I’ve always believed that if you could see something, you could get there. In the Southwest, that’s a tricky proposition. That mountain or mesa ahead of you is probably on the other side of countless washes, pouroffs, plunges, cliffs, crags and ravines that you can’t see. The first Spaniards to encounter the Grand Canyon believed they could just get to the other side, and that the big red river toiling down in the bottom was just a creek. They found that to not be true. The land is rougher than it looks, and it already looks rough. But you will get there. It just takes time.

When the pandemic began rising like a wave in the United States, I was teaching a backcountry archaeology program just over the border from Arizona into Utah. Hiking from butte to ridge top, we could see into my home state of Arizona; or across the Four Corners to New Mexico, where my family’s from; or next door to Colorado, where I live now. When the world gets topsy-turvy, you think of such things: where you are, what is familiar around you. We kept an eye on daily airplane...