Thursday, August 27th, 2026: Arts, Music & Dance.
Cattle and Cane
In 1983, a young Australian band called The Go-Betweens released a strange song about a familiar experience – the relentlessness of aging, the loss of childhood’s wonder and potential, the melancholy of memory. Despite record company backing and a professional-quality music video, The Go-Betweens’ new song was largely ignored. Hence, it didn’t reach the U.S., where at the time, I was in between versions of my own decade-long musical project, Terra Incognita. But “Cattle and Cane” would’ve aligned perfectly with what I was working on – translating the rhythmic discoveries of the original Terra Incognita into songs.
I met Katie, my songwriting partner, the following year. And we began setting the lyrics we’d both written – also evoking our rural childhoods – to music, using what I’d discovered about rhythm in Terra Incognita. We would’ve loved what The Go-Betweens achieved – lyrics evoking childhood and loss, propelled and elevated by their music to an ecstatic state, akin to the spiritual trance achieved in Sufi music and dance. But I didn’t hear the song until 2021, long after I’d lost touch with Katie. Two years later, she died.
Lyrics evoking childhood and loss are common in popular music, cattle and cane are both exotic species introduced to Australia by British colonists, and the landscape they’ve created is part of the global devastation caused by imperialism and capitalism. What makes “Cattle and Cane” miraculous is its exceptionally rare rhythmic structure, with verse phrases of eleven eighth-note beats alternating with chorus phrases using the more conventional eight beats per phrase. Like Terra Incognita, The Go-Betweens never set out to compose a song in exotic rhythms – it just happened that way – a musical miracle.
And eighteen years after it was released and ignored, “Cattle and Cane” was voted one of the top 30 Australian songs of all time.
All colonial time, that is.
Notes, Beats, Bars, and Time Signatures
In the reductive, mechanistic European tradition, the building blocks of music are rhythm, melody, and harmony. Rhythm is repetition, allowing our bodies to move in time with the music, in intervals that the European tradition calls “bars”, each containing a number of beats. The frequency or speed of those beats determines whether they’re called full notes, half notes, quarter notes, eighth notes, sixteenth notes. What we think of as a musical phrase can consist of one or more bars. And the number of beats per bar, combined with the kind of beats they are, is referred to as the “time signature”.
Over the centuries, European music came to prioritize melody over rhythm, simplifying the time signatures used in most compositions to two: the standard 4/4 time signature, with four quarter notes per bar, and the less common 3/4 waltz, with three quarter notes per bar.
Listen to your favorite songs, and count the repeating beats by tapping the fingers of one hand on your leg, or a table top. A slow, steady beat is in quarter notes – with four beats per bar written as 4/4. A faster beat is in eighth notes – typically 4/8 or 8/8. Try it while listening to the songs and compositions below – if your fingers find the rhythm, does it bring a smile to your face?
With its focus on melody and harmony, European music neglected the fundamental importance of rhythm, resulting in the now-common spectacle of a concert hall full of seated, immobile listeners. The more ancient traditions of African music make up for that, with their celebration of polyrhythm, the layering of what Europeans would call multiple time signatures, culminating in the incredibly complex and sophisticated music of the rain forest pygmies.
Exotic Time Signatures
Most of our favorite songs are in 4/4 time. Songs in exotic time signatures are extremely rare – I notice and gravitate toward them, but after a lifetime of collecting and creating, they still represent only 0.6 percent of my digital music library – less than 6 out of every 1,000 tracks.
Exotic time signatures are completely absent from some genres, like country music or disco. But they show up regularly in jazz, which became more competitive and cerebral in the postwar era. Listeners born in the 1940s or 1950s will likely remember what must be the world’s most popular tune featuring an exotic time signature – Dave Brubeck’s 1959 classic “Take Five”, a joyous rarity in 5/8 time, with five eighth notes per bar:
Creating Exotic Rhythms
Jazz splintered throughout the 1960s, resulting in new sub-genres in the 1970s, like jazz-rock fusion and Ornette Coleman’s harmolodics. The jazz world demands formal training, chart reading, and instrumental proficiency, and in the late 1970s I briefly worked with a guitarist whose jazz-rock fusion band ran exotic rhythms into the ground. All their songs were written in odd time signatures, and they never performed for an audience – they just sat in the garage hunched over, concentrating on reading the dense charts, determined to meet the challenge.
They were apparently ahead of their time – a new genre called “math rock” emerged in the 1990s and has continued to grow, flaunting exotic time signatures, sometimes in sequence to build evolving compositions. As I noted above, the reductive European interpretation of music is fundamentally mathematical, so it can easily yield mathematical complexity.
