Afton Canyon
by Geoff Cohen
I scrambled down the rocky embankment and crossed under the railroad bridge. My boots kicked up sand. The Mohave appeared through the high grass, cane, and willows. A greenish smallish frog/toad? No bigger than my thumbnail hopped away from my foot. A Western Spadefoot, perhaps, the green was almost emerald. A bridge of one by fours made crossing the five feet of black tadpoles in shallow water easy. Standing at the mouth of Gem Canyon, thinking of March a year ago, crossing the river with my mother. Harder that day. No boards, but we managed. Right away, I realized how hard the hiking was for her. As usual, she was determined to hike up the canyon, then up and out on top of the mesa-like canyon wall.
Up the rocky wash, cobblestone streets, I walked in Barcelona in the summer of 1981. The narrow old streets, the beautiful wood doors, the voices of mugged American sailors reaching the windows of my room in the pensione. Of course, Cora, her long reddish blonde hair, the green of her eyes, the serious way she grabbed my arm and pulled me against her. What caused that change? After six weeks together, we decided to move in, I’d drop out and teach English. She would paint. Still unclear how we managed to come to that decision. My poor Spanish and her poorer English.
Gusts of cool wind came down the canyon, the sound of the Mediterranean, the sea, the wind, before Barcelona, before the weeks in Rome, another fight with Joanna. This time, on a cliff near Palermo, she’d stuck the knife in again, twisting it over and over, verbally stronger and impassioned. We had been drinking from a liter bottle of cheap red Sicilian wine. Standing at the edge of that cliff, looking out on the dark water, feeling the wind pushing, the wine strong in my mouth, in my throat, in my stomach, in my veins. I hung my toes over the edge, looking out to the horizon and raised my arms outstretched, the wind again, pushing, whispering.
Gem Canyon, wider now than when I first hiked it with four-year-old Tess, pieces of green volcanic rock, basalts, pebbles of jasper, chalcedony, sand. Zebra-tailed Lizards ran from me, their black ringed tails up over their backs like scorpions. A rabbit tail, a flush of birds, cawing crows catching the rising thermals in the canyon. We…we hiked Gem Canyon almost every year for the last 30 years. I took my mother out a year after Tess and I first found it. Rock rules: If you want it, you have to carry it. Tess, filling a large Ziploc bag; Esme following alongside her, always, alongside her.
Katherine and I walking arms linked, the volcanic tufa overlying the red sands of Mallorca, 18-month-old Malcolm toddler running, on his toes, leaning forward in front of us. The Mediterranean slapping a few yards away. Great rain clouds blowing with broken patches of rain crossing the sea towards us.
I walked the canyon floor looking for a white stone or rock. I found a large rounded bleached granite rock, heavier than I wanted, but with a nice flat side. Carrying the extra five pounds slowed me down. A long rectangular piece of white sandstone, flat, barely a half an inch thick, 8 X 11, weathered on top with a small curved bay, and a set of ripples. I dropped the burden of the bleached granite and took up the new altar stone. The weight difference was immediate. Relieved; released. I passed the point where I realized she could go no further. Too tired. Too hard to breathe. I should have known. She did not fuss when I said we should go back. She slowly ate her lunch sitting on a flat edge of a reddish boulder.
I reached the white spine ridge that led up to our goat trail. I was about the age of my mother when she first climbed up that path. I went up, the white, the greenish mudstone, soft to two inches beneath my feet, a forty-five-degree angle, passed the white ovals, the spine of a dinosaur, on to the broken brown shale, the path flattened for thirty feet, then stepping up a talus slope of broken brown shale, my feet slipped. But I stayed upright. The path curved into the cliff face where we always found fresh mountain goat droppings. There were only old dry white oval pellets. The second to last slope, close to sixty degrees on that dark brown broken shale, I kept my purchase.
The sandstone slab tucked under my arm, my thirty-year-old walking stick in my other hand, up I went, then across the shallow slope of broken basalt, jasper and chalcedony to the top of the mesa. I saw the perfect spot, almost what she had described, but I thought she wanted to be higher. I walked around climbing different knobs, checking each view. I had been right the first time. I cleared, level a space, creating an area to place the sandstone altar. I took up the bunch of dried sage, split it into three smaller bunches. The first I lit, the white smoke drifting over the space I had created. The sage still burning, I placed the alter down. When the bunch burned out, I took the Ziploc bag of gray-white ash and carefully dumped it, shaking as much of the powder out. I burned another bunch of sage, the smoke curling around the altar, the pyramid of ashes.
I wondered what to do next: do I hike further in and look for crystals, opals, geodes; do I leave? I looked out across the basin towards the high pyramidic Cave Mountain. Sit. Stay. I lit the last bunch of sage and placed it in a crevice next to the small altar. The smoke blew up, bluish-gray, then white, on a sixty-degree angle disappearing into the bright blue Mohave desert sky. I sat there, staying present in the moment, remembering to breathe as my mother recommended year after year. As the smoke dissipated, I reclaimed the desert, the light purples, the greens, the reddish stone, the far-off small lava cones, the broken reddish-orange spaces of prospectors.
