Bonus Round

*Author's Note: This is my second-last blog post. The one after this will be my final entry.

"You do not have to walk on your knees for a thousand miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves... Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting - over and over announcing your place in the family of things." - Mary Oliver

For Caileigh, who reminded me to do what I love, "and f*** the rest".

"Excuse me," I approached the front desk at the Hilton with a paper cup filled with nothing but sugar and hazelnut creamer, "I think your coffee's empty." I motioned to the complimentary pot that was always fresh and hot in the lobby. The desk clerk refilled it right away and apologized no less than three times for this extreme inconvenience. I didn't bother telling him I'd shared my last hotel room with a tarantula.

I was determined to wait for Mom to eat dinner, no matter how late it got. Although I had no qualms dining alone, the notion of catching up over a shared meal was much more appetizing. For lunch I'd had an orange float at the Sugar Bowl, a 50's-style diner, soda fountain and Old Town Scottsdale institution. After that I'd gone through something of a nesting process, walking down the road to Fry's to buy apples and granola bars in case Mom was too tired to go out, then putting on makeup and a clean shirt. I knew she was my mom and she would love me no matter what I looked like, but for some reason I was nervous.

She knocked on my door at eight-thirty and we had a leisurely dinner at P.F. Chang's (I hadn't had Asian food in three months), during which we hardly stopped talking long enough to eat.

She had a rental car and told me that on no uncertain terms was I allowed to drive it, since you have to be twenty-five to rent a car in Arizona and I wasn't on the insurance policy anyway. I was more than happy to let her take the wheel.

In the morning we took Carefree Highway - a metaphor that was not lost on me - to Flagstaff. I relaxed, for once, in the passenger's seat, my bare feet propped on the dash and the window rolled down to let in the hot desert air. As the road started to climb, we passed signs indicating "runaway truck ramps" and those instructing drivers to "please turn off air conditioning next 25 m.". The incline was steep, and in 120-degree weather, overheated engines were an everyday occurrence.

Around the elevation of six thousand feet, the sky-worshiping saguaro cacti I loved so much (an old Arizona cowboy once told me each of their arms takes one human lifetime to grow) yielded to the Ponderosa pine forests I loved more. Their orange bark perfumed the fresh mountain air with the scent of vanilla. The tawny sand morphed into cottage country. The thermometer on the dash dropped to eighty-five, and we began to see signs for elk crossings. Mom thought they were moose.

From our room at the Flagstaff Courtyard by Marriott (another palace), we could see the San Francisco Peaks crowning the Colorado Plateau, the highest of which, Humphrey's Peak, overlooks the entirety of Arizona from a throne of 12,633 feet. I know from memory that, in the winter, it's capped with snow. The first thing we did was go for lunch/dinner (it was four-thirty but we were starving) at Salsa Brava, a family-owned Mexican restaurant on Historic Route 66. Mom ordered fish tacos and a four-dollar Happy-Hour margarita. Me, I had a Sioux City Sarsaparilla and what might be my favourite food in the world: chicken enchiladas in authentic, homemade mole sauce and the requisite sides of red rice and refried beans. The mole was real-deal - dark, rich, smoky and chocolatey, not that one-note milk sold in cans at Latin grocers.

The next morning I went riding at Hitchin' Post Ranch. The website advertised a "Wild West experience" complete with an "authentic cowboy cookout" breakfast. I was sure it would be a joke compared to the multi-day trek in Peru. Still, I wasn't about to pass up the opportunity to explore the Coconino National Forest on horseback. A relaxed, scenic trail ride was exactly what I was in the mood for.

"We just have to be a bit careful in some of the meadows coming up," Caileigh, my baby-faced trail guide called back over her shoulder when we rode out. "There's a big ol' grizzly in the area and Sarah's spotted a couple of mountain lions. It'll be much safer once I turn eighteen," she added, "and I can get my carry pistol."

As...unnerving as Caileigh was for a young person, she was equally admirable and inspiring. The oldest of nine children, her parents had wanted her to go to law school. She'd responded with a flat-out 'no'. Like me, she'd fallen inexplicably and irrevocably in love with horses before she could walk, and had known ever since that she wanted to spend her life working with them. At seventeen, she'd lived and worked as a wrangler all over the U.S. She enjoyed free room and board at the Hitchin' Post and lived off a small salary and tips. But she didn't do it for the money, she said. With her experience, she'd been offered jobs at other ranches for three times what she made now, but she'd found her niche in the world. When I told her I'd come back to Flagstaff for inspiration, she replied that the most inspiring experience to be had here was to ride bareback out into the middle of a meadow after dark, and gaze up at the stars.

We started out in the pine forest, which eventually opened into a meadow walled by the smooth grey faces of Walnut Canyon. The bear lived in the caves up there, Caileigh said. Once she figured out she was among her own kind, she offered to pick up the pace. We covered the rest of the meadow at that easy, rolling, rocking-horse lope of Western quarter horses. It felt good to be on what I considered a 'real' horse again. Our mountain ponies in Peru were certainly hardy and unbeatable in terms of nerve and sure-footedness, but they were closer to Spanish barbs or Paso Finos than the mounts I was used to. They were compact and gaited, with a trot so smooth you could carry a glass of champagne without spilling a drop. It almost didn't feel like riding a horse at all. The hefty chestnut I was riding now stood close to sixteen hands. His stride was long and springy, my cadillac to Peru's off-road four-wheelers.

