Petrichor

 

8-1

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You know, one of my favorite things about going west on road trips is the part where I go across time zones. Especially when I go into Arizona, and get a nice two-hour rollback. Why, you ask? Well, it’s because it makes me look like a better, more productive member of society in the mornings.

Instead of rolling out of bed at a perfectly respectable (to me, but apparently not to many people) 8AM, I rolled out of bed at 6AM this morning. I showed up at breakfast bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at about 6:30AM, and felt very smug as I surveyed all of the other bleary-eyed travelers shuffling about. It is in these brief moments that I glimpse what it would be like to be a morning person, and it feels kind of like a superpower. Imagine being functional before the sun even comes up! That’s crazy.

Well, that was me today, for once. I capitalized on my accidental early bird-ism and hopped back into Jane a little before 8AM (the horror!!!). Thoroughly soaked after a night of rain, Jane nevertheless cranked right up with only a minimal amount of grumpiness. Although, the steering wheel now squeaks slightly when I turn it to the left, and a pretty aggressive exhaust leak seems to have appeared overnight. Don’t ask me why, I don’t know. Maybe I’ll fix it… later.

None of these things mattered as we got back on the road, making our way through town towards the small highway that would take us out of the mountains. We slowly cruised through the swirling morning mists that still wrapped the sleepy town close, enjoying the ethereal solitude as we puttered past shuttered cafes and darkened homes. The desolate road stretching out of town beckoned us into sodden pine forests, drawing us ever downwards towards the base of the mountains. And then, very abruptly, we burst out of the forests into sunshine. A short while later, the gloomy mountain roads were but a memory, one rapidly being replaced by a more classic Arizona view: the endless flat, scrubby, sun-drenched high plains of the Colorado Plateau.

The morning wore on and eventually I found myself in Holbrook, a classic Route 66 town. Holbrook is one of the few towns that escaped complete population decimation with the bypassing of Route 66 and opening of I-40 in the 1960’s – although it’s not a large town, it has held firm against the passage of time and has managed to hold its population steady. Despite this, it still leans heavily on its Route 66 roots, giving the town an endearing time capsule-esque feel. On my way through town I passed several familiar stops, mostly classic motels including the famous Wigwam Motel (which I noticed has expanded its classic car collection since the last time I passed through). Every time I pass this place, I wonder if Jane has been here before (before me, I mean) on some long-past adventure. What I wouldn’t give to find someone who knows this car’s history.

At the edge of town I traded out my small highway for a more familiar one: I-40, my old friend. I have run this stretch of road many, many times by now. And as detrimental as it was to the small tourist towns that used to provide refuge for weary travelers traversing the Arizonan high plains, I have to say that this stretch of interstate is nevertheless my favorite in the United States. I know that’s a bizarre thing to say. But imagine, if you will, being me: someone who has driven a loud, rowdy vintage car for no less than fifteen hours along the often-awful, minimally-maintained roads of West Texas and New Mexico, over the course of two days. And then imagine suddenly hitting a perfectly paved, gloriously flat, comfortingly broad ribbon of asphalt that arrows straight across the plains towards a distant but visible mountain. And even though the landscape is flat, it’s colorful, all greens and yellows and oranges and reds patched together like an impressionist painting, presided over by stunningly picturesque clouds.

Ooh, does it feel good to hit that stretch of road.

Jane and I reached that distant mountain – and the town of Flagstaff nestled on its flanks – just around lunchtime. As temperatures were rapidly climbing down on the sunny plains below, we ascended back into another forested mountain refuge, seeking respite from the heat. I had some extra time to kill, so I stopped off at Walnut Canyon National Monument. One of three national monuments in the Flagstaff area, it’s a smaller park with limited hiking and activities, but it is a perfect afternoon stop.

We cruised up to the entrance booth, where the ranger on duty attempted to strike up a conversation. I say attempted, because it is fairly difficult to understand each other when shouting back and forth over the rumble of a vintage V8. Eventually I killed the motor and we were able to hear each other – he was very helpful in explaining trail closures (okay, three hiking trails are now two…) and was very complimentary of Jane. I abruptly realized that I had absolutely no idea where my park pass was, and was feeling a bit reluctant to pay the $25 entry fee knowing that I’d be there only a couple of hours. Fortunately, the ranger had mercy on us, and let us in anyways on scout’s honor. Some days, we still got it. Well, Jane does, at least. He really did like Jane.

I parked, loaded up my pack, and stuck on my tennis shoes. I’m almost always in hiking boots, but considering the trails were only a mile apiece, I felt a bit silly digging them out of Jane’s trunk. So, sneakers it is. After a brief stop at the front desk of the visitor center, I headed out the back door and got my first view of Walnut Canyon.

