Cathedral Rock loop in Sedona.

I’m on a red promontory over an ocean of conifer green, speckled with patches of red rock and dust. This varies with height and slope till there’s only the occasional spot of green, some sturdy sunwashed succulent, sucking dropped dew from the rock it slowly splits.  

A man chuffs his way past on a bike, chain whirring and gears clicking as he crosses the slabolisk framing the base of my view from Slim Shady trail.

“Do you remember this from the video?” A later biker says to their partner.

I move on, many miles to make today.

I watch them descend on their bikes and start thinking of the features I’d want on one.  A bike bell that sounds like a windchime would be cool. Also kick-ass brakes and wide tires.  

When I stretch my ankle across my shin my left knee pops out.  I just learned a thing I can’t do anymore.

Left turn on the trail turns me into the sun.  I adjust the tip of my hat and pull up my collar a little on that side. Onward.

Mountains are connected by lines of energy, the path becoming the path, drawn with feet and tread.  

The next biker is going the other way, on only his fat rear wheel.  Next “three behind” then “two behind” then “one behind” as they speed past, the rest all using the customary number of wheels.  Makes sense who’s leading.

I’ve found another color.  I’m overlooking the valley I was just circumwalking, the rolling hills topped with a carpet of bristling grass, or what passes for it in the desert.
Beyond I can now see the highway with cars full of people looking at me, and not knowing.

I learn the color of the wettest mud, and the drier, darker mud, deceptively chunkier with deep tread marks; it’s actually hard and has good traction.

The trail is very steep here, and crowded, with lines forming and operating, following the instructions of invisible traffic lights.  I’m earning my views now, scrambling with hands and feet up the vee of the rock face. 

I spent quite a bit of time sitting in the crotch between the two peaks at the end of the Cathedral rock trail.  It had been a steep but relatively short climb, but I was sweaty all the same under my long sleeved wool hoodie.  Leaving it on prevents flash cooling my skin, and it dries it out.  

The wind felt great as I watched people take photos of each other on a ledge that looks perilous in photos.  I waited for a while myself, behind a group of about a dozen Dutch students and some others from ASU, one of which was definitely a Malfoy.  

I asked the guy behind me to take my pictures, since that seemed to be the most sensible protocol, and was followed by most before me.  In part I chose him because he had a big camera and was talking about cameras with a friend of his.  Sadly this was a mistake, as he took the most hilariously bad pictures possible, given the lighting and position.  I almost waited in line again, but in a weird way I am more find of the ones I have. 

He broke the cardinal sin of shooting directly into the sun without knowing how, and also the sin of not knowing how. Pro tip: the lens needs to be shaded to avoid washing out the image. I do this with my finger frequently, if there is no handy tree.  Put your finger somewhere easy to crop out in case you get a piece of it, which is sometimes impossible to avoid for given space-time coordinates and vectors. 

Also sometimes it’s good to move somewhere else. Moving around lets your eye fall on different things in combinations with more or less Feng and/or Shui.  The photos he took are devoid of either, and any of my normally visible facial features.

The wind picked up and the Dutch students started descending, and I realized it was my time as well.  Heading back down was much easier than I had anticipated.  It felt like skiing moguls of dusty rocks, scrambling like a spider made of human, butt over rock, supported by all four leg tips.

Rounding the end of the mountain and descending some switchbacks, the view quickly changes. A wet story is being told here, in a tongue of babble.  Red rocks still, crashed among bare white barked trees, and well washed grasses gripping those rocks that made it to the river, during this chapter.  The smell of animal drifts down a gully, currently dry.

Where it deepens I took off my shoes and waded to my ankles on the soft sandy bank.  The cold cured me of any desire to swim in it today.  I stuck my wool socks back on my wet feet and they warmed up in seconds, the small volume of the droplets a much easier mitochondrial challenge than that of the frigid flow.

Here in the shade on the back side of my afternoon challenge is a valley of ancient conifers, their gray bark peeling and flaking.   These are Ent wizards.  Red bark like raw flesh peeks from beneath the flaking scabs.  Their bodies are swirled violently, a vortex of fiber, tips twisted into wands and staves of magic.  

This one’s bulk lost a battle to insects long ago, but one edge has become a trunk of its own, like a tendon on a neck.  It’s using its former tower as a guide, but becoming gnarled in the process, a heavy contrast with the conical spire of wooden insectorium.  The living branches wrap like arms around an unwilling dance partner.

Realizing the impending sunset I pressed on.  Realizing that I hadn’t looked at a topographical map, I climbed an unexpected mountain.  It was a downhill-only double-black diamond trail. For bikes.  I was going uphill and dodged a few experts.  It would be perilous on a bike, with thousand foot drops punctuating miscalculation or bad luck.   I had to press on after dark, which sped me up because it forced me to stop taking pictures.

Now to rest and recharge both phone and body.

H