AZT Mile 786.5 (2.2 miles from end). Jun 2.

AZT Mile 786.5 (2.2 miles from end). Saturday Jun 2. 

So far today I walked from last night’s tentsite at mile 778.1 to this rest stop, 8.1 miles. Not sure yet if I will sleep here and hike down in the morning or hike when it cools down this afternoon. 

Dear Trail Friends,

I was happy from the moment I woke up this morning. The same terrain that irritated me yesterday seemed glorious as I walked through it in the dark and as the day dawned. Then suddenly some of the gnarly twisted plants I discounted yesterday began to burst into bloom. It is an odd thing about walking how one can change zones - these plants in yeaterdays’s area are not yet in bloom, here they were all in bloom. Maybe in part because I came down some in elevation. 

Photo 1 is a collage of these guys. The air was full of their sweet dusty scent and they were blooming everywhere. 

Then there was the matter of being surprised by all these flowers and loving the same plants I could not relate to yesterday - in the light of the miracle of morning. 

Photo 2 is trying to share with you how the flowers combined with early morning life to create a sense of miracle and magic. 

I got to thinking as I walked about flowers. We associate them with funerals, weddings, sickness, graduations. They seem an equally natural way to share joy and join in a sense of celebration and to share pain and console. Maybe it’s because they so express the beauty of transience. 

Even the gnarly plants from yesterday that weren’t blooming glowed in the morning light (as did the cactuses)  til I fell in love with all of them. (Photo 4)

I noticed (photo 5) that some of the gnarlies had blossoms with long stamen or pistils or whatever it was I didnt learn the name of back in sixth grade. To me they looked like truly wonderful multiple penises. For some reason that reminds me that some animal (I no longer recall which) has a prehensile penis (that means, I think, that it is like a finger or an elephant’s trunk and can grasp things). Aren’t these crazily different from the ones in photo 1? Maybe male and female versions of the same plant? Not that I’ll ever research it, but I love feeling curious about the natural world. 

This was a great morning for curiosity. Also for blossoming cactuses (Photo 6)

So - I was walking along learning to love the gnarlies and all of a sudden a pine tree (or a fir, some dignified shade tree with needles) appeared. And another. Talk about curiosity. Why was the habitat suddenly changing? And then a shock of bright green and a whole mini grove of baby oak trees (I think oak, but if they’re elm or something else you will still get my point, I hope),shown in photo 7. 

I noticed that the trail was wandering along a wash (that word “wash” again, as with Corette, except this time it means the place where the water flows rather than the gunk that it pushes around when it flows). It seemed natural to speculate that the change in plants was due to water. Duh. That seemed like a reasonable theory. Then I thought about the Grand Canyon. Desert below where the river was. Green trees above. So how do we make sense of that? 

I know! It’s because Coyote got impatient and threw all the stars into the sky and we have confusion instead of nice neat laws. 

Walking along the wash was beautiful. I thought it was a perfect finale for the hike. There were even some rocks and the sense of it being a small canyon (photo 8). 

As we climbed away from the wash (which I had thought was going to be a hard act to follow), I began to glimpse rock walks in the distance that made me think I was looking south at the Grand Canyon. I even checked my compass. Gradually it dawned on me that I was looking north at Utah, (maybe, I found myself hoping, the setting for my next walk or walks?). 

I am now resting at a spot overlooking those rock walls. Photo 9 collages two views each just a few steps away from where I am resting. 

I felt, as I walked up to this view, a physical attraction - the kind of magical

body pull to another person that as a young person I called “love at first sight.” Now granted that we know how fickle such attractions can be (just as yesterday’s horrid gnarlies become today’s beatified luminaries, the reverse transformations are just as likely to occur) 
It is still a kind of magic that the body spontaneously falls in love with someone or something when it sees them for the first time. 

This reminds me of that little blonde girl I saw walking down the Grand Canyon holding her mother’s hand, looking like she was being dragged along. Just a few minutes before I had seen he two bigger dark-haired sisters skipping and running down the trail, their father hard pressed to keep up with them. Mother and daughter were doing a relatively short hike, but Father and older girls were doing a Rim to rim, they’d been training in track and he was sure they could do it. “They sure are passionate about it,” I commented to the father, and later to the mother. “I’m afraid she isn’t,” the mother said, indicating the little girl she was dragging along.  I remember saying to the girl “that’s alright. You don’t have to love what they love. The important thing is to know what you love and to love what you love.” Guess I’m still trying to be a family therapist (of the worst kind - the preachy kind) but I think I was also speaking to myself. 

The important thing is to know what I love and to love what I love. To pay attention when love beckons. Will it lead me astray? Of course it will. life looks a lot more like Coyote’s beautiful mess than First Woman’s clear and orderly laws. 

If this is a pilgrimage about emergence out of darkness into light, a pilgrimage about the miracle of morning, it is most of all for me about the mixed-up-ness of curse and blessing, light and darkness, wisdom and foolishness - the confused mess we say yes to when we have the courage to say yes. 

Okay I am getting grandiose. But this is the crescendo of the hike. Pretty soon I will pack up and walk 2.2 miles (and 1000 feet) down to stateline campground, the endpoint of this hike begun more than a year ago (before my niece died and my -and my family’s - world was changed forever) and finished now a year later (after Angel’s death and that change). 

So let me be a little grandiose for a minute or two. Why not, if it makes me happy? Angel won’t see or experience any of this. She won’t live to be 70 and see her life in perspective. She won’t outlive her mother and me. We’ve got to live without her to hand the future to. That line brought tears to my eyes. It’s as if I am sitting here looking across at Utah and imaging the future as something beautiful, like this landscape.  Something worth reaching for, worth handing on. (Not the way I feel when I read the news). 

The future is there even though Angel is gone. We have to hand it on as best we can - even if it’s only vis a few words I speak to a little girl walking down the Grand Canyon or a little boy not allowed to climb the Lookout Tower. I am doing my best to hand the future on. 

Hey - thanks for walking with me just then. I’ve got tears going down my cheeks. I wouldn’t have gotten to that thought/feeling, without you there listening. Thank you. 

I will see you down below at the end of the trail.