Desert Clarity

The back of my neck glowed with the warmth of the sun. The back of my calves burned with the hurt of the climb. In the back of my head, my soul was catching fire. In the meantime I was struggling to catch my breath. How could I be this wiped out this early in the hike? As the ground at the base of the cliffs slowly crept away I was left ruing on all those canned beers from the night before.

My flight landed in Scottsdale right as the sun was beginning to crest over the desert in the distance. The plan was for Jon, Zach, and Sam to pick me up in the truck we were renting on our way to Zion that night. We were hoping to have an early day at the park, but I'll get to that. I had arranged to spend that day with a good friend from my days on the banks of the Raritan. Evan had moved to Arizona a few years back and it seemed fitting that what would ultimately come to be looked back on as a discovery of important internal truths began with spending time with a friend with whom I had shared college’s formative years.

I met up with Evan near his office and we split a basket of tacos. I let him work the rest of the afternoon and arranged our camping supplies so they would be ready to pack away once the boys arrived with the truck. Later, at about dinner time, I met back up with Evan at a local pizza place that had permanent sprinklers overhead that offered a cooling mist when you walked in. Comfortably cool, and uncomfortably moist, we pulled a couple stools up to the bar and talked more about life. Meeting with someone who you haven't seen in some time has a way of demarcating a point in the arc of our lives. We talked about where we'd come from, where we were, and where we planned to be over too much thinly crisped pizza. The pizza was good and the beer was better, it was nice. Wholly simple pleasures for sure. The cool of the desert evening continued to roll in and we walked to another bar for one of Evan’s friend’s birthday parties. This bar had an outdoor patio with fire pits and a comfortable seating area arranged around some games. We spent that night drinking entirely too many IPAs under the clear desert sky and tossing a bean bag back and forth. The night had an easy going aura and I enjoyed being shuttled from one activity to the next.

As I lifted my head from staring at the tops of my boots to look up the trail, I saw the Levine brothers galloping back and forth along the switchbacks. They easily shuttled past the broad face of the cliffs. These tall walls reflecting earthly colors. While the blue sky cut a welcoming horizon we seemed to be chasing, Jon and I chit chatted as we struggled to keep up.

After mumbling my way through through the phone with news that they had landed and were on their way from the airport, Evan and I piled into an uber back towards his apartment where my bags of camping equipment were waiting. The Ford F-150 hummed impressively in the parking lot while the three of them looked on I hooped and hollered amidst a hop induced euphoria. I hugged Evan adios thanking him for his hospitality and friendship and we headed north, driving for a couple of hours until we came upon a motel just a few miles from the Grand Canyon.

That next morning came and went quickly. Waking up felt like a chore I was excited to do, and we readied ourselves for our another run on our destination and current location, Zion National park. The four of us spent the drive talking through the many weeks we had spent apart, re-acclimating to our chemistry that we had built over two decades of friendship. Eventually the scenery became more interesting then whatever it was we were saying and it became clear that there was shared excitement. It was almost palpable. Unfortunately so was my motel breakfast which I promptly threw up en route.

Climbing I tried rationalizing through the beers and pizza, the shitty coffee and runny eggs, and I puzzled through what shouldn't have been as much of a struggle as it was. What I hadn’t realized was that my brain, which was already a dehydrated raisin, was starving for oxygen in the high desert air. I was in pain. The climb was long, I think all told it was 8 miles, and we were going fast. We had only a few hours to get up and back before the sunset and we had to make camp, make dinner, make our numbers, and get to sleep. The next day was more driving and more exploring through the American west.

