9.04 Facing the Bear, one of Sedona’s toughest—Bear Mountain

Once upon a time, we decided to pay a visit to one of our children at college—sometimes we live dangerously. As we mentioned in our last narrative, because we are studying the art of tact, admittedly rather late in life, the child shall remain nameless. We will not provide a hint, clue or even a wink. After the visit, we were quite shocked. We wondered what the unnamed child had learned in eighteen years living at home observing his parents cleaning the house. Why do we mention this somewhat irrelevant piece of information you might ask?

A magnificent position, past the half-way mark.

Watch the cactus...oops...too late

Jenni wondering about sub-peak 2 of 6—no tunnel spotted

On our hike today, we met three sets of people, all interesting and charming. In fact at one stage, we wondered with all the talking, swopping stories and ideas why we bothered to hike—we should have met at the pool. By the way, Bear Mountain is a superb hike that shows the best of Sedona while giving the body a great workout and apparently, the tongue, too.

We’ll try get to the point of this story; clearly, we seem to be struggling a bit although not as much as we did in hiking five sub-peaks before reaching the summit. Well, it goes something like this. Nature abhors a vacuum, we learned in science. When we left our dear child’s untidy apartment, he confirmed the principle. You see, that child too abhors a ‘vacuum’. We were in a very forgiving mood. We equated our child’s behavior with nature. We both felt much better after that.

Stopping for some air on the way up

The real catalyst for this story is the women we met on the trail today, Robbie (not our son) together with Gwen and Anne. We confirmed again the principle that a Jewish woman abhors the idea of an unmarried child. Perhaps that’s a characteristic making women special. We thought we would never see it. Our dear editor and Robbie spent time on the way down working on their matchmaking skills while we sweated—fortunately, our sons were not a target. Fellows, you owe your dad ‘big time’.

Enjoying the varied terrain immensely—notice color change, too

Reaching the summit

Earlier, we spent time discussing the missionary position. We always find this type of discussion most stimulating. It began when we crossed paths with Todd as we climbed. When he heard our greeting, he asked if we were South Africans. We explained our situation. He, too is from the beloved country, he told us. You sound American, we replied rather surprised. ‘Yes, I am,’ he answered but I do missionary work in South Africa. In fact, he made it clear he could not wait to return to his new home of three years. Certainly made us think a bit.

Some of Sedona's icons viewed from Bear Mountain (click to enlarge)

Arguably, laziest hiker west of the Mississippi...east, too—at peak

This leads to another quick story from Hawaii. We noticed a young man at the hotel wearing a Springbok (SA) rugby jersey. This is not usual, especially on the islands. We approached and questioned him—in a friendly way, of course. He had just returned from South Africa completing missionary work in the Cape. Our friend, Sean Bradford, too gave of his time helping the underprivileged in other parts of the world. We salute you, fellows.

The Bear Mountain hike is a personal favorite. It contains multi-features and exposure to the semi-desert, views of outstanding rock icons, multi-peaks, canyons, valleys—it has it all and is strenuous, too. Rated as a 2,000 feet elevation gain but we would argue with that. It feels like the guy who performed the calibration had feet larger than 12 inches.

Cheers,

Jenni and Jeffrey

Matchmaker, matchmaker make me a match (bear with me)