the Smell of South Mountain
Yesterday I went to South Mountain to ride my bike. I nearly expired from the heat. It was 106, I think, but I wanted to ride. My mother and sister both insisted that it was too hot, which only made me more determined.
It was 3:30 in the afternoon and I thought that it should be cooling off. Silly. Fifteen minutes on the freeway took me to South Mountain park. I got out of my father�'s Nissan pickup truck to unload my bike and immediately the smell of South Mountain overcame me. Much of my work as an undergraduate aspiring photographer was undertaken at South Mountain. When I first moved to Arizona, I spent a lot of time at South Mountain hiking. I was living with this awful woman who was not entirely awful, but mostly awful. We were captivated by Lynn V. Andrews and her tales of spiritual journeys with her shaman guide, Agnes Whistling Elk. I was 20 years old when I arrived in Arizona. I was young and full of a nai�ve belief in the existence of right and wrong. I became a vegetarian; I read Riane Eisler'�s The Chalice and the Blade; I subscribed to the Utne Reader and I joined the Tempe Green Party.
South Mountain stills smells the same as it did then. It is the smell of the hot desert mixed with the artificial green of the adjoining golf course. It is desert dust, scorching rocks and silent creatures who skitter about as you move in the oven-like heat. The smell is beautiful. I love the desert. The heat is so consuming and it is wonderfully intoxicating. Once you resign yourself to the fact that you will be hot and sweaty, the penetrating heat is uplifting and purifying in its intensity.
I arrived at South Mountain quite unprepared for mountain biking in the heat. I had plenty of water, but it was unwise of me to believe that I could simply dive into a ride in the most intense heat of the day. About one mile into the ride, I felt like I might vomit. I tried to keep going, thinking that I just needed to get my rhythm. I never hit a good rhythm until I have ridden two miles--�always. It takes two miles before I feel good riding; before I hit the two mile mark, I ask myself, over and over again, "why I am doing such a demanding thing?' On this day, when I hit the one and a half mile mark, I knew I had to turn back. I was concerned that I had perhaps pushed it too far. And I had, although I survived. At this point, the sun pounding on the back of my calves was producing a burning sensation, as if my legs were in contact with a piece of metal that had been sitting in the sun for hours. My face was entirely red and it felt like it would explode from the heat. I kept pedaling, hoping that I would not collapse and embarrass myself. The newspaper headline my mother had offered before I departed was spinning in my head: �'Boston Woman Collapses in the Arizona Desert, Rescue Necessary.�'
�No, no, no. I will not stop; I might puke, but I will not collapse,� I said over and over to myself.
I barely made it back to my father'�s truck. I had ridden a total of three miles, which, under usual circumstances, is pathetic. However, in this case, it was incredibly bold. I managed to load the bike back into the back of the truck, although I was not entirely certain that I would be capable of doing so. I got in the truck and cranked the air conditioning. My left eye was in spasm and blurry; the eyelid was quivering uncontrollably. I began to shiver. I was so hot that I was shivering. My hands felt like they were cramped into the riding position and, as I tried to move them, the muscles resisted. I was a little frightened that I was either having a stroke or a heart attack. I began to drive the truck back to my parent�s house and thought to myself how foolish it was for me to drive in this condition. But I drove and I made it back. My eye stopped its spasm after about ten minutes. I had a pins and needles feeling in my hands as I continued to clench and unclench my fists in an effort to loosen them. I kept one hand on the wheel as I curled and uncurled the fingers of the other.
I made it back without crashing my dad'�s truck. I parked it in the garage, got my bike out of the back and unloaded my gear. I entered the house; my mom was sitting in her recliner and she looked up and inquried, �"You'�re back already?�"