Day 1
Flight and Arrival
John Merck
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Parking Garage 2. Centreville Hall lobby. Students were already assembling well in advance of the rendezvous time. Good. I took a final look at the program material: compasses, walkie talkies, camping gear, sleeping bags, etc. all stuffed into huge oversized black duffels. Good. Familiar footsteps - it was Tom. Good. Things were falling into place. I peeked into the lobby. More people were there: the rest of the students - Cynthia Shaw, the third trip leader - Peggy Wolf and Ronnie Shaw who had graciously volunteered to ferry us to the airport. Everyone was present. It was all good.
We handed out airline tickets, packed the vehicles, and climbed in. Check-in at BWI was smooth. We had absorbed Hellman's methods thoroughly. Each person checked one personal bag and one program bag, for which they would be responsible. Security: No problem. Gate, boarding pass, jetway ramp, airplane aisle, seat. Final head count: thirteen. We were all there. It was all good.
The first three flight hours were dull - perfect for catching up on sleep. Once we were over the western cordillera, I perked up. Geology is a field in which phenomena that are evident in a hand sample or under a microscope are reflected in map scale and vice versa. There's nothing to drive home that reality like seeing actual rocks spread out physically beneath you on a continental scale. I was sitting with April Roate, a Geology major and Air Force ROTC cadet. Sitting in an airplane looking down at the rocks, I can only hope she was happy. Where WERE we, exactly? It gradually came together. Here were the reds, pinks, and grays of the Painted Desert of Northeastern Arizona. There was a field of dark blemishes, the volcanic erosional remnants called the Hopi Buttes. The highway south of them could only be Interstate 40. So, the town crawling toward us from the west had to be Winslow. Bingo! We were oriented. On the western horizon, a lofty peak was capped with snow - the San Francisco Peaks. Invisible at their base was the city of Flagstaff where we would spend the night. From here on we just sat in the airplane and studied the shapes of the land - the Mogollon Rim, the Central Highlands, the Roosevelt reservoir, Camelback Mountain, and - oops - the runway.
Jetway to concourse to baggage claim. No problem. Baggage conveyors obediently disgorged our items. We were all there and had all our stuff. The rental agency acted like they knew we were coming. Good. I've seen much worse. We parked the students and bags on the curb and went for vehicles. Parking lot, there they were - three clean fifteen passenger vans. Keys - mirrors - radio. Everything was set. Getting back to the terminal was another matter. What a labyrinth of confusing signs. I circled the terminal once - twice, then finally made it into the right slot. We loaded up and I received my passengers, Christina Beringer, Hyojung Lee, and - bravely riding shotgun - Ally Burguieres.
So far, so good. We were out of the clutches of the transportation industry and on our own. Now to deal with the emptiness in our stomachs. The car rental lady had suggested a place nearby if we could find it. Tom, in the lead, found the turnoff. Disaster. I'm caught by a stop light as the other two vans round the corner and disappear. Lesson I: We had brought walkie-talkies precisely for this kind of situation but hadn't unpacked them in our hurry to leave the airport. Now we needed them. Green light. I bark and growl at my passengers to look for the other vehicles, as if I thought they could somehow "look harder" by trying harder. No luck. We drive in a straight line. Finally there they are, across a parking lot. Unreliable lady luck had smiled.
Joining them we considered our location - the parking lot of a shopping center. Must be food there. In we go, through a J. C. Penny's and through a long mall. Finally a food court. The environment was of the same standardized suburbia that we might have found in Maryland. Still, burgers, teriyaki bowls, and sweet and sour pork were a blessed relief. Bellies distended we staggered back, dug the communicators out of our bags, and returned to Interstate 17.
Securely on the road, we began really to take in our surroundings. Even in metropolitan Phoenix, it was clear from the warm dry air, palm tree - lined streets, and ornamental cactus that we were in an alien environment. Still, the conspicuous artificiality of the Phoenix cityscape left us wondering what the real Arizona would be like. As the city and suburbs gave way we lost the palms, tall trees, and green of diligently watered lawns. Instead we entered a landscape that derived its colors from rocks, either weathered on the hilly surface or brightly exposed in road cuts. On top of this was a veneer of vegetation - olive green, gray, and brown punctuated by the occasional splash of green from a large tree in a stream bed or large cactus. Indeed, cactuses were the one urban affectation that we didn't leave behind. Prickly pears, barrel cactuses and tall saguaros were not merely present but common. Place names had a distinct local flavor also, with signs sprouting for destinations like Dead Man's Wash and Dry Beaver Creek [sic].
