Redington Monsoon I

They say that one needs to use imagination to manifest something.
There has been drought. Now, a month, or more of excessive heat. Did I mention drought?
Last year, we arrived back in Tucson into the results of an historically wet monsoon. I remember those days. Our vacation seemed extended, by playing in the flow of the water in Redington Pass.
It’s time for monsoon again. It isn’t a consistent event, anymore. So maybe, it’s time to manifest this year’s fun by revisiting last year’s. Rain dance anyone?
 
2021-07-29 
Casually, we make the twenty miles, or so, to drive across town and the width of the Tucson Valley. The more urban Tucson fades into larger home lots and fewer strip malls. Tanque Verde Road begins its two lane up and down dips through the lush mesquite desert.
Fresh flowers from rains are abundant.  Frequently, natural gardens appear where different species cluster.
The trail down into the canyon is surrounded by a verdant garden. The path has become overgrown. The gardens of flowers reach out to brush against our nude bodies. The color and variety is compelling. I have to stop along the way to admire it all.
The roar of the waters below us, echo up to our ears. Our sense of excitement grows.

We arrive at the sandbar beach where the trail ends.  In a funnel, the water is pouring white over rocks, keeping a swimming pond full, where calm root beer colored water rests. There people play and cool and talk, then the flow speeds up as it falls in torrents over bedrock and off of a cliff.
Empties into the PondToday, I see too many people with clothes on. This jerks my attitude a bit, as I slip into the refreshing cool pond. Negative thought pops into mind, “It’s comin’. Someday, they’ll want to crowd the nudes out.”
After deciding to head upstream, we find our way around and through the currents, as they are finding their way. The flow bounces off of rock, being squeezed and pushing its way through several channels. The water feels warm as it flows so quickly, over us. We wade in and wade out, slowly making our way to favorite hangouts.
 I say slowly because of the care that must be taken. People get injured. I have bloodied a shin more than once.
The current is faster in the center. We search, placing our feet in where we suspect it won’t pull us as hard.  We search for turns, or where there are fewer suds, where foot prints go, or points remembered from past flooding. Sometimes it is just careful trial and error.
Several kinds of slippery hazards surround us. For one, the shoes get wet and slippery. Two, the slippery rocks are not all in the water. These surfaces have been smoothed out for eons. They can be like glass taking feet down slopes.  Adding water makes some more slippery. Three, the soles of shoes gather gritty sand and deposit it on top of the granite surfaces. It can carry a body away with a footstep, like stepping on marbles.
To add to unsure footing, some of these rocks are stable, while the others are not. The water rises and falls, rolling the round river rocks, or shifting the sand, whittling out foundation from under them. Each step must go through a process, testing the sure footing. Weight can jar any one of them loose. It is slow, but here it is solely about the journey, the moment. I love using all of my senses and focus on one thing, when no other thought is needed. Being nude, I am in touch with my whole bodily system, leaving the restriction of cloth behind.
Because the water is deep today, at times, we are often creeping along, feeling for purchase under the water. We find a little piece to latch on to here and there, pulling the body up with hands, or just fingers, or toes with arms and legs following.
The Jacuzzi, a favorite formation to climb into, is a torrent.
I find a spot with sand bar under the coffee colored water.  In the next step I sink. The water is over my head.  I creep along the rock, pulling my body along in the swift current that attempts to rake me off of my fragile handhold. My feet do me no good.  The demanding water drags all around my body. It is all a delight.  
I prop myself underwater against a rock with my feet, straightening with my leg’s power, otherwise my torso will float up, lifted in the dark tea and white foam.
Holding on with fingers only , then an elbow, I turn and urge DF into the water, shouting out “You need a good woo-hoo.”
She comes through the playful liquid, following the underwater trail that I had used to go through these rapids. I hold onto the rock at Jaccuzzi’s entrance, looking up into the waterfalls with the turquoise blue sky beyond.
I am able to pull myself up and step into the bowl, which is empty of sand and rocks, today. My foot sinks deep, the length of the inside of my bare leg. I have to lean and fall into the smooth stone tub with my upper bodyweight.
I stand next to the hammering waterfall. I place my hand into the pressure that gravity and momentum create to have it briskly sweep my limb away from me with its power. In another spot, I can part the waters as they pass, like a fin on a salmon. I play with it, slitting the clear glassy sheet of water.
I shout to DF, who is only just a few feet away. “You’ve got to try this!”
We carefully maneuver and explore, eyes open, and eyes closed, taking it all in. Exploring, the all-encompassing moment gets a new dimension with two bodies sharing the experience together.  
Back out in the warmth of the sun, we have some left over pizza and fresh peaches to lunch on.
We sit and watch a young guy in full beard go around us and then come back, bravely leaping across the flow of the crevasse.
After the jaccuzi the water slows into a pond, which is big enough and slow enough to swim in. There is effervescence as the turmoil of the water spreads out into the ponding. My body completely immersed, I watch bubbles of all sizes, as they come toward my head. They flow to my face and delight my chin and beard with light caress and tickles.
I watch the coming of big bubbles, ones nothing like foam, until they reach my face, exploding. Tiny particles jump at my cheeks and eyes, up my nose.
I smell it. Sharp clean with a trace on minerals washed from travels through the pine mountains high above, miles away.
Debris Travels Miles from the High MountainsGetting out into the warm sun, I walk naked behind rock, a huge boulder that once fell from the nearby cliff. The familiar trees back there, are doing great. Their trunks are stronger than when I last inspected, but they stand not much taller. These are twisted trunks, shaped by life in a flash flood environment.
Upstream after this playground, water washes across a wide rock surface. This may be my favorite spot in the world. I feel the chi at the base of these falls, the effervescence of the mist cools me, bringing me into my body and this moment, here in this place.
The millennia of washing waters has carved out channels in the bedrock.
Because the flow varies so much, there are variations in the sculpturing.
DF climbs in, finding shallows with less current, to a jaccuzzi between two falls. She finds a bathtub.
Further upstream a wider waterfall is very active …

Read further at The Free Range Naturist