Boynton Canyon
Rob Rogers
“If you move your hand to the big rock on the right, you can pull yourself up and put your foot where your hand is now.”
The young climber moves tender fingers newly clad in sweet pea nail polish onto the watermelon-sized boulder projecting from the side of the path like a dragon’s tooth, gripping it and gritting her teeth. Admiring her determination, the father wipes his forehead as he catches his breath several feet below, his stiff legs wedged between boulders pinching the trail. He’ll catch her if she slides. Below the back of her gray Lululemon yoga pants smeared with rust-colored handprints, her calves tighten like guitar strings.
“Uh, yeah, I see.” The back of her sunhat rattles from left to right as she shifts her weight onto her right knee, now coiled like a spring against her belly button. She rocks toward the dragon’s tooth and strains.
“I don’t know if I can do it, Daddy.”
“You’re doing great, and we’re almost there. Let me know if you want me to give you a boost.”
She focusses on her right leg, imagining she’s in the gold medal round at the next Olympics. “No, eh, I’ve got it.”
Snorting in a quick deep breath, she lunges forward, pulling, then pushing herself over the dragon’s tooth. She then jumps like a mountain goat beyond the red rocks, pushing back her hat in midair to let her sweaty brow taste the spring breeze. Without turning to see if anyone is following, she wipes her hands on the back of her t-shirt and continues up the trail. Her stomach growls for adventure, and she can already smell juniper on the cliff somewhere above them.
“Claire!”
She turns back, her golden bangs dripping beside her green eyes, hands on her waist, her shoulders raised with a mix of confidence and irritation. He knows that look, he’s seen it in photos of himself when he was twelve. Through a wry smile, she fails to hide her heavy breathing.
“See if you can find the next cairn, then wait there for a sec. I just wanna make sure Mom doesn’t have trouble with these boulders.”
They both know he’s just stalling to catch his breath. She turns and skips out of sight around the next boulder.
Five minutes later they reach the base of Subway Cave, and they join a small crowd of weekend warriors staring up at the car-sized grooves scooped from the auburn cliffs where ancient civilizations once built homes of adobe. The walls rise with ripples of pillowy red limestone, their layers of sediment compressed like giant marshmallows beneath a graham cracker sky. A rugged loop trail to the cliffs above awaits, and it will not be easy. Especially for him. Prozac has not taken the edge off his fear of heights.
Immediately to the right, the courageous are cuing at the cave’s entrance, a towering crevice barely wider than an escalator, below which a slippery sandstone slab ascends at 45 degrees. Past the top, the trail curls back along the wall. Photos on hiking websites have shown him a dusty walking surface perhaps two feet wide. But there are no fuzzy ropes or guardrails. He hesitates.
“I think it might be easier if we follow the other folks up the exit route.”
The wife and daughter shoot chuckling glances at each other, then move ahead of him without taunting. They’ll just have to scramble up the rockslide to the left.
When they finally reach the cliffside cavern, the wheezing father turns to enjoy the view down Boynton Canyon, but notices the steep drop past his shoulder, the plunging rockface smooth like a scoop of mango sorbet. Not ideal for traction beneath well-worn hiking boots.
Bile shoots up his throat, and he bolts to the back of the cave and digs his heels and shoulders into the back wall. It’s deeper than expected, thank god. The wife and daughter turn to hide their snickers. Some things never change.
The wife finds a ledge near him with room for the three of them to sit. She coaxes the scared puppy over while other hikers pass on their way to Sinagua dwellings around the corner.
Perhaps he’ll find the nerve to go see them. But for now, the family faces the opposite curve of the mountain where the trail returns from Subway Cave, its surface clinging to the indentations of the cliff-face, only inches from a straight fall several stories to rocks below. One slip and you’re a goner. He won’t be able to watch them.
“We’ll be back, babe. Don’t worry, I won’t let her go too far. Right, Claire?”
The nervous puppy turns away as they set off.
He takes several breaths and then rises. He didn’t come all the way up here to just wait. There won’t be views like this on the hike back. He digs for courage.