After nearly an hour on the road the landscape began changing. We had started in the Phoenix basin, a low flat region between mountain ranges that hosted the northernmost extension of the saguaro-dominated Sonoran Biome. Now as we climbed onto the mountains that confined the basin on the north the cactuses diminished (except for the ubiquitous prickly pear.) In their places, grasslands and dense juniper scrub competed. The Geology of central Arizona is fabulously complex, making it impossible to interpret the histories of the rocks exposed on the hillsides and road cuts we passed. Nevertheless, the sheer variety of rocks allowed a thorough introduction of basic rock types. Tom and I commented at length on spheroidally weathering granites, dark columnar basalts, and layers of red clastic sediments and white limestone. It had, after all, been over twenty four hours since either of us had given a lecture and we were experiencing withdrawal.
As daylight faded, we passed the crest from which I-17 descends into the Verde Valley. At its bottom, the highway passes through the town of Camp Verde and crosses the Verde River. When we arrived, it was time to stop and stretch our legs, and a gas station - convenience store obligingly appeared. We pulled in just in time to catch our first western sunset - high clouds, improbably distant but distinct in the clear dry air, their undersides illuminated by the Sun's last rays. Several of us felt the urge to photograph it only to be frustrated by the omnipresence of fast food signs in the foreground. The highway on which had made our slow descent to the river extended into the twilight to the Northeast where it disappeared against the distant wall of the Mogollon rim, the abrupt southern edge of the Colorado Plateau. Ten minutes later, with empty bladders and fortified by beef jerky, we were rolling toward it.
As the light failed, we made our way up the rim. Long before we reached the plateau, our vista had been restricted to the universe of highway lights: signs, asphalt, shoulder, and darkenss beyond. Even then, we could sense that our environment was changing. Tall ponderosa pines crowded by the roadside. The air took on an alpine character - thin with the faint aroma of conifers. Our ears began popping.
At last we arrived at our hotel on the outskirts of Flagstaff, adjacent to the historic Route 66. The exterior air was cold as we hauled luggage to our rooms. That done, we departed for a last errand: grocery shopping. During the trip we planned routinely to prepare our own breakfasts and lunches, resorting to restaurants only for dinner. Thankfully, there was a large supermarket near the hotel. We rolled up, walked in, distributed shopping assignments to the students then stood back and watched the carts fill with enough food to last until our camping excursion in the Chiricahuas. Presto. Provisions for four days were assembled in short order. Checkout, organization of food in the vans, then back to the hotel and sleep.
I had regretted not rolling into Flagstaff until after dark. This, in my opinion, is one of the country's most attractive cities. To experience it as a motel and grocery store along a highway seemed wrong. Fortunately, the next morning as we prepared to roll, the students got to see some of what I love about its geographic setting. The nearby Mogollon rim is a topographic high, at which the Colorado plateau attains heights of 6000 ft. Superimposed upon the plateau are the San Francisco Peaks: Mt. Humphries, Mt. Agassiz, and Mt. Eldon. These summits, exceeding 10,000 feet, encircle the collapsed caldera of a dormant composite volcano. Flagstaff is built on its southern flank. As we flew into Phoenix 120 miles to the south, we had seen this as a distant snow-capped peak. From the motel, the volcano were revealed as an enormous presence extending from the ground sloping up from the parking lot to the white peaks thirty degrees above the northern horizon. No wonder they are regarded as sacred by both the Hopi and Navajo. This religious status, along with their inaccessibility has kept them relatively free of development. The coming days promised tours of the Grand Canyon and other sites in which access to forbidding landscapes had been rendered unnaturally easy. As long as we remained on the plateau, however, the San Francisco peaks were our constant landmark and reminder that there remained heights that were forbidden to ordinary mortals.