Our route took us back up into the woods, where we happened upon an elk. She was huge. She stood facing us with one foreleg cocked, poised to run but ready to come closer if she decided we weren't a threat.

The camp was a cluster of antique chuck wagons in a clearing. Caileigh told me they'd been functional in the 1800's, but were now used for storage and ornament around the ranch. We dismounted and I followed her to the cook tent, which was bursting at the seams with women, all of which looked younger than I. One legit-looking cowgirl wearing a belt buckle, plaid blouse and hat with the long rope of a braid trailing over her shoulder was standing over a cast-iron skillet at the propane burner, flipping pancakes.

I sat on a water cooler in the corner and listened to them trade off rides they had scheduled that day. "Are you the new wrangler?" The girl with the braid asked finally.

"No," Caileigh chimed in on my behalf. "She's my morning ride."

"You're it?" The girl looked down at her other skillets overflowing with scrambled eggs, sausage and bacon. "I made too much food."

I shrugged, speaking for myself this time. "You're not gonna make me eat alone, are you?"

"We don't usually do this," Caileigh laughed as the five of us sat around the cook tent eating pancakes with our fingers. "You might be my favourite ride ever."

I smiled at the compliment, though the truth was this was way more fun for me than having an isolation-breakfast in the fancy dining tent. Sipping hot cocoa out of a Styrofoam cup and listening to the girls recount their days, from the first 5AM feeding to the last evening trail ride, I suddenly couldn't get Toby Keith's "Should've Been A Cowboy" out of my head. Caileigh was saying she wanted to try bronc riding.

We rode back to the ranch. Mom had finished her shopping spree at Ross Dress For Less and drove me to the hotel to shower before we went downtown that afternoon. At least that's what I thought we were doing. "Where are we going?" I wanted to know when Mom started driving in circles, seemingly looking for the best way OUT of town. Then I saw the sign. "Mom, the Grand Canyon is like two hours away!"

"So we'll just drive that way," she shrugged without taking her eyes off the road. "See how far we get. I bet the scenery is gorgeous."

It was. We passed out of the pine forest and into grassy highlands where the wind whispered memories of buffalo herds. Sprawling ranches dotted the plains between Sunset Crater and the San Francisco Peaks, hundred-acre horse havens which to me screamed 'paradise'. Mom and I were having a tug-of-war over the radio, seeking back and forth between modern country and classic rock. The stations were thinning, more of them fading to static as we entered into the Painted Desert. Miles of marbled badlands stretched out on all sides of us, offering nothing but shades of coral, sienna and burnt orange, dry shrubbery and the occasional road sign depicting a fire danger gauge with the plastic dial in the far right red zone of 'extreme'. We saw other signs, too, warnings for 'no smoking', 'no shooting' and 'no campfires'.

The wind was picking up. The storm clouds rolling across the flat line of the horizon were making me nervous. It was almost monsoon season, and a lightning strike in such bone-dry territory could spell disaster. I didn't come this far to die in a brush fire in Northern Arizona.

Trees started to fill in the landscape again and we passed several elk, some tiny calves on knobby knees, others huge stags with impressive racks of antlers. There were also 'mountain lion x-ing' signs. It wasn't until we passed a sign that said "Welcome to Grand Canyon National Park" that I realized Mom had been the one to teach me to focus on the journey rather than the destination. We hadn't expected to get all the way here, and it was for that reason, I think, that we did. One step at a time.

I'd been to the Grand Canyon before, and hadn't necessarily planned on coming back. Once we got there, though, I was glad I had - or, rather, that Mom had made me. We parked at the first viewpoint and looked out at an expanse of spires and cliffs and gorges too great to wrap our heads around. I had a feeling no matter how many times a person saw this, it never got old (figuratively, of course). The towering layered rocks went on forever, an entire world in themselves. Somewhere far below, though we couldn't see it, the Colorado River cut its six-million-year-old path.

There is really no reaction to be had but to stand and stare. It takes several minutes (if it happens at all) to convince the brain that what the eyes are registering is real, and not a background screen on a movie set. I was blown away to be blown away a second time, but I was even more blown away to find that, after everything I'd seen over the past three months, the crowning jewel by a landslide was not only unplanned, but closest to home. Drinking in the ocean of impossibility that is the Grand Canyon, there wasn't a doubt in my mind that it was the best thing I'd ever seen in my life. It put even Machu Picchu to shame. The entire ruined city could sit comfortably atop one of the thousands of rocky spurs I was looking out at now. Looking out and in. Into the heart of our world. Out at nothing and everything. I felt as though I'd won the lottery. I realized I'd been blessed with a bonus round, and it was more spectacular than all the rest put together. I've found it's not unusual, when you set out on a quest, that what you're searching for turns out to have been right here all along.