Walking Delano Drive: 'Edge Of The World'

One Step At A Time

Beyond this world are countless dimensions that stretch on forever. - Rama

Thoreau may have been the literary world’s poster boy for walking. He had this passion for rambling through the woods. The hippie of literature, he thought everyone should walk around ponds all day.

But we did better.

In Casa Grande, we walked to the 'edge of the world.'

It was an easy mid-morning walk for me and the girls. Delano Drive where our home was located looped around the Rancho Grande neighborhood. 

It was quiet, except for the distant barking of dogs. The sky was light and blue above, marred by only a thin line of half-hearted clouds over the distant mountains.

Our House On Delano Drive. Casa Grande, AZ. Google Maps

For miles and miles, the Arizona desert, dotted by tall, columnar saguaros and spiny ocotillo, was otherwise flat and clear. 

So much earth. 

So much sky. 

Around midpoint on the loop, the road steepened and the ground it traversed narrowed enormously. Suddenly in front of us, there was nothing but sky and a ledge that carved down many hundreds of feet deep.

Cautiously, we peered below. The trees were so dense we couldn't tell where one began and the other ended.

It seemed to be all one tree with a thousand trunks and a billion branches and infinite roots.

The scenery appeared almost out of focus. A light mist that had lingered blurred everything else making the ravine vanish to a blank, gray haze.

We stood side by side on the narrow patch of grass, watching as the morning sun brightened. 

I didn't know it then - that 'we lived on the edge of the world,' until First Daughter said something about it years after.

It took the eyes of a four-year-old for me to realize that, yes, we did.

It was a time in our life when it seemed like the roof had been lifted and we could see the dawning of a vast and infinite world.  

And we were this much closer to the heavens.