The day began well before the brutal sun showed up.

We should have been out the night before. Failing that, we should have been gone before this sun. But things do happen, and things this time were two failed valve stems out of the four that her house rests upon. The fifth wheel of course rests on a pickup bed. We don’t own a pickup bed, so it belongs to the Navajos, and we contracted them again.

Once those Things were dealt with, we blasted off at last.

The first couple hundred miles nothing of significance changes, though the population slowly gets denser. The heat remains constant. The bleakness varies, but only here and there.

Heading true north at last, you cross the Highway named Carefree, and your spirits start to have a reason to lift, with the elevation.

The first part is hard, a narrow canyon that brings out the natural stupidity of the driving class. There are always wrecks and slowdowns. I sat ten hours in the middle of the pavement one night when I could barely afford to wait. But today the gods were more or less kind. Poking out of the canyon’s head, you know you’re in a brave new world, crossing four thousand feet and then five.

It doesn’t get super pretty all at once, but the air is home air even so.

I’ve driven this road a thousand times and I feel like I’ve told it about that many too.

Hill begets mountain begets range.

At the literal end of the road there is a pinnacle peak.

We roll around the side of it still climbing into the deep pines, the right ponderosas in groves, and there we slow, and stop.

Here we will lose the fifth wheel and sit again on four.

We don’t know how long it will be so.

I don’t know how many days of the week the ponderosa will cover me personally as I sleep. Or the snow.

But there’s a basecamp now, for the ascent regardless of how high it goes, or in which direction.