Infinity Calls

As you know, I find my corner of southeastern Ohio to be an endless fount of beauty and wonder. It doesn't matter how many times I've been down a road. There will always be something new and beautiful waiting for me.

Take that appreciative spirit and put it in the Red Rock country around Sedona, Arizona, and something inside me goes haywire. An insatiable thirst for these strange and wonderful new landscapes springs up, deeper even than my body's thirst for water. 

I definitely gained a new appreciation for water on this trip. Nothing can happen without it.

All I had to do was leave my car in the Yavapai College lot, pack a couple of bottles of water, sling my big camera over my arm, put my iPhone 6 on Pano mode, and go.

I never got over the simple truth that for people who live in Sedona, this is their everyday view. The painted rocks rise up all around you, even on your way to the grocery store.

On the trail, I learned to keep turning around, because there might be a sudden peek at a sunlit peak.

On this glorious afternoon, with the monsoon clouds racing all around, I wanted to walk until dark.

With a function to attend, I couldn't, so I took in as much as I could, as quickly as I could, which  made it all that much more searing and beautiful.

Lordy Lord. A car monument, out here since who knows when.

Who knew they used wood in the frame back then? Wood. 

I don't even know what cars are made of these days, but I'm sure it never grew in a forest.

Of course, to me, the whole thing was a sculpture.

I could see desert cottontails taking shelter here, maybe a rattler, too. 

How perfect that it was once sky blue.

A target for guns, something to shoot at. 

A desert sunset painted on its rusty flank. No one could intend a more beautiful finish than time has given this old car.

The eye is cranked up and seeing it all, saving bits for later. I chase a flock of bushtits around and manage a few acceptable shots. I get a ways off the trail, but remember which way I came. 

It's in the bushtit's cold white eye.

Whatever brings me here, this is where I'm meant to be: alone but for my shadow.

Taking in this miraculous landscape, giving thanks that it is here and, as yet, and perhaps forever, without houses or shopping centers.

Rusty car flanks and bushtits aside, this is the biggest miracle of all. 

I know that landscapes like these do not come free; that people are working to set them aside so that wanderers like me can chase bushtits and desert rabbits through the brush. So there's brush for those creatures to inhabit.

In this wilderness, lofty and alone, there is intent, a realization that the earth must have its wild places to keep. I'm thankful to be here on this trail, a mute beneficiary of the set-aside.

Reluctantly, I turn around and trace my steps back up the trail. With enough water, I could walk forever out here.

Infinity calls. How could I not answer?