We had conceived of this trip months ago. We figured late October would make the most sense. Fall would ensure bearable weather. Jon had gone to school in Arizona and was familiar with the region, Zach had visited him once or twice; on the other hand, besides time spent in the middle east, Sam and I were desert virgins. This climate was different from it’s middle eastern cousin as the high altitude thinned the air and chapped your lips within hours. Our plan was to pack our short ten day road trip with drives from destination to destination, dotting the American West’s finest national parks on our way to the Arivaipa Valley. You likely have never heard of the valley, I likely will never forget it. We left Scottsdale and spent a couple really great days in Zion National Park. Zach had done his homework. Arrive, camp, hike, and eat. For dinner we roasted desert vegetables over the fire and finalized plans for he and I to be up before the sun to ensure we were among the prepared few who got to reserve a campsite for the next day in line with the parks 'first come first serve' policy. Zach and I shared hot tea the second morning of our trip under the oversight of high mountain walls. The sky blessed us with a sorbet of milky complexion in the early light. A bowl of blues, oranges, purples, greens all mingled with the leaves of trees, the brown of the mud walls, mauling us with a palette of hues so intoxicating we were essentially rendered speechless.

I spent the first two days sweating out the partying, and squeezing more from my soul. We spent the second day purifying ourselves in the Narrows on a self guided river-walk. Hi tech rubber booties sucked at our feet and weighed our legs down with water as we struggled through the narrow crevasses carved into the walls of Zion National Park. What had been an ocean a millennia before we made our appearance, still graced us with the traces of its natural history. The layers of rocks, fossils of coral imprinted on the stones, all reminded us that like an old clock our entire frame of reference sorely needed a re-calibration. The entire walk felt to me as though the ground we were walking on, the entire world that we live in, was pulling us closer. It seemed to me as though it was begging us to stay, or see, or something. All trip there were large forces at play that were outside of my control, that I was unaware of, that I am thankful to have been subjected to.

My hangover induced headache, the pain in my legs on both hikes, the pain of being away from Emily and Archie, all of it was invaluable. The trip that offered an unending supply of healing began with a lot of pain. Going through life our attention is inevitably subsumed by lots of stuff; emotions, people, things, places, things other than what is, and I’ve come to know that pain cuts through it all. In the pulse of pain you're forced to pay attention to the moment in a way that few other levers can. On the other side of pain is self. By overcoming the disquiet of pain you earn the right to be yourself. So, pain is useful, and understandably intimidating. An irreplaceable part of the human experience.

Though the hikes were steep, and the river walk technically challenging, I couldn't blame the pain on the natural landscape where we had been finding our refuge. The whole trip was spent continuing through vast swaths of public lands cut and divvied up among the people. We toured and hiked through these spaces. We circled a path that meandered through Arizona and Utah; stopping along the way at Zion, Bryce Canyon, Arches and Deadhorse parks. We lived in those parks for those days. As I write, our hallowed grounds are as in the news as they are in the cross-hairs of our illegitimate president. As sure as the devil on his shoulder has charred his skin orange, he hopes to reap that destruction on all things, our precious public spaces included. In response I'm compelled to offer my personal experience as a case for the parks. They were a vessel for my own rebirth.

To be clear the value of the parks I'm hoping to demonstrate is entirely personal. This isn’t a moral case for the protection of wildlife. This isn’t a moral case for the protection of wildlife for future generations. This isn’t a case for the protection of an asset, of revenue, of pride, of a legitimate tourist attraction. This isn’t a case to maintain and revere our shared heritage. This isn’t a legal argument. This is the experience of someone who used the parks as a place to whisk together pain and camaraderie and down a brew of profound discovery.

Despite the way they're talked about in our national discourse these parks are not political entities. These massive natural landscapes are exotic and native; in which, rarefied views abound. They offer vital reminders of a slower more glacial timeline in which we are but a tick in the eternal clock. Well worn paths of ancestors and descendants; assured demarcations of our legacy. Homes to neighbors. Go to a park and look into the eyes of an animal you see. Consider the same parts and particles that make us up, make them up, and make up all the space in the world. Enshrining land for the public has induced spaces which are separated from our urban sprawl and protected from the allure of development. They substitute suffocating crowds and man made structures with suffocating expanses of a massive land and deep black night sky. The sky, an infinite basket filled with finite entities. Simultaneously places from which we came, and a narrative on which we can map ourselves. These parks are the opposite of artifice; everything for which we cannot accurately or comprehensively value. Parks are not a thing from us, but a thing of us.

