Go Put Your Hand Upon a Mountain

When I was sixteen, my mother planned to move to Arizona. I had two more years of high school left, and my parents gave me a choice of going with her, or staying with my dad in my original hometown in Ohio. At that time, there was much about my childhood that felt like leaves swiftly falling from me. Going across the country to a new climate, new city, new school, new everyone, felt inevitable in some part of me, like I was answering a call. As fanciful as it sounds, I sometimes believe that it was the mountains that were calling. They do call to people, and in some that call is loud enough to change a life for. Before I left Tucson for Seattle, I met a woman who moved to Arizona simply and only because she "had never put her hand upon a mountain". She intended to do so before her time on earth was over. This is my witness of her calling.

The Santa Catalinas at sunset

I first encountered this lady in a department store, right at closing time, on the east side of Tucson. I heard her talking to clerks and humming to herself as she made her way around the maze of racks stuffed with clothing. I couldn't see her because she was somewhat petite, but I could hear a fragrant lilt in her voice that rose above the scraping of hangers. When talking to her later that evening, she placed her accent for me as Texan, from where she had just moved that year. Her darker skin, along with her notable voice, made her seem out of her element, which caused me to worry that she was alone and vulnerable so late at night as she walked across the vast parking lot to the bus stop in high wedged heels and a bright skirt.

The city bus is not the most normal mode of transport in that city, as it is in others. It might have started out as a one-cow town, but it is now a million car-town. In my college days, I had stood at bus stops and climbed aboard these pungent lurching carnival shows on a regular basis, before I had my own wheels. The bus stops in Tucson can be a meet-up for odd intersections of humanity, like outposts on various planets that are not economically sound, and sometimes collect the mentally unstable.

Stranded citizens, Source: The Tucson Citizen

A few minutes later, as I was walking toward my mini-van of Rolling Motherhood, a haven of well-stocked safety and comfort, she was doubling back toward the store, talking on her cell phone. She was speaking to the transit company about her bus being late, which would mean she would miss the last transfer of the night. When I heard how much time she would be spending at bus stops in the dark, and ending up near the military base, I knew I would be unsettled about her for the rest of the night. Of course, there are many ways that she could have been creating a false scenario in order to con people, but I took my chances, and offered her a ride. On her side, she had to assess if I was a threat to her, as well as the nightfall. Fortunately, we were both harmless and a little giddy to find that in each other.

She nervously chatted to me about herself, and told me that she and her husband had arrived in Tucson a few months previously. She had found a job at a hair salon within walking distance of their apartment, and her husband landed a spot with the Electric Company. On their first night in town, the car that brought them and their belongings was stolen right outside their motel room. I apologized on behalf of my city for such a terrible welcome. She had found her courage to leave her extended family, lose the security of both of their jobs, and follow her calling, only to meet with immediate and severe loss. Unfortunately, that sounds about right for a pilgrim's progress.

Ruby slippers come in all shapes and sizes

I noticed during all of her sweet and tangy voiced storytelling that she didn't say that her husband felt likewise called to the mountains. His courage and sacrifice might deserve a Congressional Medal. Or maybe his calling was to love his wife. Or maybe he was fed up with her and resentful, and anywhere different would do fine, if only to stop the ringing in his ears. We'll never know, because I feared to tread into that territory. But what is easily apparent is that a change of environment can be enough of a catalyst to get us farther along the path of growing up, both suddenly and gradually. Mountains themselves are formed this way-- great heaving cataclysms of mineral thrusting up through the earth when continental boundaries collide, and millennia of earth settling and fusing around them into formations that inspire names and mythologies. Perhaps both collisions and settlings had brought this couple to this valley, surrounded by ranges with diverse geologic histories and appearances.

Continued in Part 2