Page 15 of Anywhere with You
We reached Gila National Forest late that afternoon.
“ Hee-la ,” said Cara. “Not Gee-la .”
“Picky, picky, Coral.”
“Nice try, Hiney, but I’m pretty sure I can win this game.”
“I surrender,” I said, laughing.
The drive through the forest was wonderful, especially after hours of desert with only the suggestion of mountains in the distance.
Mature pine trees were dense walls on each side of the road.
Neither Cara nor I spoke. We soaked in the deep green beauty.
A wide river flowed through a break in the trees.
I wanted to stop, but there was no shoulder to speak of, and anyway, we were almost to the visitors’ center.
When we finally parked, Cara got out of the car and stretched, moaning. “Cars suck.”
“If we’d flown, we would’ve been there two fucking days ago.”
“ Nooo ,” Cara said. “Don’t say that.”
“But,” I said placatingly, “we would’ve missed all those amazing alien facts.”
“We definitely should’ve flown.”
We took a couple bottles of water, reusable bottles that Cara refilled at the hotel because she’d said that people who didn’t care about the environment were basically shitting in their own living rooms. Not an image I’ll ever be able to get out of my head.
Cara changed into her fancy hiking shoes. I wore my sneakers.
It was only about a half mile from the parking lot to the cliff dwellings, through well-marked trails edged in wildflowers and boulders.
I was sore enough from being in the car that the walk felt nice until it started to take us straight uphill. Before long, I was just leaning forward and hoping my feet would continue to prevent me falling on my face.
Cara walked behind me, becoming winded as she tried to explain the history of the site.
“The Mogollon people settled here about seven hundred”—pause for breath—“years ago, but eventually moved on. No one knows”—gasping for air—“why.”
“You don’t…have to be my tour guide,” I managed.
“What? And waste…all those hours of research? That…would be silly.”
“Fine. But wait…until you’ve caught…your breath.”
“Is it the elev…elevation, or are we…really that out of shape?”
We didn’t say much else. At one point, I heard Cara mutter, “Better be worth it,” and I gave a gasping half laugh.
We got to the sign at the top and collapsed onto a bench. “I have to start exercising more,” Cara said, then chugged her water bottle.
“Yeah. Right.” I agreed with her, but it came out sarcastic. Really, if I hadn’t started an exercise routine by my age, was it likely to happen? No. I’d made my peace with it.
Cara and I sat, looking around while we recovered.
I pointed at the metal railing, spray-painted yellow, along the stone stairs.
“The Mogollon people were clearly safety conscious.”
Cara poured the last drop of her water bottle on my head. It felt wonderful.
When we finally made it back onto our feet, I couldn’t believe what I saw. The houses looked like someone could’ve been living in there a few decades ago, not a few centuries. The stone walls were built into the cave with wooden crossbars and openings for windows.
“Forty-six rooms making up five dwellings, each of them—hmm.” Cara peered at the sign. “Yes, each of them much bigger than my apartment.”
“Are they serious? Can we just go inside?” I asked, staring at a ladder that led up into another set of rooms.
“They’ve been here seven hundred years. I imagine they’ll survive us.”
We climbed ladders, walked up stairs, and stood on smooth dirt floors, marveling at this place where the people who came before us had worked and loved and made music and lived their lives.
“Is it weird that I kind of miss them?” I whispered, trying to decipher the remains of a painted mural.
“I was just thinking the same thing,” Cara said softly, coming to stand beside me. The back of her hand brushed mine. “I want to meet them and hear about…everything.”
All of sudden, her hand was in mine. I didn’t know which one of us had done it. Maybe both.
I didn’t want to think about what it meant, but I also didn’t want to move and mess it up. I looked at that mystery of a mural and reveled in the feeling of her soft fingers and the brush of her warm palm against mine.
How long had it been since I touched another person? Not my parents’ quick hugs or slapping a paperback into Doug’s hands, but something else, or at least, the prelude to something else.
Cara was different from the person I thought I knew. She was charming, hilarious, and fun. I was suddenly deeply grateful that she had decided we needed… deserved …to take this trip.
This trip away from our worries, from our stresses, from the catastrophe of our marriages.
I let my fingers slip out of her hand as I stepped away.
To Cara’s credit, she didn’t make an issue of it. We walked through the cliff dwellings twice, pointing out new facets of the homes, asking each other questions that neither of us had the answer to.
Eventually, Cara stopped and pulled out her phone. “Step behind the window,” she said.
I walked around and looked through the opening at Cara’s face behind her phone. She looked calm and happy.
I smiled and waved at the camera.