But you don’t need training or virtuosity to make or enjoy exotic rhythms. Even amateurs love exotic time signatures because they’re a challenge to learn and intoxicating to sustain. My 1980s San Francisco band, Terra Incognita, began as a random collection of passionate amateurs. And without knowing or planning it, we became a proto-math rock project. During our first month jamming together, we spontaneously improvised a “Take Five” alternative, a country-funk tune in 3/4 time, and one in the really challenging 7/8 time signature, which evolved into my epic, tectonic love song “Seven Continents”:
There are so many ways to write a song! “Seven Continents” began in 1981 as a guitar riff in a jam session. We experimented with it throughout the next year, layering percussion, bass, and fiddle, sometimes in polyrhythm. When I met Katie in 1984, I began commuting between San Francisco and her home in Los Angeles. At night, in my sleeping loft under the massive rafters of our San Francisco loft, using a tiny battery-powered Casio keyboard, I started with the old guitar riff, and wrote lyrics about our long-distance affair, laboriously crafting melodies to fit the rhythm.
But the new love song included below, “A Night To Remember” (shared a few months ago on the six-song EP Miles We’ll Never See Again) emerged quickly and spontaneously. Writing lines on note paper, I strummed my guitar in a rhythm that matched the lyrical phrases, and discovered after the fact that it was in 5/8 time. Like “Cattle and Cane”, it was an organic miracle, and had nothing to do with math.
Give Them a Chance
Music enhances our lives in so many different ways, and exotic rhythms can help with most of them. The math of “time signatures” may sound daunting to our minds, but rhythms appeal directly to our bodies, and some unusual time signatures can actually be good for relaxing, meditating, or daydreaming. Speed them up a little, and as “Cattle and Cane” proved, they can energize and motivate us, for working or dancing. Both our minds and our bodies thrive when facing a challenge – that’s inspired musicians from Dave Brubeck in 1959 to Leep in 2024. And finally, changes in rhythm can take us on a musical journey, distracting us from our worries, surprising us and making us wonder what’s next, as shown at the end of this Dispatch.
You never really know whether you like something until you’ve had a chance to live with it and learn from it. I add music to my library if something about it interests or challenges me at first listen. I download it, add it to playlists, and only after weeks of listening do I begin to fully appreciate it. As The Go-Betweens learned with “Cattle and Cane”, it can take years – or even decades – for listeners to recognize your achievement.
Chilling Out
Brazilian popular music is notorious for complex arrangements in odd time signatures – I can only take it in small doses. But Marinero’s Brazilian-inspired “love song to San Francisco” in 7/8 time, from 2021, was catchy enough on first listen that I downloaded it, and it stood the test of time:
In high school during the late 1960s, I stumbled upon two psychedelic albums by quirky British bluesman John Mayall. I became obsessed with them, and unlike most music of the 1960s they endured on my playlists to this day. But it wasn’t until recently that I discovered this trippy but technically proficient jazz composition in 6/8, which was apparently only recorded live, in 1969:
British band The Stranglers approached punk rock as a pub band from the 1970s. But in 1981, frustrated by their plebeian image, they released this elegant novelty, and it became a minor pop hit. It begins with an intro phrase of two bars in 3/8 and one bar in 7/8, before settling into 6/8 time:
When I began working with Katie Rauh in 1984, I brought my experience with odd time signatures from the early Terra Incognita, but she was a musical novice. Somehow, together, we spontaneously translated her lyrics for “Plastic Snow” into the extremely unusual sequence of verses in 4/4 time and choruses in 3/4 time, and it clicked perfectly:
Motivating
In the late 1990s, Brazilian electronic composer Amon Tobin offered his own energizing, mesmerizing 5/8 alternative to Brubeck’s “Take Five”:
Holy Wire could only be from Brooklyn – a bearded white hipster with a tremulous voice and academic diction. But my attention was caught by how he establishes the beat with a 5/8 synth riff in this track from 2024, then overlays his vocal phrasing polyrhythmically in 8/8 time. And then he changes it up and cries out in pain, and I can overlook the cliches:
Like Stan Getz, Cal Tjader was a pioneer in the fusion of jazz with international music. This hypnotic Middle-Eastern-influenced composition from 1963 uses the 6/8 time signature:
And finally, here’s my recent, upbeat ode to fleeting love, my answer to Brubeck’s “Take Five”, in 5/8 time:
Embracing the Challenge
