Indiana to Illinois. Hit St. Louis and the Gateway to the West.  New Mexico, Texas, and Arizona. It’s a long haul to the promised land.

 

The human mind seeks patterns and I’m amused at the ones mine jigsaws together.  An exit to Butler Avenue. Cameron Motors. Mitchell Insurance. Vaquero Hardware.  The sky is Blue and the rocks along the road are round like Cannon balls.

 

But…while still in Indiana we pass a luxury motor home and I notice ornate lettering along the side – High Chaparral. In St. Louis, the tip of the Arc just visible, I see a large paneled truck, a vanity plate mounted above the official license plate.  High Chaparral. Pulling off the interstate in Winslow, Arizona, the words to an old pop tune jingle through my head and I think there are few corners there I’d want to stand on.  In front of a convenience store there is a pile of oversized tires; one, at least 10 foot across, sits upright, neat white stenciled across the top. High Chaparral.

 

We drive through the rolling hills of Missouri, on to New Mexico. Flat plains ringed by chopped off buttes; rocky outcroppings and dirt a mix of ebony-black, rust-red, and sand. Thinking like a rancher, I notice foliage everywhere. Lots of grass between the scrub. We pass occasional scatterings of cattle – blackface, whiteface. Friday morning, crossing Texas, I saw pure white amongst a mixed herd. Far north for the seed of the great white bull Montoya.

 

Zipping past a hometown rodeo at 75 mph I spy lovely horseflesh, surrounded by attentive men and women. Rich caramel with a snow white mane. Chocolate brown. Dark red. Palomino. Soapy was a palomino. But I am no horsewoman; they could be Adalusian, Morgans, or the bastard sons of Aye-pache war ponies for all I can tell.

 

Thunderclouds boil up in a heartbeat, rain and lightening striking the burgundy red buttes that may be a mile away but seem close enough to touch. How can a land that feels flat as a floor board have these amazing rock formations everywhere you look? We drive dead on into storm; immediately engulfed in rain so thick it is hard to drive. On our right the trees bend in the rain and fog. On our left, bright sunshine lights up distant cliffs a brilliant red.

 

Within five minutes we are out of the rain, the red rock cliffs almost orange where sun hits them. Once in a story I described them as looking like prows of ships plowing through desert sand, and I’m absurdly pleased to see great rusty formations looking for all the world like a gigantic flotilla of squared off cruise ships.

 

Through New Mexico and just into Arizona we enter the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest National Monument. I fire off dozens of shots before a hard storm takes hold. At Newspaper Rock I walk in pouring rain to a rocky outcrop and peer through mounted spyscopes at hundreds of petroglyphs. Carved thickly in massive boulders, there are too many for me to count. The Pima and Apache said they were from the people who came before.

 

At Casa Grande and Montezuma’s Castle we see ancient remains of the Hohokaum, these people who came before. Predating the Pima and Apache, between 700 and 1300 A.D. they developed sophisticated irrigation canals, dug by hand. Engineered many storied dwellings in cliffs and valley floors, in cities supporting up to 5,000 individuals. Like us, they enjoyed ball games, played on a central plaza, and could accurately predict the summer and winter solstice. By the time the first missionaries ventured into the Arizona Territory, all that remained were these mysterious stone dwellings, and the extensive canals.

 

Sunday I wake up with Buck Cannon’s voice in my head. “Tucson is paradise! It’s paradise!”  Some people hear celestial voices; I hear echoes of a middle-aged saddle tramp. Should I stop the car when we see saguaro cactus, make my parents get out and gaze at scenery? Plant my feet, nudge my hat with a thumb and say, “There it is, the country we came over a thousand miles to see.  I’ll tame it if it kills me.”

 

The saguaro cactus is the symbol of Arizona, and driving the countryside around Tucson I can see why. They dot the landscape like quills on a porcupine, too numerous to count. Touring the Saguaro National Park at dusk they create fantastic, ghostly shapes, multiple arms reaching upward, every size and shape crowding the landscape. 

 

The saguaro grows approximately 10 inches in 10 years.  A large one may be 100 years old, and there are documented cases of ones 300 or more years old.  Supported by an inner, woody skeleton, they can weigh as much as 8 tons.  As they age they grow fragile, the base thins and decays; when they succumb to the ravages of time and topple, the ground shakes.  In a cold winter, the arms may snap and break. There are huge stretches where a ranch hand would be hard pressed to find a clear space to camp, free of these behemoths.

 

 Tucson sits in a 500 square mile valley, surrounded by mountains. The plain itself looks dead flat, but you could navigate by the peaks. Far from barren, the desert is full of life – ocotillo, cholla, mesquite, johoba, and a thousand other pieces of flora and fauna adapted to life here. We’ve arrived at the end of a brief rainy season, and the desert is in bloom.  Here’s the five-dollar surprise in this Godforsook wilderness; there is plenty of sand, but also plenty of grass interspersed with the chaparral. Descendants of Big John’s beef still roam the open range – there are regular road signs announcing cattle crossings.

 

At the Arizona-Sonora Desert Museum our Docent leads us through an amazing array of facts.  The mesquite tree yields a high-protein, sweet bean, useful for humans and cattle. Jojoba leaves grow upright to shield themselves from the sun. Barrel cactus can provide moisture if you’re dying of thirst, but the pulp is highly acidic and will begin destroying your inner organs if you don’t consume water with it. Blue’s comment about a sour stomach in ‘Survival’ was authentic.

 

I gain further respect for cast and crew in the brutal 99 degree heat. We siesta and in the afternoon visit San Xavier del Bac. I know now why it’s called the White Dove of the Desert. Sitting alone in the middle of red earth, you can identify it from miles away, glowing white towers and a dome rising up out of the desert.   The mission is lovely, even with half undergoing renovation and hidden underneath scaffolding and plastic, it is awe-inspiring.

 

Standing in the parking lot I scan the imposing edifice. The mission, begun in 1692 and taking over 14 years to complete, dwarfs the landscape. The entranceway is a warm terra-cotta, built on a grand scale and ornate, the rich brown in contrast to the white towers.

 

The church is designed in a traditional cruciform. It would take months to identify and appreciate all the iconic images covered in glittering gold leaf. Bas-relief surrounds columns and scroll-work, statues, lions, saints, angels, lions. Seven domes divide the ceiling, rising 50 feet or more.  This is a working mission and there are pilgrims so we observe quietly and leave.

 

Outside I turn toward the cone-shaped hill. A small sign informs the hillside doesn’t belong to the mission, approach at your own risk. Live lions wouldn’t keep me off the path, and neither does my skeptical mother. We walk up the wide dirt and gravel slope, approaching two lions on pedestals. Worse for wear, one has a hole in his chest, the other’s tail is fractured. Abandoning reason, I think if these are Don Sebastian Montoya’s, they are holding up well considering the years.

 

The path rings the hillside, leading to an iron-barred grotto. A replica in honor of Lourdes. We sit quietly and consider the significance of this appearance, how this small cave so many miles away replicates the scene.

 

 

Images of the Painted Desert and Petrified Forest can be seen at http://www.imagestation.com/album/?id=2120752959

 

 

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