Far from being one of my more commonly-visited barren red rock canyons, Walnut Canyon is a gentler place, with abundant trees and grasses growing along its terraced sides. Flora diversity is actually very high in this canyon because of its unique position at the intersection of a drier (plains) and wetter (montane) setting, creating a bunch of microclimates within the canyon driven by orientation of the canyon walls (sunnier/drier vs. shadier/wetter) and position relative to water sources (runoff and the creek at the bottom). And because there’s so many plants, there are also a lot of animals – birds, rabbits, bighorn sheep, deer, and the like. So it’s no surprise that this canyon was a favored place for occupation by many early indigenous groups!

As you look out across the canyon, at first glance it may look to all be similar gray rock and trees. But look a little closer – with a geologist’s eyes – and you see another thing that made this canyon ideal for habitation: the alternation of different lithologies. Let me explain, because rocks are very cool and are the basis of my day job, after all. At the base of the canyon lies a massive, cross-bedded sandstone known as the Coconino Sandstone. This sandstone – which, interestingly enough, preserves the remnants of very large sand dunes - is thick and forms steep inclines and cliffs which may be readily traversed with some skill, but are not great for plant or human habitation.

 

Overlying that further up the canyon walls is the Kaibab Formation, which is composed of cyclically alternating layers of hard limestone and softer more clay-rich lime mudstones. Over time, the softer material has weathered away while the harder limestone has remained, producing the terraced benches and gentle slopes that step up the canyon walls. The gentle slopes are more ideal for vegetation, and the benches? Well, those big overhangs are just perfect to use as the roof of a home. And that’s exactly what the Sinagua people did in the 1100’s. The longer you observe the upper half of the canyon, the more these ancient dwellings leap out at you.

Incredibly, Walnut Canyon is home to over 80 cliff dwellings, each with several rooms. Many remain in excellent condition even after nearly a thousand years – testament to the engineering and building prowess of these ancient peoples. Although, it could also be argued that this is mostly related to the perfect setting for preservation: generally arid conditions with few floods or natural disasters, sturdy protective rock benches, good material availability for strong building blocks and mortar, low erosion, and a more hidden, less accessible location preventing easy destruction by vandals. Let’s say it’s both.

Walnut Canyon’s Island Trail drops you down into the canyon and loops around several benches for a close-up view of a series of dwellings, each with their own unique features. I made my way down the trail pretty quickly, eager to explore the remnants of a very different civilization. The staff at the front desk had gone out of their way to warn me about the 368 stairs that you have to traverse to get down to the meat of the trail – but that didn’t seem that strenuous to me. After all, the Sinagua peoples traversed this canyon from rim to floor every day of their lives, and they probably didn’t have the benefit of regularly-spaced, OSHA-approved cement stairs with handrails!

The trail wound around the side of a ridge, butting right up to remnants of the dwellings. Although some walls have been reconstructed for educational purposes (using the same techniques as originally employed to build them in the 1100’s), many remain exactly as they were made all those centuries ago. The 1-2-foot thick walls would have kept everything dry and cool in the summer, and dry and warm in the winter: the perfect climate control for year-round living! It was very cool to read about the various uses of the rooms in the dwellings – many of the narrower rooms were employed as storerooms, whereas other larger rooms were likely living quarters. The storerooms would have been filled with dried food stores as well as many, many jars of water, which were needed to survive the dry season as Walnut Canyon’s creek is seasonal.  Sounds stressful to me, but I guess the potential for a water shortage is no different than the ones faced by a lot of desert-dwelling communities today!

Restored walls - you can see differently colored mud mortar

A long narrow storeroom with a doorway on the far end

A series of dwellings (or one very large dwelling for a family) under a large overhang

Many of the larger rooms had charring along the top of their roof – evidence of cooking fires from a long distant past. And some dwellings still had their doorways intact, revealing them to be small rectangular openings that you would have to stoop to pass through.

A very heavily used room

That led me to wonder, though, how the Sinagua survived the massive smoke inhalation that they would have undoubtedly subjected themselves to if they sat in those rooms for too long. A fire for warmth or cooking would be nice, but not at the cost of suffocating yourself!

Well, as I proceeded around the trail to a strip of really wonderfully-preserved dwellings, I got my answer. Each room had a smoke hole built in over the doorway just against the ceiling. So, air would enter through the doorway to help feed the fire, and the smoke would stream out the top hole! Ingenious. This is probably "Fire 101", but hey, I wouldn't have known that.

 

What a great view

The size and scope of these dwellings is really amazing

The loop completed, I headed back up the steps – 368 stairs, mind you! – with absolutely no trouble at all, actually. I guess maybe I’m in good enough shape to qualify for life as a Sinagua. Or at least, I’m in good enough shape to be able to do some of their daily activities. Whether or not I could hack it long-term, with all of the climbing and gathering and hunting and constant activity in the same canyon… well, dubious.

