the sugar rush, but nonetheless, sitting quietly under a tree, in the middle of a mountain side, has a way of infusing the mind with interesting thoughts.
You notice and think about the many things taken for granted. You get epiphanies in the familiar. I think about how much we owe to trees. They provide -
Fruits for our food,
Syrup for our pancakes
Lumber to build our homes,
Branches for shade,
Flowers for beauty,
Memorials to be planted and pine boxes to be buried in
Medicines for both Big Pharma and native peoples alike,
Music - yeah all those trunks and branches sacrificed in service to the sweet sounds of the guitars of Stevie Ray Vaughan and Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix and David Gilmore. The guitar, made mostly of strings and wood, the connecting through-line between Layla and the Dark Side of the Moon.
Paper, made from wood pulp, the carrier of the written word,
Ancient Inks - the by-product of wood ashes, the recorder of history. Without ink there is no Shakespeare, no Toni Morrison.
And here in the 21st century, all those highly anticipated Amazon cardboard boxes - the carriers of our trinkets and our toys.
And perhaps the best of all, leaves in autumn - the embodiment of nature's beauty. Call me a tree hugger, if you must, I don’t mind.
The return trip down the mountain is easier. I pass many late-comers making their way up. Their sweaty smiling faces from a safe distance all seem to anticipate seeing all that I just saw. In these Covid days, very few people ask me to take their picture - and that’s a huge departure from the past. Touch, even their phones, is decidedly off limits. For the few who do ask, I gladly oblige, but with my face hidden behind a mask, arms extended to maintain distance, hands sanitized soon after I’m done. This random act of kindness is accompanied by a silent prayer that the wind carried no virus in my direction. Such are the times in which we live.
I make it back to the car by late afternoon. My Fitbit says I logged 38,000 steps and climbed the equivalent of 200 floors. At the trailhead my phone registers a 1/2 a bar. As instructed, I text Vivien, to set her worry meter at ease - Hey Honey, I'm off the trail and driving back to the hotel. I know this will make her happy, she’s always concerned about my safety whenever I go exploring by myself.
The following 2 more days are pretty much the same - wash, rinse, repeat. Funny how when you are having fun, you don't get tired.
So until next time, may you live your life like that biblical tree - rooted alongside a nourishing stream of family and love ones. Bringing forth your fruits of loving kindness and purposeful gratitude, not just in the fall, but throughout all the seasons of your life.
Peace.
Derrick