Aravaipa Canyon
Poems and Thoughts from the Anxious Poet
Aravaipa Canyon The walking is hard, a steepening path ramping up into the canyon. It makes you catch your breath, you have to stop. As the cool desert dark gives way to the browbeating heat you are already sweating. Looking back, you glimpse Aravaipa creek, still steeped in Apache tears, where you washed before dawn. The way in flattens out but you are still hindered by the rockiness of the path, now snaking on ahead as you begin your search for a sentinel place. A space presents itself as the wind and the needled edge of the saguaro cactus, speak of the solitude that you bargain away for acquaintance. You make a camp defined by a rock circle, the chaffing song of the cactus wren stirs your anxiety as a soft creature in a place of hardness. At last you become a hidden cache of silence as the dust of the trail blows over your camp and you notice how sharp everything is. The cholla cactus sticks to anything that passes, like your unspoken desires, snagging you, propagating. As the dusk falls its glow sinks into the valley, unsullied night is broken only by the cloud of starry witnesses testifying to the ceremonies that endings demand. You imagine all the creatures that live in this place: Lion, Snake, Scorpion, Bear, echoing the unrest of the powers in your sleep. The night cools the day’s anvil and you behold, each time you stir, the Milky Way over you like another dream. Your sequestered vigil ends as the second dawn brightens the canyon’s edge and the countless saguaro regather their ancient shadows and you find your own waiting for you on the track. Retracing your steps you find a cactus rib, the inner scaffold of an old giant laying staff-like in your path and it feels like a call. The rib of this creature in your hand guiding you on the path that frees your heart from its cage. You cut down the arroyo with care, as distant rains can flood the sandy gulch, trails not made by human feet. Coming back to the ranch, the dust from the canyon billows off you and you remember what happened here, you hear the ground calling for reparation, marking you out, scarring you like this land and you accept there will always be a frontier in your life that you name Aravaipa. (Aravaipa was the site of an Apache Massacre in 1871)
It is a while since I posted. Life has been full on. My Wife Wilma broke her arm on June 30th and has not been able to drive. She is making a great recovery but, as you can imagine it has made life very full. We have actually had some great time together as I have driven her to various appointments and outings.
We are also rehearsing for a gig on Thursday August 15th - a benefit for the local Labour party. We have sold over 100 tickets, so this will be the biggest audience we have played to. Thankfully Wilma will be recovered enough to play her tenor guitar and sing. If you are in Sheffield pease come along - it promises to be a great night. Tickets available here Click
I post the poem above as I have been reading a great book by an author called Bill Plotkin entitled The Journey of Soul Initiation: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Revolutionaries, and Evolutionaries: A Field Guide for Visionaries, Revolutionaries, and Revolutionaries
He speaks often and at length about the connection between the psyche and the natural world, especially the wilderness. It reminded me of my two trips to Aravaipa Canyon in Arizona. Part of the Sonoran deserts of the California and the South West of the USA. The cactus’s seemed straight-out of my childhood westerns and the landscape is overwhelmingly wild and beautiful.
I spent two solo periods of over 24 hours in Aravaipa Canyon some 13 miles from a major road sitting under the Brandenburg mountain. The poem describes my second visit. This is what Bill Plotkin says at the beginning of his book about the sort of work I was trying to do in these trips and what the poem is trying to articulate.
This is a field guide to an ecstatic and hazardous odyssey that most of the world has forgotten — or not yet discovered — an essential spiritual adventure for which you won't find clear or complete maps anywhere else in the contemporary Western world. This journey, which begins with a dying, enables you to grow whole and wild in a way that has become rare.’
This sounds very grand and in fact my experience was anything but grand. When we arrived at the ranch that is at the opening to the canyon we were handed a leaflet. It enunciated every type of creature that lived in the canyon that could harm, or worse, kill you. Tarantulas, Gila Monsters, Rattlesnakes, Scorpions, Javelina (a kind of wild boar), Mountain Lions and it stated at the end ‘remember Bears wander the rim of the canyon’. I was terrified, being from the United Kingdom we are inured against this type of wildness. We have extraordinary wild places but they are not populated by such an array of tooth and claw. Even the flora and fauna of Aravaipa was sharp.