Another in the 6/8 time signature, released in 1998 by the British indie band Snowpony. I heard and downloaded this just before COVID and my house fire:
Jah Wobble was bassist for John Lydon’s groundbreaking post-punk act Public Image Limited in the late 1970s. Wobble followed that up with various international music collaborations, the most recent with his son, yielding this seductive groove in 7/8 time released just last year:
Stereolab was one of those emerging 1990s electronic bands that I was too stressed out to pay attention to at the time. And now, they’re mostly too cerebral for me. But they did produce some catchy grooves and hooks – the intro for this alternates between 10/8 time and 6/8 time, with the main theme settling into 10/8:
This American indie band formed in Philadelphia in 2014 – my list is trending contemporary. This piece from 2018, somehow both mathematical and dreamy, uses perhaps the weirdest time signature yet, 11/4:
Turns out math rock has cross-fertilized Emo – here’s an Emo song in 12/8 time, featuring a singing drummer, released in 2024 by this young trio from Berlin:
Making a Journey
During the first year in our San Francisco loft, my roommate and “adopted sister” Tiare started dating Mark Isham, trumpet player in pianist Art Lande’s jazz fusion band Rubisa Patrol. I met the band, and Isham dropped in on one of our big loft parties, but within the year he was off touring with Van Morrison, and eventually became one of the most successful soundtrack composers in Hollywood. This track from Rubisa Patrol’s 1977 album features the rare 9/8 time signature:
My last offering is the climax of a 2010 album by the math rock band Rooftops, from Bellingham, Washington. It’s truly an epic composition, evolving dramatically between time signatures, from 10/8 to 6/8, to 4/4, to 18/8, to 8/8, and finally to 6/8:
Monday, August 24th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Animals, Mogollon Rim, Nature, Plants, Regions, Road Trips.
Stress and trauma may have made me more heat-sensitive, but this feels like the hottest summer yet. I can only work mornings – by afternoon my workspace is too hot, it’s too humid for the swamp cooler, and I can’t work on music with a fan blowing. The only practical solution requires a major investment, and for various reasons, the timing is bad and I can’t commit. So throughout each week, I get more and more uncomfortable and frustrated, until by Sunday I’m desperate for another getaway to higher elevations.
After last Sunday’s takeover by birders, I was hoping my next attempt at solitude would succeed. Today’s destination is called a mesa because much of it is fairly level, but it’s really more like a gently sloping plateau sprawling down from the crest of a small mountain range.
The range, topping out at 9,000 feet, is densely forested, and has mostly escaped recent wildfires. It’s become one of my favorites because it’s so remote, little-known, and seldom-visited. You can’t see the central part of the range from any highway, the forest blocks views outward, and there are no campgrounds or any other features that would attract recreationists.
The highway crosses the range in an 8,000-foot pass, but the turnoff onto the crest road is easy to miss and appears just to lead to a fire lookout. I could hardly have designed it better myself, to keep out the crowds.
The crest road is steep, rocky, and often deeply eroded, but another barrier is weather. I’ve learned never to go there in the windy season or when storms are forecast, because there will always be blowdown blocking the road in multiple places.
The road skirts the mesa at 8,600 feet, and from there, the mesa spreads out and gently steps down to its farthest edge at 7,800 feet. Turning off onto the mesa road, a rough dirt track which was flooded near the junction, I immediately spotted a pickup truck with popup campershell and a freestanding tent, back in the big clearing where I’ve seen lone campers once or twice before. Thankfully, you need a pickup or off-road vehicle to get up the crest road – RVs and camping trailers can’t handle it. Their camp seemed vacant, and they clearly hadn’t brought a UTV, so I assumed they were off walking somewhere, either down the network of meandering 2-tracks or bushwhacking through the parklike forest.
I drove a few hundred yards farther, to a side trail that bumps down over embedded boulders into the basin below the big dammed meadow. There are a couple of fire rings here, but I found no sign of recent visitors as I backed into shade between a couple of spreading oaks. With a high of 91 degrees at home, I expected temps here in the 70s. It was blissfully mild, but what struck me most powerfully was a smell in the air – sweet and slightly tangy, like vanilla. Here in the forest there were only a few tiny, widely scattered annuals blooming, so I sniffed the bark of a nearby ponderosa, and found that they were giving off the perfume which pervaded the entire area. I’d never noticed that before – it was barely believable!