After reaching the visitor center back at the rim of the canyon, I wandered down the second trail, which is really little more than a short walk to an overlook where you can see… well, the same canyon, I guess.

Unfortunately, it is much harder to see the dwellings from this overlook as many of the more visible ones are located in the canyon wall on the side that you happen to be standing on. But it was a nice reminder of how this canyon probably looked even hundreds of years ago – apparently pristine, but full of hidden life. Maybe back then, the voices of the Sinagua people would have risen out of the canyon, the only immediate evidence of their civilization. Maybe if you looked closer, you would start to see flashes of skin as people moved through the forest, or maybe you would catch the scent of a campfire when the wind blew the right way. Or maybe, as now, the people would have left an indelible mark on the landscape, the forests cleared away to make room for more fields, more pathways, more growth.

 A time machine would be a very nice thing to have, I think.

Our brief tour of Walnut Canyon now completed, Jane and I hopped back on the road and got to driving. I wanted to hit Boulder City, NV – a smallish town at the gate to Hoover Dam, just outside of Vegas – before dinnertime. So we finished our ascent towards Flagstaff and dropped down the other side of the mountain, Jane eating up the smooth graded pavement like a particularly delectable dessert. Spectacular big puffy afternoon clouds had gathered, bringing with them a refreshing cool breeze. The plain stretched out in front of us, never-ending, but always with a suggestion of mountains on the horizon, a teasing destination never reached. It was a perfect afternoon for a long drive in a perfect car, and one that is rarely encountered in Arizona in high summer. I savored it for as long as I could.

Los Angeles seems a bit ambitious for a road sign located in the middle of northern Arizona, don't you think?

But then, of course – as is par for the course for this trip - it began to rain.

I know that usually I complain incessantly that it always rains on the last day of my road trip, and that it is always one of those horrible torrential monsoons that threatens to wash Jane straight off the face of the earth, and that I always seem to spend half the day white-knuckled with nothing but the fear of imminent demise circling rapidly through my head on loop. But this year has been kinder. This year, in the face of the hottest, driest summer I’ve ever experienced, I was given the gift of nice gentle rain. Nice gentle rain, for hundreds and hundreds of miles across the deserts of New Mexico and Arizona. It felt like a miracle.

Jane and I splashed through spotty showers the whole rest of the way to Boulder City, alternating between cool refreshing downpours and glorious sun-drenched stretches. The air crackled with life, rife with the songs of birds and the buzzing and chirping of insects, punctuated by the staccato crunch of loose pebbles on the asphalt and underscored by the gentle whish of tires on wet pavement. I turned the radio off and sunk into the moment – one long, unending moment - breathing deep and scoring the scene into my memory.

Boy, that is beautiful

Even giant transmission lines are beautiful when the weather's like this

Moody

A very picturesque wind farm

As we traveled through that perfect point in time, something new occurred to me. Petrichor. It’s the word that describes the smell that comes with rain after a long dry spell. You know, when you walk outside and go, “It smells like rain out here,” – that smell. And there’s only one word for it, because for the most part it is always pretty much the same smell. Humans are uniquely equipped to smell petrichor, as we can reputedly detect it at as little as 0.4 parts per billion – just the faintest suggestion of rain, somewhere far away. It is generally thought that we are sensitive to this smell because our ancestors relied heavily on rains as a source of water.

Well, considering that it hasn’t rained in Austin since early June, maybe I was just a little more attuned to the scent. But I very abruptly realized that different places have different-smelling petrichor. The scent of rain in the cloud mountains of New Mexico and Arizona is very different from the scent of rain on the high plains of Arizona. In the mountains, rain smells sharper, piney, a little acidic, a little rocky. But on the high plains, rain smells sweet and mellow, warm asphalt mixing with the overwhelming abundance of grassy herby scents. A small observation, but in a way a momentous revelation. Sometimes it's the little things that really shake you.

I don't know how long I spent thinking about that, but it was probably a bit too long. In what felt like no time at all, we drew close to Boulder City. Billboards advertising “SHOOT A MACHINE GUN!”, and “DRIVE A TANK!” (which does sound fun) signaled our return to some approximation of society.

Those far-off mountains had finally come into reach, and we climbed steadily into the brown, craggy hills that are a Nevadan trademark (to geologists, at least).

And a short time later we pulled into historic downtown Boulder City, arriving at the very impressive Boulder Dam Historic Hotel.

Although things were damp, the rain held off for dinner, so I had a Guinness Stew meat pasty at the restaurant across the street (delicious) and sat outside for as long as I could to enjoy the cool temperatures (even more delicious).

Another perfect day for the books. Kelly signing out.