Go West Young Man Pt. 6

A few times, we got away as a family for a long weekend. Those times were spent in an area called the Mogollon Rim (I always pronounced it as Mug- gie-on Rim). It was my introduction to what Elk were. I remember, we had travelled to the top of the mountain and were heading towards the campground where we would be staying when all of a sudden dad pressed on the brakes and both he and my mom told us kids to look out the passenger side of the van. Sure enough, there were huge shaggy animals next to the road.

As is always imagined and or pictured, the air was just cooler and easier to breathe. I remember waking up in the mornings. All of us were backed into the tent like sardines, but my mom was missing. Quickly, I crawled out of my sleeping bag, the cold morning air greeting my skin. My eyes were still heavy with sleep, but I needed to find Mom. Pulling on pants, a shirt, and my sneakers, I made my way out of the tent. Quietly, the pine needles would crunch under my feet. The light of the sun shone down, but had not chased the chill away. As any young boy would do when out in nature, I found a tree to water and then began looking for Mom. It did not take long to find her. There she sat under a Ponderosa pine tree, her back leaning up against the tree. She wore jeans, tennis shoes, and a flannel shirt. A pair of binoculars hung around her neck. In her lap sat a book. 'Whatcha doing?' I asked loudly. Quietly, she responded that she was watching the birds. Leaning down, I picked up the book and moved it. I then nestled down in her lap and began looking at the book. 'Did you see this bird?' I would ask as I pointed to this picture and that picture. Obviously, the quiet moments that she was having were gone as Nate and a quiet voice just were not connected. We sat there for a while until I simply could not sit still anymore. Then I was up and ready to explore the rugged mountains. The days often consisted of running around the campground, meeting all the other campers. At other times, I was down at the stream casting my fishing line into the water. Every nudge of the rod always made me think I had caught the biggest whale. Sure enough, before long, something would catch my attention, and I would go into the water. Before long, the thoughts of catching Moby Dick had disappeared and now it was just simply time to splash in the water. Man, that mountain water was cold, but the thought of getting out made me slide into the water deeper.

On one occasion, we all crawled into the van and began driving. 'Where are we going?' I asked. The response that I got from the front was, 'We are going to Zane Grey's cabin.' 'Who is Zane Grey? Is he nice?' I responded. 'Zane Grey wrote books. I don't know if he was nice.' was the response. For those who do not know who this author was, he was a 'pioneer' in writing fictional western books. The cabin that was called his hunting camp, where he did a lot of writing, was nestled among Pondarosa Pines. There were a couple of different buildings on the property. What really caught my attention were the cats. There had to have been five or six of them. While Dad and Mom were learning more about the author, there I was outside trying to make friends with all the cats. The problem was that most of them took one look at me, crouched down, and with a hiss, sped off before I could get any closer.

There are many good memories connected to the times we spent up in those Arizona Mountains. Shortly after we moved back to Pennsylvania in 1990, a news story came out. In June of that year, the Dude Fire burned through a section of the Mogollon Rim, burning up over 30,000 acres of trees and killing six firefighters. Included in the losses of the fire was the hideaway known as Zane Grey's cabin. When I heard about it, my first thought was simply what happened to all the cats.

As time passed, it became increasingly apparent that we were in a bad way living at the rehab. Much of the food that we were getting at the Ranch was coming from grocery stores that were throwing away the expired food. Moldy and/or stale bread, we got it. Dumpster diving for eggs out back of McDonald's, check (these days, not a bad idea with the current prices). If there was a cow hit on the road, yep. It was the latter that was the final straw, all puns aside. Someone had donated fresh meat. It was a steer that had been hit on the road near where we lived, a casualty of open range in the area. After dropping off the animal, we then had to process the meat. The issue was that the meat had large amounts of gravel embedded in it, and so all the meat had to be gone through and the stones and pebbles picked out.

That was it. It did not matter if we had been there for a good cause or not. We were moving back east. We loaded up a U-haul truck and our van, said 'À plus tard,' and hit the road. The funny thing about the time out in Arizona was that we had never visited the Grand Canyon. But oh, to know that I would fill a page later on in life with my time at the Canyon.... But that is a story, for another time.