FEATURE ARTICLE     
Sanctum Southwest   

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Share an enchanted trek up Mount Baldy in eastern Arizona 
with outdoor writer and photographer, Ron Harris:

SANCTUM SOUTHWEST

by Ron Harris

Five hours later, we reached our summit. The empty sky had been pale turquoise hiking out in the morning; now the gathering clouds of noon were herded by a cold and constant wind onto the shoulders of lesser peaks around us. Soon, we would be shrouded in a slate grey gauze of mist and rain.

We could go no higher and the still sunlit vista to the east wouldn't last long. The August rain shadow was about to divest its daily deluge onto this mystical mountain, announcing itself with thunder that began with a low kettledrum roll and ended in an ear-splitting crash. In the windy silences between, lightening illuminated the linings of surrounding thunderheads with a shimmering chatoyance at once ethereally beautiful and electrically lethal.

We could go no higher because the bare talus and gravel of the actual summit wasn't just forbidding; it was forbidden. Before us was the barren windswept pantheon of Apache gods, the cloud-shrouded castle keep of the Crown Dancers, the Holy of Holies of all Apacheria.

We stood in the doorway of a great cathedral, denied the transept by a small, yellow metal sign nailed to a decaying four-by-four, supported by a cairn of rock:

United States Department of the Interior
Bureau of Indian Affairs
Boundary
Fort Apache Indian Reservation

The slightly higher summit beyond is a kiva of spirits. Only members of the White Mountain Apache Tribe are permitted. Even as we watched, dim figures faded in through the vapor, moving slowly toward us from the hazy dome of the peak.

The movement distracted us from our breathtaking panorama. The Apaches walked slowly, a few yards apart, bent forward, peering intently at the ground. From time-to-time, they bent down, picked something up, examined it and moved on. They seemed oblivious to the impending storm.

To the east, over the wind-blasted treeline of gnarled and stunted stumps, the sun bathed the whole of the Apache National Forest, the Escudilla Wilderness and New Mexico beyond. The lakes decorating the landscape like glistening, Navajo jewels, were testimony to the volume of water this mountain wrings from the sky onto Arizona's desiccate deserts.

Northward, the Painted Desert was dappled with light and shadow as wooly clouds slid over the great mesas of the Navajo and Hopi. Rays of sunlight poured through towering thunderheads onto the surreal landscape of the Petrified Forest, spotlighting an otherworldly graveyard of giant Sequoia trunks which have lain where they fell, back when the Earth was young.

Southward, darker clouds dimmed the distant Bear Wallow Wilderness, the rimrock border of the San Carlos Reservation and the great Sonoran Desert beyond.

But the approach of the Apaches recalled our attention to the bare shouldered boulders of the summit. As far to the south-west as we could see, an undulating, opaque curtain of rain slanted down onto the forest of pine and fir. Fort Apache Reservation was disappearing as the watery pale slowly climbed the slopes to where we stood.

For all the hiking and bending they had done, the Apaches appeared empty-handed. They carried no bags and were lightly dressed in the dichotomous costume almost uniform on Apache reservations. Grandmother appeared the most traditional, in moccasins, full ankle-length cotton skirt and scarf, but the frayed, silver satin warm-up jacket jarred her ethnic image. The rest of the family -- parents and a pair of beautiful, raven haired children -- wore similar habit, shod in those ubiquitous and anachronistic white "athletic" shoes.

"Hon-Dah!," I said, over the wind. It was my entire Apache vocabulary.

"Hello," the father replied. The adults smiled as they walked by and the youngsters examined us silently over their shoulders as they vanished into the misty trees of their ancestral land.

Closer and closer crawled the pelting rain. From a rock cairn, we turned a full circle for one long, last look. Then, realizing we were doubtless the tallest lighting rods in eastern Arizona, we began our recessional to the shelter of the old growth forest canopy.
 

In the woods, the storm gentled to a whisper, dampened by the leafy, autochthonous thicket that is the Mount Baldy Wilderness. Strolling back down the narrow path, we listened to thunder roll down the lee slope of Baldy like massive bowling balls, onto the meadows below. Now there was only the dripping from lofty tree limbs onto the ferns and moss of the verdant forest floor.

In the cool quiet, punctuated only by scurrying squirrels or clucking blue grouse, we sought the tiny spring birthplace of the Little Colorado River. The seven miles between Sheep's Crossing trailhead and the alpine tundra of the summit knobs, consists largely of steep switchbacks which often afford outstanding views. Pauses, for sight-seeing and breath-catching, are frequent.
 

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