A bruised, battered, bottom-of-the-mountain perspective

We live in rare place.

It’s a city that doesn’t hide what it was before it was a city. A city that can’t hide what it was before it was a city because the raw, unadulterated desert rises like dragon’s teeth all around us.

The trails leading up and down those places are wildly popular. Piestewa Peak. Camelback Mountain. South Mountain. North Mountain. It goes on. They draw some of us to them. It’s not as if we don’t like our comfortable homes or all the amenities that come with them. It’s just that we know that Arizona – the real Arizona – lies underneath all the asphalt and concrete and high-rises and golf courses and shopping malls.

The way we live, the way we carve up, cover up and fence out the wildness causes us to forget that sometimes.

We've “civilized” just about everything in the desert. We've scraped off most of the landscape and replaced it with grass and pavement and houses and so on. In most places around the Valley, the desert doesn't look anything like the actual desert.

Even places with so-called “desert landscaping” are less reflective of the desert and more the passive manifestations of what we'd like a desert to be. Tidy. Safe. Carefully designed and sculpted by professional landscapers, complete with hidden drip systems so that each cactus, shrub, tree and flower is healthy and hearty.

It’s not that way in the mountain parks and preserves.

The trails leading up the peaks and mountains within the city are like rough stairways to the past.

Early last week my wife and I decided to head to one of those places. It was a glorious day. Cloudy but not overcast. Patches of blue sky were visible between bloated, cotton candy clouds that seemed so low you could reach up and pull off a piece.

On this particular day we picked North Mountain. It’s a little steeper than some hikes but not as long and the view, like the view from most of the city’s peaks, is glorious.

And it was just that.

I lingered a little longer at the top than the lovey woman in my company and was eager to catch up to her on the way down. One of the great things about visiting the raw desert of a mountain park is that all the creature comforts of the city are a short drive from the parking lot below. Home. A restaurant. That glass of wine you’d been thinking about.

That I’d been thinking about — when I should have been thinking about the trail.

I’ve lived here for decades and after a time it’s possible to forget that the lovely patches of wilderness we have within city limits are, in fact, wild and potentially dangerous places.

On a relatively steep part of the descent, my thoughts already returned to civilization, I stepped on what I thought was solid stone that flew out from under my foot and sent me tumbling.

It’s not a good place to fall. There is nothing soft or smooth.

Scratched up, banged up, bruised up, and with eight staples needed to close the gash in my head, I was lucky.

Individuals get hurt in Phoenix mountain parks each year. Some die from their injuries. I’ve lived here a long time and walked the trails a lot and wondered how such things could happen. Now I know.

We live in rare place.

It’s a city that doesn’t hide what it was before it was a city. A city that can’t hide what it was before it was a city because the raw, unadulterated desert rises up like dragon’s teeth all around us.

Forget that, even for an instant, and they might bite you in the ...