I have a dream. It's a climbing thing, mostly

Mount Lemmon, Arizona. MLK Day, 2020

I have a dream. Yeah, this story is partly about Martin Luther King but it isn’t only about him. I went on a climbing trip on MLK Day. Many years I go skiing but this year I was in Arizona.

The Battle of Picacho Peak was a Civil War battle that occurred in what is now the state of Arizona and it was more of a skirmish. Thirteen US soldiers met up with 10 Confederate soldiers and three people got killed. Afterward an American army went to Tucson to find that the Confederates had already left for Texas. As it turns out, territorial Arizonans didn’t much care what side of the Civil War they were on. Slavery didn't matter to them.  They cared which side sent troops to fight the Apaches.  Some 150 years ago Cochise felt like a real threat to white supremacy so they slaughtered Chiricahua Apaches. Now there’s a plaque at a rest stop on I-10 commemorating the battle and there is a mountain in southern Arizona named after Cochise. The plaque doesn’t mention slavery or Native American genocide. I happened to be at Picacho Peak about sunrise on Martin Luther King Day. A few yards away from the Civil War plaque there was a sign warning people that dangerous snakes and lizards inhabit the area. Some things don’t change. I got back in my rental car and continued toward Tucson and finally Mount Lemmon, the tallest peak in the Santa Catalina Mountains.

Alex on a trad route.

I was in Arizona because I have family there and I was able snag some cheap plane tickets. I also met up with a friend who is living in Tucson and we went climbing up Mount Lemmon. I have spent years in Arizona and mostly ignored Mount Lemmon. It’s a great climbing destination. There is a ton of exposed granite with very little loose rock. The highway leaves Tucson at about 2,500 feet above sea level and climbs to the 9,159-foot summit. Summer and winter there is always a place with the right temperature for climbing somewhere along the road. There was snow on the summit this January. We drove up to about 6,000 feet and found some sport routes. Climbing on Mount Lemmon is also great because of Eric Fazio Rhicard and Sara Plummer Lemmon.

Mount Lemmon, as the spelling might indicate, is not named after citrus but after a feminist pioneer Sara Plummer Lemmon. In 1871 Ms. Lemmon traveled solo through Panama and continued up the Pacific Coast. This was just nine years after the Battle of Picacho Peak and nine years after  Cochise and the Chiricahua Apaches fought off the Confederate army at what is now called Cochise Stronghold. Cochise's victory was short lived. 

Sara Plummer Lemmon was a botanist in a time when women weren’t usually allowed in the halls of science.  Sara cataloged the plants of Santa Catalina Mountains. She eventually married John Lemmon but the mountain is named after her.

Several decades back, Eric Fazio Rhicard got a good deal on a thousand climbing bolts. For those of you unfamiliar with climbing, bolts are sometimes put in rock so you don’t fall to your death. Eric thought his bolt purchase would last his whole life but once he started looking at all the options on Mount Lemmon he quickly ran out of bolts. He obtained more bolts. Eric and the rest of the Tucson climbing community have been careful to not place bolts on routes that could climbed as trad. Trad routes are climbs where you protect yourself from falling with cams and nuts placed in cracks. Most of the bolted routes are close to the road on routes that don’t have cracks.  There are great trad routes on Mount Lemmon.  Other people helped Eric develop the mountain of course but it’s fair to credit Eric Fazio Rhicard with elevating climbing in Tucson. He also had a goal to climb 60, 5.12 routes during his sixtieth year and surpassed his goal and climbed 63 routes.  If I ever meet him, I am going to buy him a beverage for sure.

I got to Alex’s house in Tucson a little after 9AM and we headed up the mountain. We started the day at Windy Gap. There’s a parking area there and a magnificent view of the desert headed to the west. Parking is free and so is entrance to the National Forest. The weather was about perfect but clearly it had been colder. There were remnants of snow in shady areas. The place was a little busy with folks but not too crowded, especially since it was a holiday. I was impressed with the type of routes because climbing felt more three dimensional than I am accustomed. I spend a lot time in the gym.

Driving back to my sister’s house in Gilbert, I decided to listen to MLK’s speech on my phone. It was only then that I remembered the people on Mount Lemmon were almost exclusively white, myself included. I might not have noticed everybody we met on the mountain was white if it weren’t Martin Luther King Day and I had not read the plaque about the Civil War. The Civil War was about slavery and the plaque didn’t say squat about that. I have a dream that we remember what the Civil War was about. I have a dream the we don’t forget that Robert E. Lee wasn’t a hero.  I have a dream that we recall that Cochise was a hero, even though the Chiricahua Apaches eventually lost. After the Civil War the US Army returned in larger numbers.

Photo Credit, Alex Hughes

 Tucson is an ethnically diverse city. It has an incredible culinary tradition as a result. Tucson also has the benefit that the Santa Catalina Mountains sit just east of town. The mountain range is part of the Coronado National Forest. Mount Lemmon is also great because somebody had to foresight to designate the land as National Forest. The Catalinas are a “Sky Island,” which is an ecosystem separated from other montane environments by a ‘sea of desert.” The Catalinas are the north end of a chain of sky islands that stretches into Mexico. Rare ocelots, jaguars, and coatis live in the sky islands of southern Arizona and these species survive only through transport corridors to Mexico. Endemic species of plants and animals live up there and they are distinct because they have not had contact with species from other sky islands for thousands of years. It’s an evolutionary experiment in action where species survival depends upon subpopulation connectedness. At the same time some new species were formed by years of spatial separation. Darwin would love the American West. 

So I have a dream. Everybody should have a dream, not only Martin Luther King. I have a dream that we don’t sell it off. I have a dream that we don’t let public lands get polluted or turned into a commodity only available to the wealthy. I have a dream that we don’t kill off endangered ocelots, jaguars, and coatis with a racially motivated wall on the Mexican border.  I have a dream that we don’t treat any ethnic group like they are subhuman. I have a dream that we actualize the phrase in the Declaration of Independence that states that all men and women are created equal and entitled to certain inalienable rights. I have a dream that everyone regardless of ethnic background or economic status will feel equally welcome on public land. I don’t think I am in a position to know if everyone feels welcome.

I am glad that I can climb and hike and ski etc. on public land.  Everybody should have that opportunity, now and in future generations. Public land really is a part of our freedom. If we lose access to public land we lose part of our ability to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” Freedom becomes the choice of consumer products or a choice of television shows.  We can’t take public land for granted and we can’t let corporations gain more access to it.

Cochise (photo from AccessGeneology)