09
Oct
After nearly a month of recreational eating, I thought it would be good to get a little exercise. Steve and I spent a couple of years hiking dry, volcanic trails while we were in Peace Corps in Cape Verde, so we decided to tackle something on the edges of the Valley.
North Mountain isn’t exactly pretty, with its crown of antennae, nor is it an ambitious hike, but it was nearby, a good workout, and gave us some spectacular views of a vast, flat valley broken up along the horizon by a smattering of dramatic peaks and distant, sleepy ranges.
As an article on The Arizona Republic’s website says, the “summit” of the mountain is actually fenced off. There are more antennae on top of this mountain—towers, cones, huge discs and boxes—than you can imagine. And you can’t truly summit because of them.
As Steve said, “I wish we could see the view from up there.” Amen. I also got a bit of a headache once we were standing as close to the top as we could get, surrounded by TV, radio, cell phone, and God knows how many other forms of signals. But I was also probably a bit dehydrated.