Up the rocky wash, cobblestone streets, I walked in Barcelona in the summer of 1981. The narrow old streets, the beautiful wood doors, the voices of mugged American sailors reaching the windows of my room in the pensione. Of course, Cora, her long reddish blonde hair, the green of her eyes, the serious way she grabbed my arm and pulled me against her. What caused that change? After six weeks together, we decided to move in, I’d drop out and teach English. She would paint. Still unclear how we managed to come to that decision. My poor Spanish and her poorer English.
Gusts of cool wind came down the canyon, the sound of the Mediterranean, the sea, the wind, before Barcelona, before the weeks in Rome, another fight with Joanna. This time, on a cliff near Palermo, she’d stuck the knife in again, twisting it over and over, verbally stronger and impassioned. We had been drinking from a liter bottle of cheap red Sicilian wine. Standing at the edge of that cliff, looking out on the dark water, feeling the wind pushing, the wine strong in my mouth, in my throat, in my stomach, in my veins. I hung my toes over the edge, looking out to the horizon and raised my arms outstretched, the wind again, pushing, whispering.
Gem Canyon, wider now than when I first hiked it with four-year-old Tess, pieces of green volcanic rock, basalts, pebbles of jasper, chalcedony, sand. Zebra-tailed Lizards ran from me, their black ringed tails up over their backs like scorpions. A rabbit tail, a flush of birds, cawing crows catching the rising thermals in the canyon. We…we hiked Gem Canyon almost every year for the last 30 years. I took my mother out a year after Tess and I first found it. Rock rules: If you want it, you have to carry it. Tess, filling a large Ziploc bag; Esme following alongside her, always, alongside her.
Katherine and I walking arms linked, the volcanic tufa overlying the red sands of Mallorca, 18-month-old Malcolm toddler running, on his toes, leaning forward in front of us. The Mediterranean slapping a few yards away. Great rain clouds blowing with broken patches of rain crossing the sea towards us.
I walked the canyon floor looking for a white stone or rock. I found a large rounded bleached granite rock, heavier than I wanted, but with a nice flat side. Carrying the extra five pounds slowed me down. A long rectangular piece of white sandstone, flat, barely a half an inch thick, 8 X 11, weathered on top with a small curved bay, and a set of ripples. I dropped the burden of the bleached granite and took up the new altar stone. The weight difference was immediate. Relieved; released. I passed the point where I realized she could go no further. Too tired. Too hard to breathe. I should have known. She did not fuss when I said we should go back. She slowly ate her lunch sitting on a flat edge of a reddish boulder.
I reached the white spine ridge that led up to our goat trail. I was about the age of my mother when she first climbed up that path. I went up, the white, the greenish mudstone, soft to two inches beneath my feet, a forty-five-degree angle, passed the white ovals, the spine of a dinosaur, on to the broken brown shale, the path flattened for thirty feet, then stepping up a talus slope of broken brown shale, my feet slipped. But I stayed upright. The path curved into the cliff face where we always found fresh mountain goat droppings. There were only old dry white oval pellets. The second to last slope, close to sixty degrees on that dark brown broken shale, I kept my purchase.
The sandstone slab tucked under my arm, my thirty-year-old walking stick in my other hand, up I went, then across the shallow slope of broken basalt, jasper and chalcedony to the top of the mesa. I saw the perfect spot, almost what she had described, but I thought she wanted to be higher. I walked around climbing different knobs, checking each view. I had been right the first time. I cleared, level a space, creating an area to place the sandstone altar. I took up the bunch of dried sage, split it into three smaller bunches. The first I lit, the white smoke drifting over the space I had created. The sage still burning, I placed the alter down. When the bunch burned out, I took the Ziploc bag of gray-white ash and carefully dumped it, shaking as much of the powder out. I burned another bunch of sage, the smoke curling around the altar, the pyramid of ashes.
I wondered what to do next: do I hike further in and look for crystals, opals, geodes; do I leave? I looked out across the basin towards the high pyramidic Cave Mountain. Sit. Stay. I lit the last bunch of sage and placed it in a crevice next to the small altar. The smoke blew up, bluish-gray, then white, on a sixty-degree angle disappearing into the bright blue Mohave desert sky. I sat there, staying present in the moment, remembering to breathe as my mother recommended year after year. As the smoke dissipated, I reclaimed the desert, the light purples, the greens, the reddish stone, the far-off small lava cones, the broken reddish-orange spaces of prospectors.
Geoff Cohen has returned to writing after many years of working in higher education. He works at writing full-time in a room for of books, maps, and two dogs.