I’d been wondering if the big meadow would hold any water, and I could already hear croaking from far away. A chorus somewhere out in the middle of the meadow, then an answering chorus closer, behind the low earthen dam. Walking over through the big trees, I spotted a shallow pool no more than 20 feet wide, and next to the dam, a deeper one. I ate a snack for lunch, then carried my chair and a book to a spot in the shade where I could watch the entire meadow, while breathing in the seductive fragrance of ponderosa bark. I couldn’t see or hear anything from the distant party of campers, and the only sounds were from birds, and occasional waves of wind through the canopy, 80 t0 100 feet above.
The frogs in the ponds were quiet for long intervals, then suddenly started up again. I learned later that they’re Arizona treefrogs, the state’s official amphibian. Scientists only recently changed their genus, and many online publications haven’t caught up yet, resulting in a bit of confusion.
I wondered where they came from, to end up in these ephemeral pools high on the mountain, miles from any perennial stream. And where they go when the pools dry up. All I could find online is that they’re “dormant” during dry seasons.
I had planned to drive farther up the highway for a midafternoon burger before heading home, but I was really reluctant to leave this spot. Going easy on my foot, I followed a barely visible 2-track trail south into the forest. I didn’t have a detailed map and wondered where it went. All throughout the forest were pines and firs wearing rings of orange paint about six feet off the ground.
After a little over a quarter of a mile, I reached the end of the trail in a small clearing anchored by three big, old stumps. I finally realized that the 2-tracks forming a maze across this mesa are logging roads. A website associated with a nearby national forest says the orange paint designates trees that are not to be logged, which was a relief, because they must’ve painted tens of thousands of trees along this crest alone.
Of course, that makes me wonder what blue paint means – I see that much more often in our regional forests.
Two hours of peace beside that meadow had made me sluggish, and I had to force myself to drive farther up the highway, only to be served a mediocre burger – one more reason to avoid that alpine village of Mormon Trump-supporters. From there, it was a long drive home, especially on the twisty stretches where I ended up trapped between pickups towing UTV trailers and city drivers pretending to be racers. I may have to rethink this weekend getaway thing.
Monday, August 17th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Regions, Road Trips, Sky Islands.
On one of the terrestrial radio stations I listen to throughout the week, there’s a program of movie and TV soundtrack music, hosted by a guy who sounds like an elementary school teacher. A regular feature of his program is called “Cool Secret Places”, in which he introduces thousands of listeners to the kinds of places a few of us have discovered, and hope no one else will, because their value lies in being uncrowded. I groan every time I hear it, with my only relief being that all these places are in my old stomping grounds, hundreds of miles from my current home.
This is one of the countless ways in which technology degrades our lives and habitats. Those of us who explore the world, gain cool secret places because we stumble upon them accidentally, not because we’ve heard about them on the radio – or on social media. The effort we make to discover them is part of what makes them cool and keeps them secret.
A couple of months ago I told a friend that my life has become like fighting the Hydra – the many-headed serpent from Ancient Greek mythology. Whenever the hero cut off a head, two grew back to replace it. My problems had become so overwhelming that I could no longer step back and get perspective, I could no longer identify priorities, and I kept making obvious mistakes and overlooking obvious solutions.
One of those was an obvious treatment for my foot inflammation – rest. I couldn’t imagine my life without hiking, so I had kept telling myself rest meant shorter hikes. No, Max – rest means NO HIKES.
So, for the umpteenth time in the past two years, here I am doing road trips to nature, in place of hikes.
Today I would take a slightly different route to the abandoned campground in the sky, where I planned to have a snack and enjoy a few hours of solitude, before driving down to the cafe for a midafternoon main meal, then returning home in late afternoon/early evening.
Today’s slightly different route involved a stretch of backcountry road through a remote rural settlement I’d been curious about and gotten close to a couple of times, but never actually seen.
This may be considered one of those “cool secret places”, but with caveats. First, like many areas in my region where people have chosen to build and live, the access roads involve creek crossings that flood seasonally and wash out catastrophically once or more per decade, leaving you isolated for days at a time and dependent on the county’s heavy equipment crews.
Second, it’s in habitat that has evolved with wildfire and will burn at least once per generation. This settlement was evacuated during the last big wildfire, and only saved via labor-intensive “structure protection” by fire crews. So if you build and live there, you’re totally dependent on the tax dollars of the rest of us and the life-risking labor of dozens of young strangers. Which in my opinion is egregiously irresponsible.
Despite all that, when I finally saw this place, I understood the name they’ve given it, and I was encouraged to see that the homes along the road were typical working-class retreats – not the kind of architect-designed monstrosities you find in places with more reliable access.