An American friend on the same jaunt reminded me that I am an animal too. I have in my DNA the same instincts as the more than human world. Think like an animal he advised, You can hear from the poem I did my best. These kind of experiences heighten and sharpen our sense of where we are in our lives and what might be the horizon we are facing.
We were given a tarp and sent off with some David Whyte poetry to read during our solo time and up we walked into the canyon. I found a spot and made a camp. We were encouraged by the leaders to stay in that place for the next 24 hours, no food just water and some gatorade for the hike out.
Once I settled in and realised the tooth and claw redness was actually as vulnerable and cautious, as rapacious and defended as I am. I ended up being disappointed that nothing of fur or exoskeleton came anywhere near me. I did see a rattlesnake sunning itself as I walked in. The wind on my tarp in the middle of the night sounded like a bear whacking it to my imagination! It was just the wind however, and it was fortuitous as I got to see the incredible panoply of the Milky Way arcing over my head.
I don’t remember the specifics of my life at those times. I do know they both helped me find the frontier I was facing and gave me the courage to face it and walk towards it. That was so much better than being with unconscious of it or wasting my time trying to avoid its demands.
I kept looking at the white tree near my site. It felt like a summons or an invitation. I have always, since then, tried to back people who I sense have some gift or leadership potential. I have tried to be mentor and offer anything I can to those that cross my path. If I have led then I tired to lead in such a way as to find the next generation that will step up as I let go. This white tree reminded me of the White Tree of Gondor in The Lord of the Rings. With the loss of good leaders the white tree has withered but once healthy leadership in the form of Aragorn and Arwen is restored then the new sapling of the White tree is found in the wilds and grows in the courts of kingdom. It said to me that leaders and gifted people are often hidden and we need to find and nurture them wherever they emerge. Leadership, it said to me, is about working yourself out of a job, it is not about you.
On the hike out of the canyon I found in my path the rib of a Saguaro Cactus. These are the woody scaffolding that hold these ancient giants up. Apparently each arm can take up to 60 years to grow. I suppose they are like our oak trees in this country. When you stand near them you can hear this lonely whispering as the wind crosses their spines. Finding this rib right across the trail in my path again felt like a sign or an intimation from the natural world. I took it as a token of walking and travelling. It spoke to me at the time of the wizard, of magic and the spellbinding world I was striding out of.
I wrote in a poem at the time
No more can I pass the gap that gates
the path unnoticed, stepping through
towards mossy trees and fish’s glimmer,
novice to the green flame in the bud.
This magic is the fierce embrace
of all that makes up our life’s course,
uttered bold in faith to the deep
unsleeping witness of the dark.
From the collection Arriving In Magic
As I traversed my breakdown in 2014 and onwards I realised that I am not the Magician - that the Magician archetype is to be served and flows in and around us at times, if we are blessed. It comes to us disguised as our everyday life as the poem intimates.
A friend on the event in Arizona was keen for me to have the Saguaro staff. He Fed-exed it to me as I wouldn’t be able to take it on the plane. It took two months to reach me. Unfortunately, it first went to Sheffield - Australia. Then he managed to track it down and have it sent to Germany and then to me in the UK! It was battered but just about in one piece. It now speaks to me of the long night sea journeys that we have to take. It also says to me that once you have been the scaffolding for your family there is a life of a different kind as you age. Stay upright but not too ossified or inflexible. These are the continued frontiers we negotiate in our lives. In that vein here is a final thought from Bill Plotkin.
“As Carl Jung repeatedly declared, our goal is wholeness, not perfection. People living soulcentrically are not untroubled or unchallenged. They are not beyond experiencing times of confusion, mistakes, and tragedies. They have by no means healed all their wounds. They are simply on a path to wholeness, to becoming fully human- with all the inevitable defects and distresses inherent in any human story and with all the promise held by our uniquely human imagination.”
― Bill Plotkin
Here is one of my Anxious Poet’s Podcasts that also uses this poem.
Arriving in Magic and all my poetry is available at my books