My three fellow travelers are three of the people I’ve known for as long as I could remember. The familiarity and loyalty was a fundamentally necessary ingredient. The web of camaraderie is made up of concentric circles. Each of these circles are filled with associates and each circle has its own purpose. The urge to compare the value of the circles is a sophomoric and impulsive exercise that adds little value. The closest circle is made up of the people with whom you share your roots and where your rooted values are entangled. Ideally they're principled people who help cement your own principles. They say you are who you are when you're alone; what they don’t say is that there would be no you if you didn’t have others to contrast yourself off from. While the pages could be filled with the valley of camaraderie I'm comfortable knowing I've sufficiently laid out what was necessary, and the knowledge that for those who know they need not have it explained. This heavy dose of camaraderie, garnished with a bit of pain, mixed in the deep public lands and combined to mirror and partner the magical brew found in the well of Arivipaya valley.

A few days later we pulled through a small mountain town that looked as though it had just benefited from an injection of coastal cash. Cute stores, cafes, and organic groceries lined the streets in the shadow of the Utah mountains. The peaks of these mountains spliced across the backdrop offering a sense of ease for the villagers that only a massive natural feature can. We pulled into a motel slightly off the main road but not too far from the liquor store that closed too early and sold beer that didn’t have enough alcohol. My preconceptions of who I believed to live in this part of the country and the violently self aware motel desk attendant who had chosen a sex other than one given to her at birth was juxtaposed with the calm indifference when she handed us our key cards and pointed us to our room. After a couple of unshaven days and many hours snacking and sweating in the truck we were all looking forward to a hot shower. Our room provided internet access which we could have been used to fill tomorrow’s itinerary but our growling stomachs made it clear that any planning would have to wait. We piled back into the truck and rolled towards town to find something to eat. A light drizzle peppered the windows as we pulled into the parking lot of a genuinely precious Mexican restaurant. They say that Moab, Utah is the mountain biking capital of the continental united states, but the Mormons had pushed arcane regulatory caps on what passed as beer based on ABV, I won’t depress you with the details, but the result was untenable. We managed to find something decent enough but I’m not sure the MTB community had all their gears engaged when they made that decision.

Sam has always had a refreshing unique perspective and coupled with his bona fide enthusiasm and ambition he can make for a really fun and insightful hang. The two of us considered what needed to be considered between beers in the hotel's hot tub before heading to bed. The next morning the four of us loaded up on the motel’s continental breakfast. Sure, the food isn’t great, but when you’re wandering into the hotel cafeteria, a groggy eyed collective, the thin eggs, heavy syrup, and crunchy muffins means you’re somewhere and you’re about to be doing something. These carbs dutifully serve and the orange juice is usually surprisingly palatable so who are we to complain. As we headed outside to go to the bike shop the crisp mountain air justified our complacence. We threw two 29ers and two 27.5s over the back wall of the truck. Zach knew how to ride, but I can see in Sam and Jon’s eyes the combination of excitement and anxiety. This was going to be fun. We headed to Deadhorse National Park for the trailhead.

What makes an activity something other than a hobby is the meaning we impart on it. Biking is ritualistic, and a ritual begets the spiritual.

Every morning I’m blessed to wake up to the unending blues of the great Lake Michigan. I get to overlook the bike path and see it’s winding trajectory up to the north side of the city and to the south. Even from my kitchen window I can see the waves lapping up and over the big boulders, and further north I can see the lake meet the edge of the city’s buildings. I can see how the promontory point pokes its circular bosom out into the water. But what I can't see is the bottom curve of the lake. I know the lake is big and at the bottom it sweeps past Illinois and Indiana.

