Rapture on a Ridgeline, II

Arizona's White Mountains, Springerville. Actually it seems less like mountains around here than high lava-based plateaus with occasional volcanic knolls. Some of these were connected by a grassy ridgeline, and you know how I get with ridgelines and saddles. But first...

Since there are new readers on this blog lately, some explanation should be offered to them as to why I don't show them scenic postcard after postcard of all the photo cliches of the West: Monument Valley, red arches in Utah, snow-capped peaks in the Rockies, etc.  The short answer is that I see full time RVing as a profession or occupation, not as a short term vacation. If you are looking for scenery-based escapism, you have arrived at the wrong blog.

Let's make the case for appreciating these high grassy plateaus, knolls, and ridgelines by looking back to something I wrote earlier when visiting the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Then, after the second horizontal line, I'll return to today.
________________________________________________________

The dogs and I are enjoying camping (boondocking) on BLM land at 8100 feet on the west side of the San Luis Valley, Colorado. This area is not the most popular part of Colorado with mainstream scenery-tourists. 

It seems like we're in the Okanogan Valley of eastern Washington. We are surrounded by grassy ridges, squared off with exposed volcanic layers. Laccoliths. Our first hike was up the western side of the nearest ridge, still unwarmed by the morning sun. I walked perpendicularly to what seemed like a high and long ridge, and aimed at a tree possibly near the top of the ridge. Perhaps its flattened shape was a tribute to the ridge and its winds, or so I tried to imagine. I wouldn't turn around and look at the RV until the crest. The view was a fine harvest from just a few minutes of hiking. 

Walking on these ridges you feel humbled by the large peaks of the Rockies, off in the distance. They are the War that you must fight and win someday. But today you must win a Skirmish with this ridge.

There is a profound difference between free-walking a ridgeline and trudging on a marked trail. Official trails seem arbitrary, unnatural, and constrained. They frustrate you by following no sensible pattern regarding the terrain or the viewscape. The mathematical simplicity of a ridgeline is easy to notice when you walk it; it makes the walking purposeful and rational. With each step you become a little more confident.

The ease of motion and the expansive views in most directions put the hiker in a calmly euphoric mood. But there is still some doubt about the top of the ridgeline. On the other side of a dip a half mile away, three elk were silhouetted along the ridgeline. 

There is something dangerous and glamorous about animals or humans creeping along a distant ridgeline. Think of all the westerns that you've seen in which Indians ride silently and menacingly along a ridgeline. Or imagine being a Han Chinese, on the western fringe of one of their past empires, looking at pony-mounted Mongolians trotting along a ridgeline. And then there's that famous photo of the Great Wall following a sinuous ridgeline.

The ridgeline needn't be solid ground. Think of the terror experienced by an Irish monk at one of their island monasteries, about 900 A.D., when he spotted the appearance of a Viking long boat at the surf-line.

And then of course there is the classic scene at the end of Bergman's "Seventh Seal", in which the Grim Reaper leads his victims away, along the top of a ridgeline.

We finally reached the terminus of the ridge and found a cliff. In a way it was annoying to be interrupted. But birds appeared and the wind intensified. After being cranked up with endorphins and feeling the cool breeze, it was easy to imagine walking right off the end of the ridge and into free space. 

The birds weren't big-winged soaring birds like you would expect; rather, they were small birds with iridescent blue wing tops, a white belly, and a swallow-like silhouette. They flew around like combat fighter craft, but they could also catch the ridge lift and hover motionlessly. One of these birds did this about fifteen feet over my head and scrutinized me, curiously. He seemed so playful and friendly, as if he wished to join our hiking club -- or maybe he was inviting us to join his flying club.

Standing on a rounded boulder at the edge of the cliff and looking up at the fast moving birds while the wind destabilized me, I started to feel vertigo. It seemed like the dream scene in the recent movie version of "Pride and Prejudice." Too bad I wasn't wearing a loose cape or poncho like Liz was in that scene.

_____________________________________________________

...back to today. It wouldn't be right to burden the reader with personal experiences unless they are concrete illustrations of a more general principle that also apply to the reader, albeit in a slightly different manifestation. In part the satisfaction of biking and walking over this land comes from the imaginative effort in perceiving beauty, and then physically working at it, rather than merely passively consuming pretty scenery. To new readers, note the 'early retirement' in the description of this blog. Fundamental to early retirement is the rebellion against normal, middle-class habits of consuming. Why should that only apply to shopping?  Let it apply to scenery as well!

Here in the White Mountains near Springerville AZ there are huge grassy pastures at over 9000 feet:

Since they aren't as vertical as other topographies they make second-rate postcards. But postcards are usually of completely useless land. These pastures make fine summer grazing for livestock, and the surrounding ponderosa pine forests are an excellent source of lumber, where Green theology hasn't managed to obstruct timber harvesting.

Of course it doesn't hurt that high grassy pastures and ridges are perfect for  boondocking and mountain biking.

It is pleasing to think of this land as the perfect Woman: fertile and useful, as well as attractive. It's not for nothing that ancient religions imagined land as feminine and maternal. 

But sadly, for most Americans of our times, the Metropolitan Bubble Syndrome and the sickly theology of the Greens have destroyed our appreciation of land that is both beautiful and useful.