To Saunter

A few days ago I read something interesting on Facebook. As we all know, not everything on Facebook is uplifting. Most posts reflect current affairs which are downright depressing. I admit, I add to the depression by angrily posting about the Hair Product-in-Chief and the Republican single party tyranny. But there are also interesting posts, as was this quote from John Muir:

Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word "saunter"? It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre," "To the Holy Land." And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."

Sauntering on Rampart Ridge, Cascades.

I found it interesting not just because I delight in etymology, the origin of words, and not just because I have two decades of history hiking in the Cascade and Olympic Mountains. It was interesting because I went sauntering with Nazar the Wonder Dog through the wash this past Sunday and I found myself reflecting on a memory triggered by John Muir's quote. It was an aphorism I had made up: The slower you go, the more you see.

It's something I first noticed motorcycling back roads some forty-four years ago. I clung to the back of my brother Géza as he drove his Suzuki motorcycle seven thousand miles from Milwaukee to Florida to Arizona to Utah and back to Milwaukee. It was a new phenomenon, proceeding through space with nothing but a helmet visor between me and the environment. We avoided freeways and stopped at many a scenic place: Smoky Mountains, Big Bend and Organ Pipe Cactus parks, Grand Canyon, the canyon lands of southern Utah, and a drive through Yellowstone.

Sauntering among tame Wyoming "bears".

(I remember the rangers at Yellowstone handing out leaflets warning drivers not to roll down their car windows to see the bears. We got stuck on a traffic jam where drivers and passengers rolled down their windows to see a mother bear and her cubs by the side of the road. Several eagerly encouraged Géza and me to look also, oblivious to the fact they were in their steel cages while we sat in the open, inching past the bears hoping the mother bear was not as irritated as we were.)

Then I took up bicycling as an outdoor activity. One can see a lot more at the pace of a bicycle, and feel more, too — in legs, buttocks and lungs.

Then I took up hiking in the mountains. That was mostly hiking, as in John Muir's definition, with only a little sauntering. Most saunters were after we made camp.

Hummingbird perched on an agave spine.

Now I like to sit and watch the saguaros grow. It takes a bit of effort for me to just sit. I always feel like I should be doing something. But if I do just sit, I see lizards scurrying and doing their push-ups, hummingbirds competing for access to the feeder, hawks soaring, monarch butterflies flapping to caesalpinia flowers, quail and dove pecking at seeds on the ground, even the occasional bobcat or coyote looking for prey. This is all stuff I miss walking, and not just because my attention is distracted. Walking by itself prompts the little critters to retreat into holes or hide behind scrub.

When I walk Nazar, I have to stop because he constantly stops to smell something or another. In those gaps, I stare at trees, the patterns of sand in the wash, the colors and textures of rocks, and the shadows and clouds over the Catalinas. I have my favorite porcupine cactus, two of them. I always stop to see how they are doing. Except for keeping an eye on the dog (he doesn't need a leash except on a road with traffic), it's a bit of a saunter.

Contrast a saunter with flying in an airliner, or driving on a freeway. How much do you see at six hundred or even seventy miles an hour?

Hence my aphorism, the slower you go, the more you see. Or the more present you are. Or the more awareness you have. In meditation terms, when one is completely still, one sees all. In saunter terms, one has attained the sacred land.

The South Point

The avalanche slope on the way to the South Point.

It's about one hundred and sixty steps from the front door of our house to the south point of our little acre of the Sonoran Desert. From that point one can see further south: the properties beneath us, a narrow but impressive view of Tucson and, about fifty miles distant, the Santa Rita Mountains, then seventy-five miles distant, I can see, at least in my mind's eye, Mexico.

It took years to get to that south point. First we had to cross the driveway, which, for the first couple of years, we never did without wearing boots. Then gradually, I began clearing the local varieties and equivalents of mulga (it's an Australian term; look it up) and digging benches into the hillsides to make trails and sitting areas.

The last stop for my improvements was next to a mature palo verde tree on the south edge of the inner portion of our gully. That is about twenty-two steps south of the driveway. There I ended the water and low voltage electricity lines and planted a faucet, garden hose and landscape light.

