You know those places that are so much the same that you can’t remember if you’ve been there or not? The same-same parking lot, the same expanse of paved roads, the same adobe-ish strip malls over and over and over. That’s Phoenix, all of it, even some of its mountains. (Not that SoCal and even the greater San Jose area aren’t, also, overly similar in their own ways.)
San Tan Mountain, in my recent experience, was not even a mountain (though at 3104 feet, it more than meets the minimum 1000 feet to be a mountain), just a little clump of hills. Hills clumped together like the cars in the greater Phoenix area’s many surrounding parking lots, most of which would be much more likely to visit San Tan Village than San Tan Mountain. Still, the parking lot was busy enough, filled with dust and port-a-potties and a closed ranger station trailer even though a ranger was running around telling every car how to pay for parking because the ranger station was closed. (Just open the ranger station, maybe, so you could stay in the shade and have us come to you so you can tell us the same thing? At least the AC was off, I suppose.)
The same ranger advised us to take the Dynamite trail instead of the Goldmine trail on account of our footwear (running shoes) and the steepness of the gravely Goldmine trail (significant, allegedly). Well, I acknowledge it wouldn’t be very fun to spend a mile and a half slipping downhill when trying to go up. So we Dynamited, it was fine, a little bit of up and down, a lot of cactus, a lot of dusty, a lot of hot, a lot of cactus. Same as going anywhere in Phoenix, really. The difference being on your own feet on a trail you don’t have to see so many cars.
Another difference is Mansel Carter, a prospector buried around San Tan, somewhere I didn’t see because it was up Goldmine. One wonders how many more unmarked graves there are, how many died without any acknowledgement so we could build up all these same-same streets and houses and stores, ever so many more identical boxes sucking up oil from the ground to make energy to power our cooling even as it delivers more heat, the thing this area does not need. As Phoenix set a new heat record of 96 degrees in March (March!), one can’t help but wonder: should we be here at all? Should we leave it to the mountains? Let nature come back and differentiate itself, unpave the assimilating roads and overgrow strip malls with cacti?
(And when they say prospecting they mean stealing, right?)
According to the Maricopa County website, 2,613,715 people in Maricopa County are affected by drought, up 209.2% since last month. That’s more than half the county’s population. There is no above normal stream flow. Arizona looks quite wet compared to California, though, where 93% of the state is in severe drought (compared with just 29% of Arizona), though maybe Arizona’s drought level is simply higher (lower?) by nature. Perhaps improbably, most of Phoenix’s water comes from snow in the mountains, something the area would seem to have little of. The city, at any rate, seems quite confident in its supply. Should it be?
A woman who was also hiking San Tan wanted to know where I got my shorts. The Nike Store in San Francisco, I think, or maybe Seattle, I don’t know. They’re all the same, right? Or maybe I ordered online, from far away. You could probably get them in San Tan Village, though.
Anyway. The world is getting hotter, and samer, even as the things we really need are coming (or trying to) from far away, farther and farther away. Can we make them closer? Can we hike our own mountains, build our own somethings, make our own clothing (not me), or simply find ourselves–closer and more meaningfully than ever? Maybe not. But let’s prospect within, not without, and see if it nets us something cooler than a warming planet, something cooler than the hellish same.