The settlement lies in a long, narrow canyon, and the canyon road was a little gnarlier than I expected, which was fun. Eventually, it joins the road to the crest of the range, where I deflated my tires to handle the rocks. I passed two or three other vehicles on the way up, all city SUVs, which is about normal for midday on Sunday.
I reached the spectacular crest, climbed to the side road to the abandoned campground, crossed over to the west side, and began descending into the lush old growth forest of the little bowl, where it lies nestled below cliffs and talus slopes. I soon came to a broken-up tree trunk mostly blocking the road. It was only about five inches thick, and I stopped and easily cleared everything off. I assumed this was a sign that no one had driven here today, and I would be alone in the rolling, parklike forest below.
But lower down, I got my first glimpse of the clearing at the foot of the meadow, and saw a couple of vehicles parked. Driving between them, I saw another farther in. I began to drive a spur trail across the drainage point of the meadow and found it was flooded for 60 feet or so, so I stopped and got out. Just then, an older woman appeared from the uphill side. I could see yet another city SUV, parked at one of the abandoned campsites in the forest beyond. What the hell was going on?
I was hesitant to drive that far through saturated mud, so I backed up to the first clearing, passed the parked SUVs, and started down toward the old campground. This forest track descends over rock ledges that will stop most low-clearance vehicles. But around a bend, I encountered a small Japanese sedan that had somehow made it that far, and saw yet more people on foot ahead. Jesus Christ!
I continued down a stretch where the road definitely needs high clearance, glimpsing a crowd milling below around campsites that were destroyed by deadfall after the 2011 wildfire. At the bottom, two women about my age approached, and I stopped to ask them what was going on.
“It’s all birders!” they said. “The word got out that a tufted flycatcher was seen here for the first time, up from Mexico.”
“I’ve been here many times, and this is the first time I’ve seen anyone else,” I said, sighing and shaking my head. “I guess I’ll just try to find a place away from the crowd.”
None of the birders had brought a vehicle capable of reaching the lower campsites, so I easily found a spot to park just opposite the only surviving trailhead – which I had hiked only a few months ago. The two women caught up with me, and I had a long, friendly conversation with one while the other started down the trail toward the GPS location where the rare bird had been spotted. They were from a retirement community west of here, on the Mexican border next to an Army base. As we talked, small parties of birders kept walking past, to and from the low rise where the forest track ends, with a partial view west.
The friendly lady sympathized with my shock at seeing a crowd here. “I’m not a serious birder like my friend,” she said. “I’m interested in everything in nature. But at least these folks are here for a benign purpose.” I was not so sure – the compulsion to see a bird that’s already been recorded seems to have little conservation value.
She mentioned encountering a guy who maintains motion-sensor cameras in the mountains along the border, and has recorded two male jaguars that are now isolated due to Trump’s wall, and will never mate with females in Mexico. She said the Border Patrol hates the wall and considers it an insult to their work.
I ate my snacks, read my book, and between regular influxes of birders, took short walks around the edge of the old campground. Thunder boomed sporadically from a dark cloud mass over the crest, a mile or two south. A pair of undersize whitetail does foraged back and forth around me, at one point approaching within a couple dozen feet, their prominent ribs and disregard of humans making me wonder if they were diseased. There were definitely a lot of birds out. A woodpecker worked high in a tall, dying pine just west of me for so long I lost awareness of it.
A convoy of three side-by-sides passed, driven by old geezers. They’d obviously parked their giant RVs in a campground at the base of the mountains and were on a grand tour. They drove out to the viewpoint on the western rise, returning a half hour later.
A late-model Jeep Gladiator – the 4-door pickup – was parked at one of the old campsites on a slope opposite me, and after a while I realized they were speaking Spanish. Paying more attention, I discovered it was two young women, so they had to be on vacation from Mexico. With all the uproar about ICE, deportation, and the Wall, few Americans are aware that the Southwestern U.S. remains a popular vacation destination for Mexicans – after all, many of them have family and friends here. And in my experience, Latinos are avid campers, hunters, and fishermen – at least as outdoorsy as Anglos.
I spent over three hours in the beautiful old-growth forest of that lush basin below the cliffs, and those young women were industriously packing up their campsite for most of that time. I noticed one of them had a black ponytail swinging past her butt, reminding me of the great love of my life, whose dark hair reached her waist – my only girlfriend with hair that long. Mamaw, my dad’s mother, talked nostalgically of hair that reached her waist, worn mostly in elaborate braids, when she met Papaw in the 1920s. It’s definitely a turn-on, and an asset.
