My legs tire of being tentative with steps. My eyes glaze with looking so closely at the danger lurking in sidewalk ice or trail snow. Eventually one winter morning between the whirls of Christmas/New Year’s holiday events and SuperBowl/Valentine’s Day partying, I wake up starved for planet delicacy. I need rocks, not snow. Time to go south for an afternoon. Or time to add two hours to a Phoenix trip to pause and curl up on warm granite for a nap or step tenderly along water’s edge someplace damp and warm.
You know where, don’t you? You’ve noticed them on your right as you hurtle north on I-17 returning from a Phoenix mission to airport, sports event or shopping. Before you get to Cordes Junction, at Exit 259, the Bloody Basin Road, there’s a tumble of boulders that looks spilled from a giant’s hand like pebbles removed from a pocket before laundry. You’ve probably meant to look more closely, but the interstate’s grip is magnetic at 70 mph. Still, that sign for the Agua Fria National Monument calls out and if you want a pause with good leg stretching, you’d be smart to take the dirt road east and follow your nose for ten minutes. You’ll find a fine place to pause for an hour’s picnic at the least, maybe even enjoy a meditative re-set inside a worn out commute. If the sun has been shining long enough between weather systems, leaning back onto a gritty boulder surface might make you feel like an old cat glad of heat to warm the bones.
Further south, the Agua Fria National Monument protects the slide of water from pocket to pocket between fields of blue boulders at Badger Springs. I was taken there when I was in high school and it is one of my very favorite walks, a place I save to show to the people I like best.
Even in her eighties, my mother could be persuaded to meet her northern Arizona daughter for a Sunday walk. I’d call her on a winter day and she’d drive 40 miles north from Phoenix and I’d roll downhill a couple of hours to meet her at Exit 256, the Badger Springs Road. There she’d park her Honda Accord in a broad dirt pullout east of I-17, and then she’d climb into my little truck and we’d bump five minutes through a maze of dirt roads to get a little closer to a side canyon of the Agua Fria River. With daypacks and hats we’d walk thirty or forty minutes down a wash to running water, get our feet wet crossing the stream and find a bit of willow shade and sand where she could sit with her horse racing detective story and thermos of tea while I explored through a parade of tumbling blue granite to inspect a swimming hole or two. I’ve taken a handful of friends to Badger Springs over the years to explore upstream and down with moonlight or spring run off or winter stillness. In January it is a walk perfectly suited to quiet conversation and deep listening to the trickle of water sound chuckling out of sand into pockets of granite, and bird flutter, and the hush of cloud shadow against cliff face.
I had worried that the change in status to a national monument in 2000 might change the look of a place I’ve adored for so long. Dressed it up somehow. Or caused it to be over run with people, but last Sunday I found it still sparkling with a delicious mix of mid day warmth and quiet. Now the maze of dirt roads has been cleaned up and signs direct you to an outhouse and trailhead, even a trail register with good maps for free. We found five vehicles parked, including a horse trailer. A couple on horseback passed us and said what a treat for their animals to walk to grass and water, a welcome break on a long road trip. Further along we met a family who had pushed a stroller to picnic with a little tent set up to shade a baby. Two couples with dogs on leashes were coming out as we strolled in. Not a place I’d take a dog, however: too many burrs in the bushes at exactly dog ear height.
My friend and I were both wearing boots we didn’t want to get soaked, but though there was recent rainfall collected into a flow along the wash, we found enough path to walk with dry feet. At the confluence of the drainage with the Agua Fria we were content to look at petroglyphs and the reflection of cliff face, saguaro and sky in water. Curves of white clouds upstream looked like echoes of pale boulder shapes: I could have sat with the sound and color of it for hours. But sometimes it is just right to walk in and walk out with Buddha steps as a Sunday prayer. Perfect to do the two hour thing instead of the all day trek. Most excellent to stretch winter wary knees through a stroll and sit on a rock to gather quiet into one’s fanny pack, like orange peels collected from a lunch pause, color inhaled, refreshment guaranteed.
