December 18th, 2014: On Hiking

Now Playing: Are You Satisfied? - Marina and the Diamonds

This post is an important one. I’m doing something big (woah)! I got approval from my dad to take the next few days off, and he’d watch the kids and so would the neighbors. He said he’s proud of me guys!!!!! I showed him this longer post’s draft, and he loved how I really put myself into it. I still don’t want to tell him my blog’s url and he’s okay with that and told me he wouldn’t go searching for it. I feel lucky to have a dad like him

As Winter begins, I’m taking advantage of the coolness to trudge out into the desert for a day, spend the night, and head back in. Don't worry, its not my first time doing this. If you leave town, going the opposite direction of the highway (so, take the north path instead of south), there’s a few paths you can take out into the desert. Most people don’t use them as often as the main road in town, but sometimes someone will leave town out through the back exits either because they have a storage unit they’ve built close by, or for a cookout, or just to drive to the top of an overlook and see the view. So they still exist. There’s not really a reason to go more than even slightly out of town this way on foot, because there’s literally nothing out there but nature and precarious situations such as snakes that kill you and THE SUN. And everything that's clearly defined is closer by, like give or take 45 minutes maximum on foot (for the rock faces and bottle pipe) and even less on car for other places that can be driven to. So no one strays far from where the north paths start to fade out, the man-touched landmarks are traded for geological beauty, and the wild desert opens up.

Unless they’re looking for a good hike, which I am. So here I am, packed for a full day and night stay (woah!). The gremlins are with our neighbor at the ranch for a sleepover, dad’s happy to support, and momma’s getting some me-time!

Here’s the content part of the blog, because Lizzie told me my posts need to be more exciting and she wanted an “abandoned places” feature. I told her we don’t really have her urban exploring stuff she likes so much, becuase we… Aren’t really an “abandoned” places sort of town, unless you count the buildings IN town that we can never seem to fill up lolll. And she asked me if I had seen anything out on my hikes. And it… Hit me. I don’t… think of those as abandoned buildings. There’s just… So many little things out there, yet so few, and so spread out, that when I’d go out with my mom, maybe we’d point it out to each other, and go “awesome” but that was the extent of it unless we were using it for shelter. Plus, you have to go so far out to see anything, and most of it is almost all the way destroyed. After a while it just was normal to me to see skeletons of buildings. After thinking about this, I told Lizzie I’d write her stupid darn blog post!!! Curse you, you chaotic little.. freak!!!

I tend to see signs of old buildings sporadically dotted along the landscape. Keep in mind that, on most of my hikes, I’m not really looking for anything like this, like I said. Lizzie’s better at that, and she lives in a city. Often, I won’t see anything, because the mountain ranges sort of tuck things away from sight. But here’s what I have learned, and now I can identify shit. Maybe. Sort of. With the help of an expert, who I spoke to, and did not tell the location of these things because he would absolutely take it and collect it. Even if there was nothing of value. Lol. 

Picture this: Many, many miles of natural beauty, the saguaro’s stretching their limbs into the sky, washes that wind and bend, making invisible pictures, and then: A fenced off hole in the side of a mountain, apparently indicating an attempt at prospecting. The weathered bones of a shelter. Some unknown mess of rocks and wood and someone’s American Dreams just… scattered across the desert. 

Our town historian told me that, when the main mine shut down in the 1920s, the town population wasn't anything to scoff at. So that was, what, a couple thousand people out of a job? SHEESH! Not only that, but the company who owned the mine paid many of their employees at least 50% in company currency that they could only use in town. Which is like nooo omg. 

