Bear with me, this post rambles. Literally and figuratively . . .

Marcia and I arrived in Arizona to begin our retirement era (we’re still in the go-go phase) just over four months ago. Since that time, we have generally hiked at least five miles every day, beneficiaries of both a benevolent climate and a more-than-ample local trail system. Our daily walks are, for me, personal highlights: we amble, we ramble, we walk, we talk, and we share a deep appreciation for the history of the region we’ve chosen as our current home, loving both its geological and human-historical scaled facets.

On a geological front, we routinely see from our home and hike through a region that’s about 320 million years old, formed deep in the heart of the Carboniferous Era, when much of the modern world’s climate-altering coal and oil beds were laid down. It looks like this, and it’s all around us:

The most marvelous thing about this region, though, is somewhat defined by the fact that you can travel a very short distance (in modern, human scales) and move from ancient landscapes to ones that are in their geological infancy. Case in point: the Sunset Crater region, about a 90-minute drive from our house, and where the youngest prominent landscape features are less than 1,000 years old. That area looks like this:

As interesting as the geological aspects of our new home turf may be, the human-scaled history of our home region is equally fascinating. Near the aforementioned Sunset Crater region, one can visit the Wupatki National Monument, where the ruins of Native American civilizations may be walked and considered, close to the homelands of the modern Navajo and Hopi people. Wupatki is an extraordinary site, featuring vistas like these:

The first photo above shows what was once a three-story urban edifice. The second shows a ceremonial ball court, something of an historical anomaly hereabouts, as such sites are generally associated with Central American or Hohokam sites well south of Wupatki. These particular human relics date from around 1,000 AD, and the local civilizations of that era came and went as the neighboring volcanic eruptions allowed, blessed in some ways by cinders that held moisture in the arid soil, and cursed in other ways by the sulfurous vapors that would have shrouded the area in its most tumultuous geological eras.

The net effect of being regularly, easily confronted with such examples of geological and human history is that we routinely find ourselves discussing time and its scales. I considered some facets of the ways in which we small humans exist and thrive (or not) within the vast time sphere of the world and universe surrounding us when I wrote my Credidero series in 2019, most especially in my articles about Eternity and Mortality. Being confronted daily with deep geological history, and with evidence of the transient nature of human history, often leads to small conversations about big topics, oftentimes while we are out walking the trails and paths that present such evidence of pasts short and long to our senses and our minds. It creates an interesting blend of physical activity (e.g. we have to climb this 1,000-foot face to get a great view of some ancient rocks) and mental activity (e.g. considering why those particular rocks are still standing all these millennia on, when those around them have long since washed away), and that holistic sense of full, deep experience greatly adds to the joys associated with walking and talking around our current home.

A couple of months ago, I wrote an article called Red Is The Color, where I posted the following photo, of my green hiking shoes:

Those green shoes are coated with our region’s signature red dust. The big local rocks decay into red powder over time, and that hard evidence of deep time and deep history sticks to us as we trek through it, on our boots, on our skin, in our hair, in our house. In that prior article, I made reference to a favorite song called “Red” by a favorite artist named Jarboe, though it has occurred to me since that post that I probably could have even better captured the spirit of what I wanted to communicate through another of her songs, called “Panasonic in Red Dirt,” which sounds like this:

I love the red dirt around us. On one plane, it reminds me of the red clay of my father’s native Piedmont region in North Carolina, evoking many fond childhood memories. On another plane, it’s both humbling and heroic to walk through visible dust relics of the magnificent ancient rocks around us, making new memories today. There are many things that I adore about our new home, but I have to say that our daily walks may be the best of the best things hereabouts, for reasons obvious and intangible, good for the body, good for the mind, good for the soul.

I recently spun another favorite song by another favorite band called NoMeansNo, and the lyrics of its final chorus perfectly expressed the way I feel about our daily rambles hereabouts, why they make me feel so very, very good, and how they fit within the belief structure I explored and elucidated in my Credidero series. Here are the most relevant lyrics:

 

Yes, that. Exactly. Getting dusty while walking makes me feel good, in just about every way that I am programmed for pleasure. If that’s not heaven, then I don’t know what might be. With that, I’m off to ramble here (literally, not figuratively), but I leave a copy of that brilliant NoMeansNo song for you to spin below, and I thank them for giving me the title of this particular post, and for so brilliantly laying out the sentiments I wished to express here today, and to live and experience in the days that remain before me: