By Rob Bettaso

Photos by Mike Lopez 

and Anne Groebner

Perhaps you will recognize this experience: you suddenly take a fall (slipping on the ice, tripping on a rock, blundering into a hole, or whatever) and as you hit the ground, your first thoughts aren’t about injury, but instead, about how embarrassed you are going to feel if anyone witnesses your tumble. There you are, down on all fours, and immediately your head swivels around to see who might have observed the event. Eventually, your mind shifts to more important things and you begin to assess where and how badly you may have been hurt.

This happened to me recently but in my case, since I had slammed my right side against the ground, I instantly knocked the wind out of my lungs and was gasping for breath like a beached fish. It took several seconds but once I could draw in some air I was so grateful that I could breathe, I didn’t focus too much on the humiliation. And then, when I had fully regained my composure, I quickly determined that if I hadn’t cracked a rib or two, I had at least seriously bruised them. Ominously, a Tolstoy novella I had read years ago (“The Death of Ivan Ilyich”) crept into my thoughts.

For several days I was in pain but slowly, the pain transitioned to discomfort and before long I was able to take careful, gentle walks along our local trails. Nonetheless, I was also hesitant to become too active and, as such, I was spending more time indoors – both at home, and, at my home away from home: the Larson Library.

As a kid, I spent a lot of time in our school library and eventually, when my mom got her later-in-life college degree in Library Sciences, I also spent some of my after-school hours at the public library where she worked. Back in those days, libraries were focused almost exclusively on books; as the era of videos, CDs, and the internet had yet to be invented. My reading interests had commenced with animal stories (John and Jean Craighead-George were among my favorites); progressed to adventure lore (Jack London was an early hero); and eventually, spread into numerous genres of fiction as well as a wide array of non-fiction.

Now days, because I’ve never had (or particularly want) a smartphone or home internet, I rely on public libraries as the place to do all of my emailing. Not only do I enjoy staying in touch with family, friends, and former co-workers who are scattered all over the world, I also belong to three local community groups (Search and Rescue, the Audubon chapter, and the Nature Center) — which means that I frequently coordinate with folks in these organizations via emails.

Additionally, because friends often send me emails with photos that they have taken during trips we have made, my mind will often wander back to those excursions while I’m using the libraries’ internet connection. Just before I smashed my ribs, I had two memorable experiences with local friends at nearby wildlands. Today, those friends sent me their photos from our outings. I will now relate those two tales.

The first outing was with my long-time pal, Mike, whom I met back in the early 1990s while we were both working as fisheries biologists at the Arizona Game and Fish Department. Mike is not only a very skilled and knowledgeable biologist; he is also an avid outdoor enthusiast and spends a significant amount of time out fishing, hunting, birding, and just generally enjoying the world of Nature.

The other day Mike mentioned that he was going to meet a few of his fishing buds out at Willow Springs Lake so that they could try and catch some “Tiger Trout” (a hybrid of Brook and Brown trouts). Because our Pinetop area lakes had thawed weeks ago, I was surprised when he told me that Willow Springs was still frozen and that the crew would be ice fishing. Mike knew that I wasn’t much of an angler, but he thought I might enjoy getting up over 7,500 feet and cross-country skiing while they spent a few hours fishing. Naturally, I jumped at the chance to go ski some new terrain.

When we got to the parking area (just a pull-out off of Highway 260) I quickly put on my skis and made a brief test run of the snow while Mike and his friends got their gear ready. The anglers had to bring big backpacks as they needed to carry such things as augers for drilling into the ice, poles and fishing tackle, plus the usual things one brings when plans call for spending several hours standing on a frozen lake. Soon, the fishers were ready and, after strapping on their snow-shoes, we all headed away from the pull-out and into the nearby woods. The snow conditions were good and it didn’t take us long to descend to the frozen shores of the lake. I marked my companion’s approximate fishing site on my GPS and left them to drill their ice holes and commence fishing while I was off to ski first along the shores, then back up into the woods, and then eventually along a hiking trail that local skiers had been using during what must have been an exceptional winter’s worth of skiable days.

Everything about the outing was perfect and when we finally reunited, over three hours later, we were all satisfied with our efforts (the crew had caught both Rainbow and Tiger trouts). The drive back to Pinetop was uneventful and by the time I got home, the day’s exertions made for a lazy evening and eight hours of very deep sleep.

Within a few days of the fishing/ski trip, I had an invite from two other friends (Anne and Cathy) who wanted to ski in an area that was in the opposite direction from Willow Springs; namely, the Railroad Grade area just off Highway 260 and about 40 minutes from Pinetop as you head east. If the first ski trip was unique in that it also involved ice-fishing, the trip to the Railroad Grade was also somewhat novel in that we did our skiing at night; under a luminous full moon.

Because the Grade area is in between two chunks of conifer/aspen forests, the sky is open and offers an expansive view of the heavens. The moon was at apogee (which means as far from Earth as it gets) but you wouldn’t have known it based on the intensity of bright light that was shining down upon the winter world. The Grade area is also fairly high in elevation, over 9,100 feet, and the amount of contiguous acres of snowfall in that part of the Arizona is often more extensive than it is anywhere else in the state.

The moon was already well above the horizon when we clicked into our skis, and the terrain was so well lit that we knew that we would have no trouble with navigation or with any surprise hazards. In fact, we turned off our headlamps as soon as we past the initial rocky area at the start of the trail. Within minutes, we had skied away from the crater holes made by walkers who had been using the trail to climb some nearby slopes where daytime sledding is popular. And a while after that we also left behind the tracks of the snow-mobiles, so that we could ski across snow that was smooth and without spore of any kind. Our nocturnal world took on an almost mystical quality when, off in the distance, along the edge of the woods, we could hear a Great-horned Owl calling, perhaps wooing an unseen mate. Oddly, that owl (or perhaps two owls) wound up flying parallel to our route, somewhere out of sight yet within earshot for most of the two hours we skied near the Grade but down upon a vast plain of smooth but icy snow.

Usually when I ski with others we ski in a single file line. But that evening, perhaps because we all craved an unimpeded view of the snow field out ahead of us, we skied side by side; but, with a significant distance between each of us, so that we each felt that we had the illuminated snowscape to ourselves. The snow was crusty and we covered the terrain surprisingly quickly. Before we knew it, we had made it to the Rez boundary fence line and so we turned around and made the two mile jaunt back to our vehicles.

My dominant memory of that excursion was not only the bright moon and the shadows it cast, but also the curious lighting that was created by moon-glow reflecting off of brittle snow -- because it made for an eerie bluish light in all directions. When the three of us returned to the parking lot, we were all hopped up on adrenaline but also uncharacteristically taciturn. I think we were all afraid of talking too much, as we didn’t want to break the spell that we had been under by being out and moving through such a strange but beautiful realm.



I guess I was the one who finally broke the mood when I started talking about how hungry I was; and that got us wondering if there was someplace back in town that might still be open when we returned, so that we could enjoy a fancy dessert. I had tiramisu in mind and was disappointed when we pulled into Pinetop and saw that the local restaurants had already flipped their signs to the side that said: “Sorry, Closed.” Well, nothing could put a damper on the fun we had had skiing that night, and besides, I knew I had a Milky Way bar waiting for me when I got home.