Sipping hot coffee one frigid morning I began to think that riding the whole thing had to be possible. The lack of logic of thinking I could bike around something for which I had no frame of reference had no bearing on the momentum the idea of the project began to accrue. As the coffee's active ingredient began working it’s way into my blood the bike’s gravity began to pull on the ambitious corners of my mind. A mile was easy, my commute was twenty, weekend trips averaged about of fifty, a hundred seemed doable, could I do a hundred? Per day? For ten days straight? The circumference of the dammed lake was about a thousand miles so that would mean I would have too. A bikepacking trip around lake Michigan. This initial absence of doubts, the combating of any second guesses, of trusting my laurels was the paving stone for the path towards desert clarity.

The path to considering a ride around Lake Michigan began months before when I had gotten into the habit of riding my bike around Chicago. I’m from New Jersey, and the midwest was always just a place that was somewhere else. A disinteresting, unremarkable, underpopulated, useful part of the map. A place that was pretty in paintings. But it had become home, and the bike pulled on me to get to know its unique qualities. All places are settings for feeling. Walk into an old library and you’ll whisper, walk into a bar and you’ll throw peanuts on the floor, climb a mountain and you’ll feel small, and when biking through the midwest you will feel tranquil. The sameness of the landscapes is a meditative feeling. Settling into the hum of the rubber tires, accepting their grip on the roads, letting the rolling hills of tall grasses and open skies melt away the feeling of passing time.

Our ride in Deadhorse combined pain and camaraderie in a place that helped facilitate the singularity we pursue. Riding consistently eventually shrinks the space between one’s mind and body. The duality is present but the connection is tenured. As we bounced between the rocks I tried to listen for the internal signaling, letting the trails along the edges of the cliffs have their affect on me. The high arid air made even the shortest of stretches feel long. On every long ride there is a transition. The experience of riding itself evolves. As this process begins I can actually feel my consciousness shifting gears. During the initial stretches of our ride I was focused on making sure that Jon and Sam were capable riders, especially in the technical sections. For the record they are instinctive learners and I quickly realized they would be enjoying themselves. I shifted my focus back to what my body had to say.

We rode tire to tire yelling over the crunches and whirring of the drive train to point out views for one another. Soon enough the familiar pain in my legs made it's presence felt and I shifted my focus on managing it's arrival. I'm sure you've seen those reductive commercials assert that their tiny-pilled remedy could resolve some hyper local pain point, more often then not highlighted by a lightening bolt or a throbbing red mound. That depiction might make sense for a short commercial but that's not how pain is experienced on the velocipede. While the pain might begin in the local vicinity of your thighs, the storming concoction of electric energy joins the cacophony of frantic press releases from the part of your mind that prefers to not feel pain, and spreads its message throughout. With your mind and body engaged, and the lactic acid has waged it's local war, a flank arrives triumphantly. A more welcomed and duller burden of your strides. Each conspires with your mind in an attempt to hijack your focus. This for many is the barrier to entry, also known as The Dip (a Seth Godin concept, and book, s/o Jon Rave). Wisdom is knowing this is just a fee. Nothing in the world is free and I don’t mind knowing that you gotta pay to play. As my arms shuttered absorbing the chatter of the front fork that my well built suspension passed along, my legs, acting as a piston, fired electric bolts through my lower half, getting my feet, gripping the pedals, to will the crankset through to maintain the momentum I needed. My legs became heavy as they do, bearing the burden of my weight. But at some point, the experience changes. Gone is the feeling of any local pain, it’s been dissipated throughout. It’s as if any weight associated with your body is dislodged from the locomotive reactions below. I’m inside myself floating above the bike and the ground. This is the magic. Man ruling machine. At this point there is no weight. Turns are effortless. Banking at speed is a natural and sublime primal action. It’s at this point that everything that exists, for the rider, makes sense. The bike’s frame is subservient to the unspoken will of my torso and the bike ceases to ride. It drifts. Everything becomes nothing, and nothing is everything that matters. But nothing alone is wholly inadequate. Sharing this experience with the people we care about is the salvo of meaning. Camaraderie grafts meaning onto experience. It changes an experience to the experience.

