Nature
Monday, September 15th, 2025: Chiricahuas, Hikes, Monument, Nature, Rocks, Southeast Arizona.
After sixteen months and three tries, our local doc’s attempts to fix my knee have failed again. I can’t waste more of my precious life on failures. Time for the big-city options, an hour’s flight or up to a five hour drive away.
In the meantime, I’m no longer worried about making it worse. What limits me is the harder the hike, the longer I’m immobilized with pain afterward.
The hike I chose for this Sunday was in the national monument over in Arizona. I wasn’t looking forward to the crowds, but the habitat would be spectacular, the distance manageable, and the elevation changes should be okay for my knee.
This trail starts on the crest, drops down through the rocks into a series of small, narrow canyons, then loops back up to the start. Pulling into the parking lot, I had to pee really bad, so I stepped behind a tree and checked to make sure nobody could see me.
Five minutes later, as I was placing the sunshade in my windshield, I heard yelling and noticed a car passing me, leaving the parking lot. I walked out, asking “What did you say?”
The small SUV was already past, but a middle-aged matron with beehive hairdo leaned out the window and yelled, in a nasal East Coast accent, “If you gotta pee, go behind a tree where nobody can see ya!” I laughed, but I started the hike feeling like everything was against me – my knee, my doctor, the square tourists in this formerly wild place that had been sanitized by the empire into a recreational enclave.
So much disappointment saps your motivation. As I passed one group of out-of-shape tourists after another – cheerily agreeing with them all that it was a beautiful place and a beautiful day – I asked myself again and again what I was doing there. The miles of stone stairways winding through the rocks, result of Herculean labors by the Depression-era Civilian Conservation Corps, actually made the trail harder to negotiate with my knee injury. Our hallowed National Park Service has even provided catchy names for natural features, handed down from English imperial history. I compulsively shot photos for a Dispatch, without really seeing what I was shooting.
I normally hike in remote locations where I’m totally alone and am often the first visitor in weeks, months, or even years. Here, with tourists both in front and behind me, I felt pressured to just finish the damn hike. The rocks became overwhelming, and the only saving grace was the plants – especially the grasses, which were thriving in our late monsoon.
As the trail began descending a side canyon, I could hear a small waterfall hidden in the rocks below. Soon I came to a trickle of water, and finally, to a pool I could cross on boulders. The side canyon emptied into the main canyon and I came to a trail junction. My loop continued onto a traverse across the slope of the main canyon. This part of the loop was much less traveled – even overgrown in places – and here, I became fixated on the grasses.
Nearing the turnoff where the trail left the main canyon to climb back to the crest, a young couple caught up with me – the old cliche of a tiny girl with a huge guy to keep her safe. As they were passing, the boy asked “Have you seen anything cool?”
Surprised, I asked him to repeat, and when he did, I replied “Are you kidding? Everything here is cool!”
That got me started wondering what wasn’t cool – the stone stairs? The tourists? The fact that it’s a national monument?
Natives talk about the time when animals were people. Before humans, animals had to figure out how to live, by trial and error. Then when we came along, the animals became our mythical teachers.
Long ago I came to realize that everything is alive. Everything has its own form of awareness, and the ability to interact with the rest of us.
This place reinforces my notion of rocks as living beings, more than any place I can think of. It’s spectacular, but it can also feel a little spooky. As you recognize human features in the rocks, you realize we’re outnumbered here. Way outnumbered by this looming crowd. Barring some mutual apocalypse, they’ll be here, watching, long after we’re gone.
The lonely traverse up the main canyon, away from the stairs and the tourists, had somewhat lifted my bad spirits. Parts of the trail had reminded me of favorite rocky, shady spots on hikes in the Pinalenos, the Arizona White Mountains, the Mojave Desert, even taking me back to the Sierra Nevada of my youth. Lush, intimate pockets in a vast, monumental landscape.