When the girls drove out, I saw they’d had to drive over the concrete foundation of one of the original Boy Scout cabins – since the campground is abandoned and interspersed with deadfall, there’s no longer direct vehicle access to many campsites.
The last birder I saw before I left was a little old guy who spent a half hour circling my vehicle, at a discreet distance off in the woods, looking up and occasionally giving me a furtive glance, creeping me out. He obviously saw me as an inconvenient obstacle, a vibe I’ve had from birders before.
That got me thinking about this whole flycatcher thing. It had started when someone with bird knowledge was hiking on that little-used trail, noticed and identified the rare bird, and captured its location on his phone. Like my thoughtless radio host, the hiker then shared the GPS coordinates with thousands on email lists and other forms of social media, and that addictive technology had brought dozens of people with selfish motives, from distant cities, to flood this remote, mostly secret and abandoned place.
It’s significant that on the way in, I had stopped to move those logs off the road for the convenience and safety of those who came after me – but none of the birders thought to do that – they’d just swerved into the ditch to get around them. And there were more arriving as I left. Who knows how many more people, with less honorable motives, will now learn about this special place?
That raises the question of how the Mexican girls in the Jeep found it – especially considering that I’ve never seen anyone camping here before. I can’t answer that, but I’d love to hear the story…
After more than three hours, I drove out, and on the way up the slope of the bowl, I glimpsed something strange through the forest, a hundred yards off the road. It sparked a vague memory from my superficial reading about this place, so I pulled over at a clearing halfway up, and began walking through the forest, over and around numerous deadfall logs.
What I came to was this bizarre structure – isolated in the forest, with no road or trail leading to it. Obviously designed with some purpose in mind – but what? Some long-obscure ceremony or ritual? Hard to imagine it ever being used, but if not, why did they haul all that lumber, those asphalt shingles, those bags of cement and sand, the water, and the tools? Roofing that doesn’t biodegrade, all abandoned as a monument to some dude who died elsewhere, far away. The whole bizarre little structure, intended in service of “God and Truth”, seems like the product of beings who were mentally deranged and/or deficient – and we have the Kiwanis Club to thank.
So I drove down the mountain and feasted in the cafe. I was surprised to eat alone – apparently the birders came from the west and returned down the opposite side of the range.
Most of my hikes involve long drives on mostly-empty roads past intriguing mountain ranges. And because of the low traffic, my eyes and mind can wander, speculating about future hikes.
Friday, August 7th, 2026: 2026 Trips, Baldy, Hikes, Mogollon Rim, Regions, Road Trips, Southeast Arizona, Squirrel, Whites.
Volcanic Puzzle
In July, the monsoon teased us with a week of good rain, then abandoned us. My house became so hot and humid I was sweating in my office well before noon. Fan noise made it impossible to work on music.
I found a cheap room in the high mountains of Arizona. I’d booked four nights, so I had three full days. The nights were cool, the days were blissfully mild, and it rained every day.
On my first full day I went for a hike nearby, through mature mixed-conifer forest up the rolling volcanic plateau. Within a couple hundred yards of the trailhead I encountered an older couple returning 20-30 feet off the trail on opposite sides, collecting trash. I’ve often remarked at how much trash Arizona hikers leave, and their bags were nearly full. In a sour mood, they barely responded to my greetings.
I met one other hiker, a friendly woman much older than me. Walking through patches of sun and shade, I began seeing aspens among the tall pines and firs, then noticed a red plastic bag half-hidden behind a trailside boulder. It was a bag of dog shit. Who would bag their dog’s feces, then hide it behind a boulder instead of carrying it out? Probably the same “animal lover” who shares cute pet photos on Facebook and is validated by hundreds of “friends”.
Reaching the limit I considered safe for my chronically inflamed foot, I turned off onto what promised to be a loop trail returning by a different route. Little used, the trail deteriorated, was blocked by deadfall, disappeared for stretches. I saw a broad gap in the trees ahead and emerged on the rim of a canyon, facing an apocalyptic cascade of fractured lava rock, like a stormy sea turned to stone. I’d never seen anything like it and could barely even imagine how it had been formed. According to the myths of colonial science, the canyon itself had taken eons to erode out of the plateau, which itself had been formed earlier by eons of volcanic deposits. And then, some time later, another lava flow poured over the rim of the canyon, cooling and fracturing as it neared the canyon bottom – then stopped?