After returning the bikes back to tattooed lifers, we hit the road. Of all the stretches we drove for that week and a half, this was the longest. We left Moab the morning after our ride and headed out towards the South eastern part of Arizona. On our drive we would pass through national lands granted to farmers, ranges for cattle and steer to roam, dry crunchy rolling hills bestowed to Native Americans on which you could grow little. We cut the drive in half by camping halfway on a Native American preserve in Monument Valley. The entirety of the trip was building towards it’s ultimate purpose. While in nature throughout, we had left the noise of the city, joined like minded tourists in Zion, spent a day with local non-natives, and used a quiet night in the valley among the local natives. At this point we weren't far from our waiting potion and the novelty and difficult personal introspection required was activating some of our nerves. We were the minority in Monument Valley and the serene calm of the valley and the ease of the native people helped to settle our focus. The Native American paradigm is medicinal. The cultural and shared human heritage of these people and their brew was evident. The prevalent arc of the trip was heading towards it’s climax, but this climax would be settling. Even the shadows at sunset felt long and settled, comfortable and true.

But that was night and this was day. Driving through the desert has a way of the making days feel long. The desert sun encases the world in a light that is as bright as it is dull and the hum of the tires on the highway tucks you into a comforting melancholy. During the drive deep, challenging, intellectual conversations are punctuated with basic and welcomed silences. Driving through this part of Arizona means that you can always see far, and the horizon is always at your eye's level. You can see the day coming to a close from far away.

The Aravaipa valley is blessed with privacy. Once we turned off the highway it became clear that where we were going was very remote. Roads quickly became dry hard packed dirt. As night fell dust rose and lingered like a tail off the bed of the truck. The winding road and occasional farm was all we had to mark distance and time and it felt like our collective consciousness was settling in some way that made a lot of sense. Still, we were also aware of the slight hints of anxiety, the good kind. The direction of the trip had been leading to this farm. This farm stood alone in the hills and by tomorrow’s nightfall we would be consuming an age old brew in it’s natural habitat. We had grown accustomed to moving as a unit, but tomorrow we would be alone with ourselves and the elements.

Neither the road we came in on nor the farm where we would be staying subjected the landscape to artificial outdoor lighting. For that matter, there was no artificial light in the valley for hundreds of miles in any direction. The modest house bumped up against a simple side yard with thinning grass. At its center was a mule tied to the trunk of the only tree. There was rusted farm equipment tucked into the corner leaning against a wooden planked fence that needed maintenance. Up and around the driveway on one corner of the property, not too far behind the big cement pit which was also a pool, and ultimate resting place of the Rabbi’s dog who would drown that night, was a hut. Near the hut was a hand built stone and clay oven that as of the day of our arrival had never actually been used. Beyond the footprint of the property there was nothing made by man of note, it was an expanse of unending desert brambles and bushes that eventually fed to the base of the surrounding hills. In front of the house was a quaint clay wall spattered with multi colored painted pottery chips on the outward facing side; on the inside of the courtyard was a circle of reclining chairs with a small folding table which held the ashtray and bamboo incense ramekins. Taped to the dark auburn door was a welcoming note the Rabbi’s wife had left us, directing us to the guest rooms, pointing us to the guest bathroom, and reminding us to remove our shoes before we came in. We read the note by the light of our cell phones and pushed the door open.