Clawing his fingers into the cave wall, he creeps to the edge, measuring each step like a cartoon hunter stalking a deer. We can do this. It’s not that long of a fall, and we’re still on flat ground. The kid up there must be only six or seven. It can’t be that bad if he can do it.
He gets to within two feet of the edge and releases his knuckles, then looks past the drop to oblivion. A jade river of pine and juniper flows to the other side of the canyon, its waves crashing against the crimson ramparts on the far side still cloaked in the shadows cast by the rising sun. He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath.
Ponderossa pine soothes his fear. The chatter of the other hikers drifts away. He opens his eyes, and he is alone. He scans the horizon, focusing on the hazy monoliths in the distance. He smiles.
Deep within his toes and fingertips, he can feel it. Divinity.
Then a pebble beneath his left foot loses purchase and he is jolted back to reality. His throat tightens as the pebble plunges, his spine jolted by the imagined crack of it shattering on the rocks below. Nice try, it’s time to get the hell back.
He closes the distance to the back of the cave in a single leap, landing seated with legs crossed like a sketch comedian. Surely no one noticed, but why not look composed just in case. Distance offers perspective anyway.
He begins to wonder why his girls aren’t back yet. His imagination wanders to darkness, but he’s too scared to scan for them across the cliffside. Should he call his wife? Is there even reception out here?
No need to go there. They’re safe. She’s a responsible kid. He should appreciate her enthusiasm. She could be sitting back at the AirBnB frying her brain on Instagram. But she’s out here, hiking, just like he loves to. She’s exploring the world by challenging herself. She won’t be a kid forever.
“Daddy, it was so cool!” The daughter waves her hand in front of his eyes to confirm he hasn’t passed out.
“Be glad you didn’t go.” The protective mother looks tested. “I didn’t mind so much at the beginning when there was more room, but when Claire started going out to the edge and people were coming in the other direction, . . .”
“I get the picture.”
She knows to spare him from further details.
“You could not have handled it, Daddy. But it was so cool. I was so freaked out.”
His wife hands him her cell phone to show him photos. Ten snapshots in a row of the alpinist in different poses, first runway model, then duckface, then bright sunshine smile. Several distant shots of her approaching the rim, crouching and bracing against the wall of the cave. Nothing too reckless. But he’s glad he wasn’t there.
Their views were much better than his. Oh well.
Another family attempts unsuccessfully to squeeze into a selfie, and the wife senses an opportunity and offers to take their photo, knowing they’ll reciprocate. He knows the cave behind them won’t make for a good Christmas card, so when it’s their turn, the embarrassed husband disconnects from the wall and creeps out to the edge backward while locking onto his wife’s hand and cutting off all circulation. He manages a sincere smile.
The excited pre-teen turns to resume the adventure. Ruins are just around the corner, maybe even hieroglyphics or paintings of long extinct mammals like the ones they saw at Lascaux.
“Let’s go, Mom. Coming, Daddy?”
“You can tell me all about it when you get back. I’ll enjoy them from right here if it’s okay.”
As his girls slip around the corner, he returns to his seat in the back of the cave, then peers past the other families to the river of trees in the sandstone canyon. A hawk flies by, and he imagines a stone hearth beside him. He can smell the roasting cornmeal. He listens beyond the cliff for foreign tongues of parents who died centuries ago warning their children to be wary of loose rocks.
He closes his eyes once more and he is overcome again by a warm embrace. He knows they are safe. And so is he.
Rob Rogers
Rob Rogers is an award-winning writer and attorney from Winter Garden, Florida. His first book, a memoir titled Finding My Way Home: Fighting Depression Backpacking in Central Florida, won a Florida Authors & Publishers Association (FAPA) President’s Award. Rob’s essays have been published in Still Points Art Quarterly, The Florida Writer, and Wilderness House Literary Review and on FloridaHikes.com. Rob also writes a blog called the Central Florida Backpacking Desk Jockey (backpackingdeskjockey.blog). More about Rob can be found on his website, RobRogersWriter.com.