I always have a feeling as I make my way across the Arizona landscape of just how expansive it is, that the land just goes on in every direction for as far as I can see. At times you drive alongside a train with hundreds of cars on the track, or there are telephone poles straight as an arrow stringing copper lines to horizon’s end.
And then, the mountain ranges that bookend the huge valleys, the kind you are on approach toward for long, almost endless periods of time. The mountains watch over the land with their snow tops teasing the desert below. You catch them in the rear view mirror as the look over your shoulder in passing. Most seem to untouched, except for the faint trail paths that connect peak to peak, where some brave souls have made their way to the top.
I often walk across the passage from desert to foothills, just marveling at the cactus and brush and flowers that appear following a very heavy rainy season. I become aware of being completely alone, but the spell broken by coming across another hiker who dispels this feeling: but I’m glad that they too get to share the beauty of this Arizona environment.
Beneath the ground and within the mountains are evidence of the mineral wealth that once drew so many prospectors here through the past centuries. Abundant copper, silver and gold has been pulled-at, tugged away and thoroughly mined in the ground. But inevitably the many rich veins that coursed through these places were ‘poored’ out until nothing remained other than abandoned holes, so where you need to be careful to avoid and others enclosed by barbed wire warnings. The miners, the families and businesses that accompanied them left for new prospective locations, and the ghost towns and faint trails are all that’s left today.
But there is still richness here because modern day RVers such as myself are seeking their own parcel of land, their own claim to stake with a motorhome or trailer. After being constantly on the road they feel the need to put a stake in the ground and have a home base, a storage location, a destination to head back toward after being on the road for an extended time. One with access to water and not too far from supplies.
But they are careful not to put too big a fence around it, to become to confined by it because the wide-open spaces may call and it will be time to hit the road for the next adventure, the next treasure that’s out there.
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