We left the majority of our gear in the back of the truck and took only the essentials for sleeping, and while we were tired from the full day of driving, sleep would not come easily as the plans of tomorrow had our already empty stomachs growling with nerves. Jon and I sat outside in the courtyard considering the stars in the sky, blessed to share some tea under the clearest night yet. After the tea had sufficiently settled our nerves we put ourselves to sleep. The next morning I woke with the sun streaming through the window warming my face yet again.

I spent the morning lounging in bed. I quartered in the sun room, surrounded by shelves filled with books on what seemed like any and all topics. The rest of the walls inside the house hung paintings from artists who had stayed with the Rabbi of the years. All the paintings shared a similar theme despite dates ranging from the early 1960’s up through the early aughts. Shelves in the house supported some pottery, work-shopped trinkets, even some note cards strewn about. In the room I was using none of the sections of the book shelves seemed to relate to one another, there was no obvious order, just unending piles and rows of books. One wall was pretty much a giant window which gave me a view of the front yard. The farm felt like the outside of a fishbowl, but in a good way. Fasting gave me something to think about other than what was to come. Slowly slipping into a shallow coma due to my hunger I bathed in the warmth of the sun. To pass the time I would alternate between flipping through the books and slipping on my boots and wandering around the farm. My focus honed itself onto the information that my physical senses provided. Eventually, and finally, night came and it was time to get settled at our respective campsites. I had the North site which was at the top end of the driveway and a bit elevated from the base of the compound. I came upon my clearing and noticed a chair, next to which sat a bucket. The entire spot was protected by a canvas canopy. A circle of rocks made the place feel holy. Along the outskirts of the ring, lying on the dry dirt, were rows and rows of logs. Dry light colored logs that looked to be an ember away from catching fire.

The first sips tasted as they should; chalky dirt, slightly acidic, exhilarating. The onset is respectful, cautiously approaching before it's comfortable enough to strip away and ravage your preconceptions. You're entirely there but so is some other force, acting on you, but of you just the same. Not unlike the land we had called home for the past few days. Jon’s site wasn’t too far off and I could hear him rummaging around his site. That was comforting. Only we occupy our world, but we can share ourselves with those we love. Camaraderie at it’s finest. Though what would have been dinnertime had come and gone, darkness comes later in the desert then it does in the city. The sun's reach knows it's earthly bounds, and once the globe began turn away from today the desert seemed to stir. Darkness fell and and so had my ego’s defense. The desert lit up with sounds. Animals playing, scurrying, dying. The primal reaction to the desert foxes hunting, finding, killing. The shadows of birds and rodents dancing by the fire. I had brought a pen and a pad with me and began to take account of the people and things I was thankful for; a useful tool in uncertain times. If filled with gratitude one doesn’t have room for anything else. Forget any fears or other malfeasance creeping into the experience, Gratitude was there to stay. I felt protected in the echo of the defiant proclamation, “There ain’t enough room for the two of us.” It was a pleasant way to begin. The mountains in the distance humbled me. The sounds of the desert scared me. Though far from perfect the paternal instinct inherent in this brewed concoction yielded a vitally necessary reminder of who and what I want to be. The physical (and other) artifice we’ve create can shield us from truths, the ageless wisdom in this right of passage wouldn’t.

Perhaps when people refer to the unilateral self they are conflating the vessel and its contents. As newborn entities we are essentially empty, our only identifying characteristic is our unique physical components. Vessels, like us, come in different shapes and sizes designed well before the world fills them. We're filled with the continuous flow of experience. This trip through the desert had been a steady pour of the feelings, the people, the places that I hold very dearly. We chose to look inward and impart intentionality on our identity, to steer our interactions with the world. Unlike other living things this is a right and opportunity we are given, a birthright. It has become apparent that for all things this is the giver’s greatest gift. Should you choose to use the public lands as a venue for experience is up to you; if it’s removed from the menu by those in power we have lost that choice. Pain, camaraderie, and the natural landscape of our nation's national parks, our public space, all helped brew a magical potion. Drinking that potion under the stars allowed me to begin to understand what doing the work meant.