Cliff Park
Maybe not a complete thought. Just a moment.
Parking–finally–is a godsend, because driving in alien cities makes me anxious. “You have arrived” comes to my ears like sweet honey on toast. Hot air hits as I exit the rental car. Something they don’t tell you about the desert air is how light it is. Ninety degrees in the East does not clog the lungs like ninety degrees in the West. It’s hot, don’t get me wrong, but I feel like I can move. Back home, hot weather is like wading through soup. Another reason why I like it here.
The place doesn’t look like much. A grassy hill with pine trees scattered about. Actual pine. Not how back West when I look at Douglas fir and go “Oh look, pine!” Real honest to goodness pine trees. Admittedly, they are weird to me, splaying out in all directions. Little green fireworks clumped up together.
The hill goes up and up, and I can kind of see this large shape looming behind the trees. I start circling the park, trying to find a path. Anxious someone is watching me, always anxious on this trip. I had a panic attack in the hotel room the night before. Not even a six-hour car ride can stop me from overthinking! It’s sorta a talent of mine. A path makes itself known to me, something small and scraggly and far from official. An unknown kind of plant drapes over this path, creating an almost tunnel. I dive in, hiding from the imaginary eyes I think are following me. Halfway up the hill I notice a homeless person’s sleeping quarters off to the side. A hoodie and a sleeping bag crumpled in the dry grass. I keep on, hoping I’m not disturbing anyone.
It dawns on me halfway up the hill that the unknown plant that’s been brushing against me is poison oak. Given I don’t know what poison oak looks like, this sends me into a spiral. I was already ripe for the picking given my anxiety from traveling and driving in remote cities, so this is a borderline crisis for me. I manage to get myself together, taking a picture with my phone. The iPhone plant identifier will know what to do. But of course, to my dismay, the plant identifier isn’t working right now, because it never really does when you’re out in the real world needing plant identification. It’s not like this is an emergency or anything. I wave this away and tell my overthinking brain to shut up. Try to avoid the plant for now, and if I start getting a rash I’ll deal with it when the time comes. Onward and upward, toward the plateau.
The heat bears down on me, but it still feels good. As I’ve been hot this summer, I’ve been reminding myself of Olympian winters. Always the cold, damp feet. Never being completely comfortable. Happily ready to jump off a bridge if given the chance. Enjoy the warmth while it lasts, I think. Soak up the sun. I walk along craggily rock formations. Up up and up. Something rustles in the bushes. Something big. Well, kinda big. I come to a small opening, to an official path. Concrete! Stairs, but fenced off by a half-assed chain link fence. The rustling continues, and a large bird lands in front of me. Gray and fat, the size of a small chicken. I tell it hello, and it flies away as if this is offensive. Not to be discouraged, I pull out my bird identification app. This one works, unlike the plant one. California quail. Don’t have that at home, or if we do I’ve rarely seen one. What a special occurrence. Another sign that this day is good.
Stairs. Another obstacle, but not really. A section of chain link has been placed over, perhaps even “tossed about,” the stairs up to where I’m headed. Not secured down in the slightest. It’s easy for me to duck under one side and continue my journey up. Part of me worries that this place has been sanctioned off for a reason. Perhaps construction. Or danger. Or poison oak. But another part of me, a stronger part of me, tells that part to once again shut up. It’s fine.
The steps are a bit of a slog, but I break the surface, coming up to an empty field of grass. Yellow and dead as hell, it covers the whole surface. A jagged stone wall encapsulates the entire thing. It’s a plateau, really. I used to be obsessed with plateaus as a child, seeing as they were the setting for the prehistoric jungle in Conan Doyle’s The Lost World. Despite this, I don’t get to summit many plateaus, so this is a treat. Even though, really, there’s nothing up here.
It’s a bit alien, the whole thing. Every two feet a sharp rock juts out of the wall like a spike. On one end I see a hole in the wall, like someone kicked it down. A circle of empty Taco Bell hot sauce packets scatter along the center. Signs of witchcraft. I take my sunglasses off out of respect. For some reason, this feels to be a holy place.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Heat.
Nice.
Besides a very small corner from where I entered, there is no shade on this whole plateau. The sun beats down, and again, I don’t hate it. Instead, I sit in front of the hole in the wall, beginning to draw it in my notebook. Might as well remember this. I’m no good, but it doesn’t matter.
I know Mom used to come here, when she lived in Spokane. This was years before me. I wonder if she ever drew this wall. I can imagine her and her friends coming up here at night, dancing and laughing under a full moon. There was a full moon last night, come to think of it. A supermoon. An eerie coincidence. I text Mom pictures of the clearing.
“It used to be green. Lush,” she writes back. It’s hard for me to imagine this. For some reason, the dead grass fits the spot tell. I hunker down in the shade corner, flattening the grass like a deer’s nest. Reaching into my bag, I pull out a fresh copy of The Faggots and Their Friends Between Revolutions–something I found at a downtown bookstore only thirty minutes before. It seems like the right book to read, in a place like this, a portal to somewhere else. A breeze cools me, rustling through the grass blades.
Quiet.
No longer anxious.
Crack open the book.
Cool.