Processes taking millions of years, during which continents drifted, terrestrial habitats changed dramatically, countless species evolved and migrated across the land. The first mammals appeared. Eventually, humans arrived. Apaches, Spaniards, Anglos. Me.
The abandoned trail led away, back down the gently sloping plateau, eventually rejoining my original trail near its head. The rocky trail had re-triggered my foot pain, so I resumed daily contrast bathing in my motel room – a complicated, time-consuming therapy where you alternate hot and cold soaks while performing toe exercises.
Restored by Natives
A few years ago, I’d read about a celebrity Apache chef who’d made his name in some city, then returned to open a native foods cafe on the remote reservation, as part of a drugs-and-alcohol recovery program. I checked and found it was less than an hour away, so I drove down there the next day. Through the beautiful alpine forests, past the colorful rimrock cliffs of the river canyon. Nearly all the patrons were local, everything was affordable, many of the healthy ingredients came from native farms and ranches, staff were uniformly friendly and hospitable. I can’t get food this healthy and delicious at home, and before leaving, I told them I wished I could return every day.
On the way back, I reached the alpine plateau just in time to meet a cloudburst that nearly reduced visibility on the highway to zero. The meadows were so lush with new forage that normally sedate cattle were literally jumping for joy, kicking their heels and breaking into gallops for the sheer fun of it.
Restored by Nature
I had one day left, and the natural thing to do was a return to the plateau’s most spectacular trail, a half hour’s drive away at the base of the 11,400 foot summit.
Two trails follow the east and west forks of the little river to connect just below the summit. Both are popular, but for some reason most hikers crowd the less scenic west fork trailhead. There was just enough space for me at the more scenic east fork, where my little 30-year-old pickup joined seven other much newer vehicles, including an expensive electric SUV.
It was a perfect monsoon morning, with clouds promising rain for later. The trail starts at nearly 9,400 feet and crosses a series of meadows following the edge of the spruce-fir forest. Most hikers start early, and I began passing returning parties by the time I reached the climb through the forest to the sandstone formations.
A couple in their 80s, a couple in their 40s, a couple in their 50s, a couple in their 30s, a party of four college students. Climbing through the beautiful old-growth forest that had barely missed the huge wildfire fifteen years ago, I reached the massive, iconic sandstone towers and started up the dark switchbacks. At the top of the ridge I met the equestrians whose tracks and poop I’d passed below – two middle-aged women. And finally a solo hiker in his late 70s or early 80s.
Then I was at the overlook – a rolling sandstone formation with a view southeast over the heart of the plateau, across the vast meadows and lakes to the other high peak 24 miles east and the watershed of the Black River 20 miles south. Another place that anyone with eyes and a heart is loath to leave.
On the way down I recalled how friendly everyone had been that I’d passed on the trail that morning – with the kids being the most reticent, of course. Back home in the city, they’d probably never even look a stranger in the eye, but here, they were smiling, returning my greetings, wishing me well. The city beats us down and pit us against each other, while a place like this restores and brings us together.
Monday, July 13th, 2026: Black Range, Hikes, North Star, Southwest New Mexico.
By June, I’d increased my hikes to 6 miles, even accumulating up to 1,800 vertical feet, without triggering foot pain. But when I tried the next step up, I ended up limping back.
After months of false recoveries, I really, really hated to take a step back. And as usual, finding the right hike was a challenge. In summer, it needed to be shaded and/or high-elevation. I was tired of long drives, but most of our nearby high-elevation trails remain closed due to wildfire.
There’s a network of mostly abandoned and very seldom-used trails northeast of here along a famous backcountry road. It’s a pretty long drive – 1:30 to 1:45 from home – but it’s a fun drive with light traffic. I often overlook it when planning hikes, but the farthest trailhead is nearly 8,000 feet, with a mostly forested trail that climbs to almost 9,000 feet. It’s too short for me when I’m in top condition, but now, it might be just right.
Our monsoon had started with a bang and we were getting thunderstorms and rain almost every day. Even if I didn’t get rained or hailed on, I expected temps up there to stay well below 80 degrees.
The backcountry road climbs to the mesa and spends about ten miles up there. Halfway up the mesa I reached the first tree blown down across the road. Keeps the riffraff out – it would’ve stopped a car or a city SUV, and the deep, rocky roadside ditch gave my high ground clearance and all-terrain tires their first workout of the day.