There were people who had faith in the town and its survival, who stayed, and the story goes that these people founded Homestead as an actual town. For those who didn’t have faith, they only had 50% of a usable salary (OR EVEN LESS!! There’s not a ton of surviving records according to someone I talked to because it was so long ago and so many buildings have burnt down or been destroyed or records have been lost or changed hands and the county is hard to reach abt this and they’ve misplaced most everything). So what they did, was they were really really needing to make money ASAP. So they’d pack their family up if they had one, and they’d pick a direction, take a horse and wagon if they had one, and they tried to set up some sort of future for themselves. The YOLO of the 1900s, if you ask me

That’s why, if you walk out into the desert, you’ll find so many random little mining tunnels, for example, unconnected to the main mine. This is more the kind of thing I explore when I’m out and about outside of town. History isn’t my favorite thing and sometimes I think it ruins the excitement, but I’m trying to get some content for this blog, so I’ve been finally asking all the questions I’ve had about the little things I’ve explored. Apparently, there have to be at least a couple handfuls of people who banded together to try to find new veins of copper, at least enough to get them started in establishing a new life. More tried ranching, and at least one of those families is now one of the owners of the ranch that I live and work at! My neighbors!

The conversation was really nice, actually. The abandoned tools beneath a shack on the mesas, the holes cut through canyon walls that now serve as shelter from the harsh desert heat, and the empty houses seen below me as I look down from the top of one of the bright red buttes (haha butt) that define the unique beauty of this Arizona desert, apparently can tell me a story of tenacity and struggle. In all the cases of these scattered settlements, their abandonment signals their eventual failure. That makes our town even more special. I’m glad I asked my questions. Nobody else really goes out far, because it’s so dangerous and generally we are warned to avoid any overnight stays too far from town (not everyone has training from a super talented hiker like I did, and the county police takes ages to arrive, and our volunteer police force is... Well. They leave much to be desired haha) and any sign of life is few and far in between, so I just hadn’t really thought about it. I just figured, oh yeah, that probably belonged to one of the earlier settlers.

Basically: You will go hours or even days without spotting anything, if you don't know where to look. And even if you do know where to look, knowing can’t close the basic facts of distance or time. 

The desert is a natural place, even if evidence of human settlers exists on its’ surface. That’s what I always emphasize, anyways

You might find that funny, given that I’m trying to write about landmarks here. It’s honestly a challenge for me to try something new. I’m way more of a nature gal than a culture gal. I’m super introverted, and I didn’t have the best time in my tiny small town school. Hiking was my refuge. 

The Arizona desert is described often by hikers and other outdoor enthusiasts as a place of contrasts, and I can’t help but to agree. My life is different than when I was younger, because of what the desert offers. I spend my working and family days in lush, arid, grassy fields, knowing that our cattle will be provided for by the land. I have a community that supports me, and children who I love, and a dad that’s always there for me and his grandkids. But once I step outside of the bounds of the ranch, and into the place where I find peace, I accept the risks, continuously, of the desert’s darker side. Each time I go out on these longer trips, I have to acknowledge the risk of death. I can pack a bag, I can know the routes, but something can always go wrong. And yet, I accept those risks anyways, without even thinking about them most of the time. I calculate water, I have emergency gear, and I am always prepared.

 Still. I think a lot of outdoor lovers feel the way that I do. Every time we hear a horror story, we wonder if that will be us, and then we plan for a weekend trip to cross a canyon with only a backpack and our wits. I think people have contrasts, too, is something that I have realized

 I’d asked our historian about these structures in preparation for my first big desert trip since my mom died, and to answer Lizzie’s question. I wanted to think more about everything I saw. I want to think more in general. I understand the landscape, but I want to know *why* these tunnels, which I used as shortcuts when camping with my mom, exist. That house that I call a midpoint shelter could have belonged to a family, and I never thought about it all these years before.

 I miss hiking with my mom. 

As a young mom myself, I think that as I return to my hobbies, I want to proceed with all of the care that I always wanted my own mom to use when she went out without us. It breaks my heart that cancer took such an adventurous, brave woman. She taught me everything I knew about this place. I want to honor her memory, and be safe for my kids, just as I know I want to live my own life.

Anyways, that’s all for now because I’m heading out soon. Liz, feel free to say “i told you it would be cool” :p

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