The Sawatch Cowpoke

If I get a little lost don’t worry about me. Just remind me why I do all of this. Shake my spirit slightly and direct my vision to the western setting sky. If I lose myself a little out there, don’t cry for me. The tears aren’t worth the joy that’s being lived. Not very many have been able to hold me down, and I know that few in the future will be able to either. Chances are, If I get lost out there, I planned it anyways. Look to the mountains above, take in their massive beauty. See in detail the rugged crags of their headwalls, the rocky outcroppings from which only the angels and the birds know the view. I mean to be there. It is where I belong. It is where I feel whole. My mind wanders there often. Every morning that I wake, my ambition swells with another day to go out there. One would be hard-pressed to find something that can hold me back for too long. The determination of a man unfettered, the wild stubbornness of a grizzled mountain goat. The ferocity of a pit-vipe...

“You alright!?” I heard a thud and a few timid footsteps short after on the quaint ridgeline above me. “We’re chilling,” AJ announced out loud enough for me to hear over the insulation of the desert bush between us. I looked up to the sky. Shortly after 2:45PM and the sun was still beaming down on us from high in the atmosphere. It was early March in southern Arizona, but that never guaranteed that it wasn’t hot. We were dead-set in the northeast corner of the eastern section of the park, making our way down from the infamous “Finger Rock” formation near Wasson Peak. This place had a thing or two to leave me with before it’d let me leave with some pictures and a good tale to tell. Behind the red-washed and pink sunset pictures of high-desert hills teeming with the quintessential large Saguaro cacti, sprawls one of the most underrated wilderness areas in the American southwest. Encircling the northeast, east, and western sides of Tucson, Arizona, lies the very large expanse of Sagu...