Recently I had dinner with a woman who arrived in Flagstaff on foot from Mexico. Passersby on Aspen who peered into the window of Mountain Oasis could hardly guess that gal savoring forkfuls of Greek salad had been hungering for feta cheese for more than 30 miles as she goosed herself along the Arizona Trail to get to Flagstaff ahead of a snowfall.
We’d never met before, though we’ve both contributed to a ranger round-robin letter that has spiraled through Canyonlands, Alaska and assorted Arizona and Colorado fire lookouts for years. I knew this woman from her fine writing from duty stations, but how lucky to finally meet her as she paused inside weeks of trail walking. She mentioned how a dear friend of mine across the state managed to find a knee brace for her at just the right time. She described the old fellows who gave her elaborate warnings about how to stay safe. I chewed on a fine chunk of salmon, but what I feasted on was inspiration. Hearing Heidi’s stories from the Arizona Trail made me want to walk for months in one direction, it’s true, and it also made me want to move through my life with less stuff.
If you’ve lived out of your backpack for days or a rocket box on the river you know it helps to stay light. If you’ve thrown your Rick Steves-designed luggage into an overhead Amtrak rack you know less is more. If you’ve lived in the same rooms for three years or 20 you have peered into your closet and sighed trying to remember just what is in that buried box, and how come you own six cowboy shirts with snap buttons, and what is that dress still doing there and, oh my, that sweater was supposed to exit with … oh well. (Pause to inhale aroma of that sweater.) Maybe that’s why we travelers are travelers: we want to get away from our closets; we long to move through our life without our accumulation of things and memories.
Every day since Heidi left I’ve gone walking without my cell phone, without my wallet, and without a watch. I don’t walk all day, because I’m not on the 800-plus miles of the Arizona Trail. I have Things to Do: a desk to tend and income-producing behavior to manage. But it’s spring in Arizona and so I press my face against the outdoors; I note unusual clouds, speculate on the dryness of pine needles, shift layers of windbreaker and polypro to meet sun and chill. I’m getting my ankles and knees ready for a summer season with the uneven ground at the lookout tower where I’ll work, and I’m also letting myself pretend to be walking, and walking in one direction in my life which makes me wonder, “What would I like to leave behind and how would that serve me?”
Instead of meeting a long, long trail, I count the tulips along Beaver Street to Macy’s as I walk to the Friends Meeting House. Other days I hike as far as I can up into the woods for an hour, seeing how much further I get each morning. Almost daily I pause to sit on the same outcropping of knobby rock where I can see Mormon Mountain, and Woody, and A-1 and Wing. I peer down at a kestrel fluttering over curved oak treetops. Four ravens shout news to me in passing. When my breathing slows I can almost hear the steady stepping of a long-distance hiker hundreds of miles away. I imagine her shadow gracing yellow grass. I think of her passing the peaks, strolling out across the Babbitt Ranches where junipers perfume one’s dreaming and huffing up into the pines of the South Rim at the Grand Canyon. And then she crosses that canyon and walks more miles all the way to Utah.
Meanwhile, I peer at my four filing cabinets and wonder where to start with pitching out the past. And she walks on. I finger the books on a dozen bookshelves and make a box to take to Bookmans and another to donate to the library. She sets up a simple camp and takes it down again and puts it on her back. I put winter clothing into storage as a dare to May to snow. I make myself use up the food from the backs of the shelves in the kitchen. I fidget inside four walls, and she walks.
