coconino
i remember the air, how thin it was, how it was simultaneously crisp and damp. it was october air, the kind i'd always imagined happened in october but i had never experienced. in theory, october is my favorite month of the year. the days are not too short, pumpkins appear on doorsteps, candy is sold in abundance, and the season's aroma of scented pinecones hasn't gotten tedious yet. while its other qualities are enough to give it a podium finish, the sole factor that makes october number one is the air.
the air at our apartment was hot and thick with dust. it shimmered on distant stretches of sidewalk like water as i approached it on my bicycle. on terrace avenue, just after orange but before rural, minuscule fruits littered the sidewalk, baking into leathery stones before they had the notion to ferment. the air would become briefly tart as i rode my bicycle over that fifteen feet of faux-cobbled concrete, a momentary escape before promptly smelling like maricopa county once more.
seven thousand feet above the fruit leather, the air didn't smell like dust, it smelled like earth. it smelled like decaying leaves and moisture and minerals. our shoes sank into the soft ground below us as we stepped out of the car. my partner and i had driven to coconino county in search of leaves to collect. forty five minutes from the nearest gas station and twenty minutes from the highway, we had certainly found them. to characterize this forest as being abundantly full of leaves would be both seemingly unnecessary and an understatement.
there was no abundance at the hotel we stayed in the previous night, and certainly no dampness in that room’s october air. the air that cascaded down from the ceiling vents was the driest i have ever breathed. it was drier than the air at our apartment. humidity is typically measured in percentages, with 0% being absolutely no moisture and 100% being entirely moisture. this scale does not represent a wide enough range to accurately depict the dryness of this hotel room. i could feel the air drawing the moisture from the soft passages of my nose and mouth with each breath i took. i tried covering my face with a blanket to retain what little dampness my breath held, but I still felt it escaping. at around 1:00 am, we ventured out into the night in search of a humidifier.
the manufactured climate of the night before stood in stark contrast to the one that surrounded us as we ventured out onto the hiking trail that morning. the trail was wide enough for a car to pass, with towering trees pushing at its edges. the aspen trees had spared no expense to produce the abundance of leaves we sought, and with the season on the cusp of winter, they had drawn their life back within themselves and given the vividly yellow leaves permission to fall as they wished.
my partner’s favorite color had always been yellow, even before seeing those leaves. my favorite color is blue. the grand canopy of yellow that mingled so high above our heads was only dwarfed by the vastness of blue that encompassed everything beyond. i never knew a sky could be so blue, and in all my life i have never seen that shade of blue again. i never knew how marvelous yellow could be. how could a hue so rich and vibrant only be a byproduct of an annual cycle? how could it just be created as an absence of green? how could a tree discard leaves of such a perfect golden color?
i carried a large paper bag that i intended to collect these fallen leaves in. i had acquired the bag after dinner the night before, when i did not have the stomach to finish the fish and chips i had ordered. i was in the longest day of a cold i had acquired a few days prior, and while i heard from my partner that the fish was delicious, i was too congested to taste it. even though we only had one box of leftovers, the restaurant still insisted that the box be put in a bag. i realized when we returned to the hotel that i had not brought a bag to collect leaves in the next morning. the unnecessary bag was just the right size.
the breeze picked up the freshly-fallen leaves as we continued our assent up the hill, scattering them lightly over the older leaves, crippled by moisture or under previous foot traffic, too heavy to fly again. the trees and leaves stretched out endlessly on all sides of us, staggered in amongst shrubs and trunks of former trees. Some of the trees closest to the path were carved by hikers that came before, professing such deep sentiments as one set of initials hearting another set. sometimes, these initials were accompanied by a year. the more distant the year, the less legible the mark. over decades, the trees slowly reclaim their bodies, scarred by trivial human concepts of love or unity. i cannot imagine what possesses someone to take a knife to the bark of a tree, let alone to do so as a way to memorialize their feelings for someone else. i will never love someone enough to deface a tree.