I had to slow for a couple more downed trees before dropping into the fun part, a dark, narrow, and rocky canyon. It’s always rough and bumpy down there, in and out of the creek for two miles between low walls of flood-debris boulders. All two dozen of the creek crossings were flooded, and the hairpin turns in and out of the canyon were already badly eroded. Fun!
I’ve only visited the trailhead, just below 8,000 feet, three times before. Today I noticed a classic, conical Rocky Mountain juniper near my parking spot – a tree I’ve certainly passed but never identified in this area.
Today’s trail is one I hiked three years ago, aiming for a 9,600-foot peak about eleven miles in. I lost all sign of the abandoned trail at the halfway point and returned, disappointed. Today I was planning to stop after about three miles, on the traverse of the west slope of a peak called Rocky Point. I remembered some cool rocky slopes and vestiges of Herculean trail-building efforts, probably in the 1930s by the Civilian Conservation Corps.
I did the first segment, a gentle traverse of a west-facing slope to the first ridgetop, in the shade of isolated cumulus clouds that gave every sign of developing into a storm later. And I soon encountered more blowdown that got harder and harder to cross or circumvent on foot. I ended up working past dozens by the end of the day, but that’s still better than the thousands of logs blocking our crest trails after big wildfires.
At the ridgetop, the trail continues east to the next low rise, with more blowdown and only the faintest tread in places. I found some old horse poop but no human tracks anywhere.
Reaching the east end of that ridge, I got my first view south across the canyon below. And rounding a corner, the trail traverses across and switchbacks up the canyon’s head.
The trail gets very rocky in the head of that canyon – trailbuilders had shifted hundreds of boulders to create terraces and retaining walls, and now, sheet flows down the gravel slopes above were burying the terraces, and runoff was undermining the retaining walls. Not the most sustainable place for a trail in fire habitat and monsoon climate, but those concerns were off the radar for most white folks in the 1930s.
At the top of the switchbacks across the canyon, you reach a rocky point where you cross into a new watershed – always an exciting moment for me.
From the rocky point, overlooking the new watershed, I got my first view of the real Rocky Point, whose west slope would be my destination. This is the start of the rockiest and most fun part of the trail, switchbacks descending an area of exposed, tortured bedrock.
Crossing the saddle below, I moved into the head of yet another watershed, this one draining east to a long north-flowing creek. A gentle climb through tall pines and firs finally gave me a view of the crest of the range, eight miles east. And then I was at the saddle below Rocky Point.
Most of the west slope is burn scar, and I hiked in sunlight all the way. Mild temps, intermittent breezes, and lots of stops for plants, pollinators, and photos. Toward the south end of this traverse the trail crosses narrow talus slopes with loose rocks up to twelve feet long. I’d planned to turn back before that point, but of course, since I was feeling good, I continued into forest and up to the saddle in the ridge south of the peak.
In that high saddle – 8,779 feet – I got a view of the 10,165-foot summit of this big range, which I climbed three years ago. In good weather with high clearance and 4wd, you can actually drive to within two miles of it.
I wanted to bushwhack up Rocky Point – only another third of a mile and two hundred vertical feet – but I soon ran into a thicket of thorny locust, saw a rocky ridge ahead, and realized it would be too hard on my foot.
On the way back down the west slope, through the burn scar, with one of those top-of-the-world views across our vast wilderness, I realized I really didn’t want to go home. I wanted to live up here. This hike had frustrated me three years ago, and now I was in love with it.
To slow my return, I began studying the trees, and the rocks.
On the switchbacks up that slope of exposed bedrock, I noticed bands that could not be sedimentary. I’d always believed most of the rock in this region is volcanic, but my geologist friend tells me this is gneiss – and may have metamorphosed from sedimentary rock.
Turning back into the next watershed, I began to notice two or three different pines in among the familiar ponderosas. One appeared to be a pinyon, but at 8,600 feet, was much higher than they’re expected at this latitude.
I traversed the head of the west-draining canyon on the eroding reinforced trail, reached the last ridge, and was in the home stretch. I’d been paying a lot of attention to my left foot, and it was fine all the way down to the vehicle. I’d taken 5-3/4 hours to go 7-1/2 miles and 1,226 vertical feet. That seems to be the magic combination right now.
It hadn’t rained on me after all, although from up on the ridges I’d seen rainfall far to the west. In the morning, I’d passed one truck-type SUV on the way out. And now, near the mouth of the backcountry road, I passed a new Bronco that appeared to be sightseeing. Two other vehicles on a mild Sunday, on almost 30 miles of our famous back road – and the campground in the canyon had been empty. I definitely picked the right place to move to.
