by 
I was blissfully unaware there was a problem. I stopped my automobile to photograph a stand of wildflowers beside the road. It was a cluster of small white flowers with a forest of giant sunflowers towering above them. My camera began to experience some sort of electronic malfunction. Turned out my camera was doomed. I realized that I would be forced to spend the entire camping trip without a camera. Using some selective framing, the wildflowers would have made a nice photograph but I suppose you will just have to take my word for it.
Tacoma, Dakota, Winnebago, the names of defeated Native American nations adorn our recreational vehicles as we roll across the wilderness we stole from them. I drive my Cherokee across the Rim Road, part of the General Crook Trail, traveling cautiously as the road winds across the ceiling of Arizona with thick forest on one side and an eight hundred foot precipice off the other side. It is a beautiful and dangerous road.
General Crook led the last and most effective war against the Apache. He made two military innovations. The first was he replaced horses with mules.. The mules were much slower than horses but were much more surefooted in this steep and rugged terrain. The second innovation was using Apache scouts to hunt the Apache. The athletic prowess of Apache warriors in this landscape was legendary. From the center of Arizona they were said to be able to run six hundred miles, reaching the ocean in only two and a half days – running on their tiptoes to avoid leaving footprints. Crook correctly believed that only an Apache could track another Apache across this rugged countryside. The Apaches believed that great warriors in this life came back as bears in the next.
My Cherokee keeps rolling across the ceiling of Arizona, following the twisting road. The precipice provides a spellbinding view but the precarious road forces me to keep my attention on my driving. Normally I would stop the car for a moment and take photographs of the magnificent vistas but not today. The road rolls for fifty four miles which is a long way when you are forced to drive fifteen miles an hour. Signs proclaim turns for historic places, sheep crossings, old cabins, historic schoolhouses, and the beginnings of a train tunnel. About a century ago somebody blasted about hundred and fifty feet of tunnel into solid granite before someone else decided there might be a better way to move mining ore besides trying to tunnel through an entire mountain range. I find myself reluctant to stop, without any photos to post on social media, did it really happen?
There are many brown forest service signs along the road and the biggest of them all point towards Knoll Lake, so I head there. Knoll Lake is gorgeous. Granite boulders line a steep and narrow chasm. I walk along the shore and climb onto the middle of the dam. Here is where I would stand if my camera was working. I turn my imaginary camera on its side, stretching the canyon lake to make it appear longer and still capture the dramatic monsoon clouds flying across the afternoon sky. It would have made a nice photograph.
I walk along the shore till I find a comfortable rock and eat my lunch. Blue herons work the shallow water across the opposite shore. If I had my camera I could zoom in and get some great shots but then again I already have lots of good heron pictures. An osprey flies low, from one tree to another. A moment I never would have been quick enough to capture with a camera. Then I spy another non photogenic moment. Cliff swallows swoop and soar, just above the lake. They cruise in random zig zag patterns, twisting and turning through the sky before sometimes diving into the water with a tiny splash. They are hunting insects and the longer I watch them the more convinced I become that swallows are earth’s most acrobatic animals.
I camp on the edge of the rim. I erect the tent only a few yards from the precipice. The view is tremendous. These would have been easy photographs, standing atop the ceiling of Arizona, with a vista of magnificent mountains stretching out before me and all those peaks I see are lower than where I am standing. Dramatic clouds hang in the sky late and I suspect it will be a spectacular sunset.
I place a chair on the very edge of the rim and read. I find reading outdoors relaxes me like nothing else. I look up occasionally to watch the light slowly change, shafts of sunlight shifting as the clouds float past. I think of my forest service friend high atop his fire tower. He tells me stories about watching bobcats, bears, and mother deer hiding their fawns in the tall grass as he watched from above. There was one time, an osprey flew by with a bass in his talons at eye level with my friend in his perch atop the tower. The best thing about sitting in the fire tower is the gradual dance of light as it passes slowly across the landscape. He says “You do not notice being alone so much when the beauty moves you to silence.”
Hs fire tower is located atop Heliograph Peak in the Pinal Mountains. Those mountains were named by Spanish explorers who noted that the Apache gathered pine nuts here. The peak was named Heliograph Peak because General Crook established a heliograph station here, soldiers communicating from peak to peak by flashing mirrors.
The sunset is spectacular. The clouds quickly fill with gold until a crimson red glows from the heart of the thick clouds. Too bad I do not have a camera. The ridge immediately to the west is just a little higher. As the sunset slowly grows more spectacular, I hike the few hundred yards to the next finger of precipice, just in time to see the clouds shift from dark red to purple. It is so stunningly beautiful that my heart races at the sight of it.
Then I see the bear. A black bear climbs up the last stretch of granite precipice towards the rim. A large male scales up the cliff, scrambling up the granite walls, muscles rolling across his massive shoulders as he climbs. He is a large bear and must have been a fierce Apache warrior in a previous life. He reaches the rim and strolls across the grass only about two hundred yards away from where I am standing. The bear seems nonchalant until he realizes I am there and rises up on two legs, sniffing. The bear smells the air while staring straight at me.
The bear moves so he is in line with a tree. The furry spruce hides him from my line of sight. I cannot see the bear even though he is only a hundred yards away. Is he coming towards me, using the tree as a shield? Afraid to move, afraid to stand still, I take a step to the side and look around the tree. The bear does the same thing at exactly the same moment.
We both crane our necks to the side, taking awkward glances towards each other. The bear rises up on his hind legs and takes another sniff. I am too scared to do much of anything so whatever happens next is up to the bear. The bear drops back down to all fours and starts back down the eight hundred foot precipice. It was a glorious moment and you will just have to take my word for it because I have no photo to prove it.
Gary Every is an award winning author who has won consecutive Arizona Newspaper Awards for best lifestyle feature for pieces “The Apache Naichee Ceremony” and “Losing Geronimo’s Language”. The best of the first decade of his newspaper columns for The Oracle newspaper were compiled by Ellie Mattausch into a book titled Shadow of the OhshaD. Mr. Every has also been a four time finalist for the Rhysling Award for years best science fiction poetry. Mr. Every is the author of ten books and his books such as Shadow of the Ohshad or the steampunk thriller The Saint and The Robot are available either through Amazon or www.garyevery.com.
by by