I woke up to clear skies after yesterday’s wild weather. Didn’t even eat breakfast because I wanted to get on the road and out of Santa Clarita and all of the LA freeway madness before the worst of the traffic. This was 6:30 am. (I didn’t take this photo cuz… driving, but it’s accurate).
It took me 3 hours to get 70 miles onto I-10 E. The energy on the road is manic. Lot’s of mini-road rages. It was stop and start, with the starts getting up to speeds of 85 mph for like, three miles.
People tail gate, then when traffic starts moving again, they zoom ahead, cutting you off.
In addition to the traffic, the air, due to the fires, was orange tinted brown. All around the metropolis for miles. Just a dark, toxic stew people are breathing.
I do not understand how anyone chooses to live in such stress and constant, relentless survival mode. I tried it out in 1981 and even then, it felt unhealthy. Dis-eased.
Anyway…
Turns out yesterday was just about getting there. Despite my previous day’s “it’s about the journey” teaching. And it is, it IS about the journey. But yesterday’s was about getting to my high school sweetheart Jim’s (and his wife, Sandy) house in NE Phonix. Seven 1/2 hours away from my start if the traffic wasn’t bonkers.
Add in an hour for the 21 miles between Palm Springs and Indio. Also stop start, heavy on the stop.
Then finally, up the mountain and the rains returned and snow tried to join us and Arizona has a basic speed of 75. Who knew? Not me, in any case, until a few irate cars honked at me for going to slow at 73 (I thought I was cheating).
Drive, drive. 90 miles west of Phoenix I glimpsed a rocky mountainous area to the south which was so powerful that I kept checking it out for the next 30 miles. There was a face, then there were several faces. And the powerful draw of the place was visceral.
If I hadn’t been feeling pressure to get to Jim and Sandy’s before it was too late for a proper visit (damn that LA mess), I would have hunted down the turn off and headed into those mountains.
I kept looking but there were no signs so I had to look it up later on a geologic map of the area.
Eagle Tail Wilderness. 
Apparently, the area is rich with petroglyphs. 
And trails abound
I would honestly love to camp in there for several nights. It’s some kind of power center.
But onward to Jim and Sandy’s as the sun began setting. Phoenix also has BIG traffic (8 lanes per side) but I didn’t feel that same manic, angry energy. Just go fastness.
It was a loooong drive and I was ready to be done. Then lo, when I my GPS told me I was exactly 7 miles from their house, a ray of light broke through the darkness and the arch of a rainbow glowed right into the exit I would be taking. Awwww.
Jim and I were part of a triad in high school which kept us all alive. Neil was the third. The three of us were like from another planet compared to the other kids in West Eugene. We found one another, found Hermann Hesse, found acting, found poetry reading and writing, found LSD, found love. That was back in 1971 and 1972. They were a year ahead of me. They graduated, leaving me behind for a senior year without my kin. I was bereft.
So, we had a lot of catching up to do.
It was a wonderful visit. Too short but maybe just long enough.
I was back on the road at 6:00 in the morning, leaving a new set of memories behind.
I lasted in LA just six months (in the late 1970s) before I left my relatively new husband there (he was still finishing his school program) and accepted a job transfer to San Francisco before we both returned to Portland. I can see why folks originally settled in that beautiful valley, but the crowding and the dependence on motor vehicles was too much for me.
Glad you were able to reconnect with your special folks from teen years, the ones who made it possible to live in that social hell that was high school for us artsy folks. They are friends worth treasuring because they share a history no one else in our lives shares in the same way.