The last sixty steps to the south point are mostly over two barren avalanches of loose dirt over rocks, scree and rubble. All I did there was plant a few surplus blue agave pups, plants that have grown rather large over the years and provide a little blue-green relief from the otherwise barren brown slopes.

On the other end of those sixty steps is the hillside survey pin that marks the southern point of our little acre. It took several years of slipping and sliding and peering under sagebrush and into rabbit and ground squirrel holes to find that pin.

I dug out a narrow bench so I could reach the point without falling down the slope. Over the years, that narrow bench has eroded because — well, because it traverses the steep slopes of two barren avalanches of loose dirt and rubble.

Did I mention that the slopes were unstable?

Until last weekend, my final possessory act regarding that South Point had been to carve out a triangular platform in the loose slope (triangular to match the property lines), implant an iron rebar by the survey pin and tie some saguaro ribs to the rebar as a sort of visible marker. The rebar served as the human equivalent of what a dog does to a local fire hydrant.

As seen on Facebook: the island
and the east enclosure.

In addition to the view, that platform area is private. It is hidden from the house to the east by the berm of the hill above and that neighbor's own backyard wall. On the other side, a thicket of palo verde trees hides the space from the house to the west which is situated below, on the other side of the gully.

Like a coyote surveying and marking its territory, I would traverse the avalanche slopes to that platform area to sit and enjoy my private view. But the unstable slope eroded the bench, and there was nothing to sit upon. I began imagining concrete blocks.

In the meantime, I worked on the backyard kitchen island and the east wall cum enclosure which were the subjects of my Facebook posts earlier this year.

The saguaro ribs tethered to the rebar is visible towards the right.
It marks the South Point survey pin.

Friday a week ago, the first in October, the weather changed. With cooler weather come inspiration, energy and motivation.

I bought concrete, gravel and concrete blocks, and carried them a few at a time over the eighty traverse steps to the South Point. I dug trenches and sifted dirt to collect rocks large enough to serve as a natural retaining wall. I bought mortar and bricks and carried them a few at a time to the South Point. The ol' back ain't what it used to be.

The blocks got stuccoed and painted this Friday and I topped my oddly shaped (on account of the property line) low walls of concrete blocks with red clay bricks.

All I have to do is re-work the bench that serves as the path that leads to the South Point. For that, I need to scrounge up some one-man boulders to anchor the slopes.

I have my motivation: access to a pleasant sitting area and a great private view.

The view from South Point

It's Happened Before

It's happened before, something you don't expect.

For weeks and weeks of three digit highs (Fahrenheit), we have lived in our underwear like trailer trash. By eight or nine in the morning it's time to take shelter inside the shuttered house. It's time for lizards, ground squirrels and chipmunks to do their thing, and much of that is digging holes in the ground for refuge. It's the time of year when folks dream about going to Hawaii to escape the heat.

The odd thing is shade. It's the direct sunshine that is fierce. Even in three-digit temperature, I can sit in the shade and marvel at all the life in the Sonoran Desert, life that thrives in a bit of shade. I sit in the shade of the house and think to myself, "Gotta make more shade in the yard." We are fortunate to have plenty of trees in the gully whose shelter encourages all sorts of plants to thrive, even in the heat. I could erect pandals, trellises, follies, gazebos and other open covered areas. Meanwhile, I am grateful I work for a living inside the house and we have cooling.

Did anyone catch sight of the full moon, now two weeks ago?

By evening, when the sun loses its power and the bugs and bats come out, it's pool time. We carefully manage the solar blanket to maintain a water temperature in the low nineties. These last few weeks have provided an amazing evening planetary show. I have been floating with my rubber noodle and gazing at the horizon-to-horizon moving arc of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Mars and the Moon as they reveal themselves in the twilight, followed by innumerable stars.

Now it's the first week of October and the first week highs are in the eighties. Lows are about sixty. Shucks. Instead of just flopping on top of the bed in my underwear, I have to cover myself with a sheet. It's actually almost cold in the mornings. The swimming pool is loosing heat.

It's a subtle but very definite change of season. It has been only a week since the end of the summer doldrums.

It's happened before. I already miss summer.