by Mark Johnson

Madera Canyon, Ariz.: Amidst memories of a desert childhood.

I must be dreaming. It is a mid-winter’s day and I am outdoors… comfortable, warm even, in shorts and an “I Love Ouray” tee shirt. My Colorado home seems a million miles away, but a long day’s drive landed me in a time-warp where “the weather suits my clothes.” Yes, “Changes in latitude… changes in attitude.”
In spite of never having raised a literary eyebrow, I find myself playing the loose role of "roving columnist" for Ouray County’s weekly rag (one must take delusions of adequacy where they find them). Editor Todd granted me a somewhat vague “leash"; as a “rover,” I am compelled to test its length and strength.
I am a rover; of that you can be sure. I played rover on more softball teams than I care to remember. In school it didn’t take long for coaches and teachers to grasp that I had the attention span of a lightning bolt… a guy like me tends to fall asleep playing right field. Eventually a coach with a minor in Psych tried me at “roamer,” and discovered that the freedom to move around kept my head in the game. Lesson? Don’t force square pegs into round holes.
In the good ol’ days before Attention Deficit Disorder was invented, teachers kept my head in the “game” by giving me the very thing I seemed to lack, “attention.” As soon as the window commandeered my gaze they would call on me. Kids learn differently, and I was/am not cut to sit with folded hands at a desk all day. Unfortunately, personality traits outside the Bell Curve often resulted in labels like, “daydreamer, short attention span,” or “slow.” Once in the “record,” those kinds of labels cast a long shadow… one that preceded my arrival to the next grade level.
It almost sounds “Dr. Phil,” but we have only to look as far as our parents to find out who, how, why and even where, we are. Make no mistake; each of us charts our own path. But if we could step off our treadmills long enough to have a look around, we just might notice footprints of our progenitors. I came by roving honestly via heredity and environment; vagabonds beget vagabonds, dreamers beget dreamers. Thus I peck out this column from somewhere near the end of my “leash,” camped at the mouth of Madera Canyon where a most verdant Sonoran Desert intersects the pine-topped Santa Rita Mountains.
Up canyon I sit alone beside a creek, bone-warm, reclining against a speckled granite boulder targeted by the sun. I survey my childhood playground, eavesdropping on colorful songbirds, falling water and darting chipmunks in search of their next meal. Sleep nibbles at consciousness… I come to, beside a creek with no ice. I was dreaming but this is not a dream.
I’ve waged a long war with Restless Male Syndrome so I speak with a measure of authority; we take many “lovers” in attempts to sever roots, outrun the reaper and sate freedom’s thirst. To each their own; I haunt orphaned back roads, wilderness trails, ragged coastlines, sky piercing mountains and Saguaro strewn deserts… places that suspend time.
"I would like to thank my parents… Jack Kerouac, and Charles Kuralt," I say to my disinterested foraging friends, "for both the gift and curse of their gypsy ways during my impressionable youth." Songbirds chirp agreement from thorny-limbed, ebony mesquites, while ivory skinned Sycamores, smooth as a lover's cheek, touch a cobalt sky.
My wandering disability makes so little sense I’ve given up trying to explain it. What defective gene is responsible for RMS? What drives the inexplicable need to roam from a perfectly warm and cozy hearth in Lovely Ouray when I know there is no better place on earth? “These things run in families,” explains Dr Phil. Indeed, Mom and Dad were gypsies of “God's will,” a moving target, if you ask me. But if the measure of spirituality is not church, and the measure of wealth is not assets, doesn’t it follow that the measure of Freedom is not wandering? One would think.
Under a wooded canopy I boulder a serpentine creek back to camp. Soon, I’m sipping a full-bodied IPA and savoring the aroma of steak sizzling over embers of mesquite. Though far removed from Lovely Ouray, further from an RMS cure than ever, somewhere near the bottom of a second Long Hammer I sensed that, as with lovers, it is good our separation, home and me, for absence grows a fonder heart.
Yes, my mind does tend to wander, and it pleases me greatly that it takes my body with it.
“Go where he will, the wise man is at home.” Emerson