A Walker in the Suburbs

Last weekend, I pulled off a surprise party for Tom. I had partners in crime, especially my daughters, but I was feeling the pressure. Would one of us give it away? Would guests arrive on time?

My worries were for naught. Partygoers arrived promptly, parked where instructed (away from the house), and did everything they could to throw the birthday boy off the scent.

Now that the dust has settled I’ve been thinking about the nature of surprises, how people like to be in on them. So many of life’s sudden revelations are unpleasant ones. A call in the night. A rushed trip to the hospital.

To participate in a happy surprise is a gift. In fact, it’s as much a gift for the bystander as for the guest of honor, who may be in shock.

Does this mean I want to plan another surprise party anytime soon? No thank you!

Photo by Beverly Tomb

I woke to a foggy world. The snow still carpeting my backyard seems to be rising into the air, transforming itself from a solid to a gas, skipping the liquid state altogether. Is there a name for this?

Yes, there is. It’s sublimation, I learn, or relearn, since surely I was tested on this at some point in my schooling. Sublimation is the noun; sublime is the verb.

It doesn’t look sublime (adjective). It looks like a soggy mess. Tufts of ground cover emerge from the now-softened snowcrete. A lone limb lies helter-skelter under the witch hazel tree. It’s more Ash Wednesday than Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday it is, though. Also not sublime, because this day of feasting precedes a day of fasting. On the other hand, I have some time before the boom is lowered. I think I’ll go downstairs now and have a piece of cake for breakfast. Now that is sublime.

I’m just in from a shoveling session. Having spent Sunday and Monday in a snow-induced, soup-making fog, I woke up Tuesday to a weather report that showed single-digit lows the rest of the week. This frozen world won’t be thawing anytime soon. It was time to join the shoveling crew.

I started with the snow shovel and quickly realized that using it alone was like raking leaves with a fork. A regular shovel was required, a tool with a sharp edge that could chip away at the several inches of frozen stuff on top of the fluffier white precipitation underneath.

The funny thing about this top layer, though, is how I finally removed it. I used my shovel as a fulcrum and pried it up. Chunks loosened and cracked, like tectonic plates. I tried to use my best form as I crouched low to pick up each ice floe and toss it into the yard.

In this way, ever-so-slowly, the dark macadam began to emerge. Expose enough of it and there’s traction.

(From a long-ago, fluffier snow. The car’s the same, though.)

I gave it to myself, a gift of my own devising. A reading day where nothing was expected other than to move my eyes across the page. And move them I did.

First, the Sunday newspaper. A ritual in a long-ago life, reading the paper has become a much quicker endeavor. If I’m rushed I can make it through all the sections in 30 minutes. Gone are the days when I’d pick up the Sunday New York Times on Saturday night, so I wouldn’t have to run out to a newsstand (remember those?) to buy it.

Newspapers are shorter and less inky-messy than they used to be. Time is more precious. But yesterday was devoted to reading, just the same. After the paper I dipped into a couple of different books, finishing one and making progress in another.

After dinner, I watched a movie. It was a day spent largely in other worlds. Not a bad way for a January Sunday to unfold.

(Talk about other worlds: I snapped this photo at the Chiricahua Desert Museum in Rodeo, New Mexico.)

The boxes and bows are sorted and stowed away. I’ve found most of the teenage mutant ninja turtles that hid in my house after Christmas morning. The tsunami wave that is the holidays has peaked and begun to ebb.

What remains is the holiday table. The gathering of kinfolk around a roast or casserole, foods heavier than my usual fare but tasty and festive. Some of these meals have been eaten in chaos, while babies throw their cups on the floor and preschoolers pick at buttered noodles. But others have been nibbled in blissful adults-only configurations. I’ve enjoyed both of these arrangements!

I wish the holiday table would remain indefinitely. Luckily for my waistline, it does not.

(More salads are in my future.)

It was a rare autumn monsoon, pounding the dry desert earth for hours. There was lightning and thunder, but no sign of the Milky Way, which we glimpsed our first night in Portal. The locals welcomed the rain, which had been teasing them for days.

The storm left a world rinsed clean, pockets of blue sky, the Chiricahuas sharp-edged against it. I looked, took a photo, sighed. This is why they call it the Yosemite of Arizona.

After snapping the shot, I climbed in the rental car, punched the gate code one last time, then bumped over the cattle guard, heading first east and north on Historic Highway 80, then west on I-10 to Tucson.

It was a short trip but a powerful one. The American West is like another country. So much so that I expected to queue up for passport control after landing at Dulles. Luckily, that was not required. It was a quick return home to the muted colors of a mid-Atlantic November.

Yesterday we hiked halfway up Silver Peak. We think it was halfway. It certainly felt that way. But it may have been two-fifths or one-third.

It certainly was not all the way. At 7.975 feet, the Silver Peak summit would have provided an awesome view of the Chiricahuas. But we had an awesome view of the Chiricahuas from 5,500 feet, thank you very much.

We could see how far we had climbed. We could glimpse Portal, Arizona, in the distance. A scattering of houses, a single road. Portal is not a bustling metropolis.

Even part way up was enough to provide perspective, which may be the best reason of all to climb a mountain.

We left Bisbee yesterday morning, driving east across a landscape so broad and barren that I could barely take it all in. We tucked into New Mexico then swung back into Arizona, making our way here, to Cave Creek Canyon, where javelinas* graze and trogons** sing.

We hiked down the South Fork Trail, along the embankment of a mostly dry stream bed. Above us a canopy of yellow sycamore leaves. At Cathedral Vista we sat in awe amidst the splendor of the rhyolite cliffs. Here is nature in all its abundance, still and silent and peaceful.

Our hike was limited only by the lack of light. Once the sun dipped behind the cliffs we needed to turn back. And we did, reluctantly.

The mountains here are called the Chiricahua. I’d never heard of them until a few weeks ago. Now I can’t imagine a world without them.

*Javelinas are a type of peccary, similar to a pig. Here, a family of them cross the road.

**Trogons are rare birds somewhat parrot-like in appearance that make a barking cry. People travel here from all over the world to see them.