A while back I was visited by one of my life-long best friends. We hadn’t seen each other in quite a few years and it was nice to get back together. He and his wife and I and mine, went out to dinner then back to the house, where we talked the night away.
Dan and I were best friends from our sophomore years in high school in Tucson, Arizona. He and I roomed together for a semester or two at college. When he married, I was the Best Man at his wedding and he was the same at mine. Since then we have gone our separate ways, but have tried to cross paths now and then. In recent years we have sort of kept up with each other through online social media, but haven’t done a very good job of it. It was nice to see him and his wife again. What a joy it was to reminisce together over old times.
What a surprise it was to learn, during this visit, that his wife is the sister of one of my friends at church here in Salem, Utah! What a small world this is!
That got me to thinking about the many times I have come across people who know people I know, or are related to me in some way, even in places far from home…or anywhere I have ever called home.
For instance, in 2015, as my father and I were preparing to embark on a cross-country (Mexico to Canada) horse pack trip we had dreamed and talked of for years, I advertised on my website, westerntrailrider.com, that anybody who wanted to join us for any portion of our trip was welcome to do so. I received one single response. That was from a fellow in Safford, Arizona, who said he’d like to join us for a few days as we passed through southeastern Arizona.
We began to communicate via email about routes and where we might meet up, stage feed, and other issues. As it turned out, he was an officer of the U.S. Border Patrol, who operated in southeastern Arizona as part of the USBP mounted patrol. He was intimately familiar with the trails through and around the Chiricahua Mountains, which we planned to traverse. This officer, Joshua, was able to recommend much better routes through the mountains than I had selected from my out-dated maps.
The week before our start date, Dad and I headed down to Safford to meet Joshua and make final plans for the trip. When we got there he introduced us to Al, who volunteered to come along as well. We were glad to have him. Later on in the trip, Al proved to be our salvation, as we ran into an emergency he was able to help us through.
Josh and Al were able to successfully guide us through the Chiricahuas, keeping us off the routes normally traveled by drug traffickers and other “undocumented immigrants”. Joshua was also instrumental in helping me communicate with other USBP officials along the route, who helped us obtain permission for travel across several sections of private property and keep us out of trouble along the US/Mexico border.
Then, during 2016, as Dad and I prepared to continue our horse pack trip into northern Arizona, we invited Josh to come along with us again. He wanted to, but couldn’t, due to other commitments. During those communications, my younger sister, Crystal, noticed his last name. Using social media, Crystal was able to find that she had several common acquaintances with Joshua. On further searching, it turned out Joshua has a younger sister who is married to the younger brother of Crystal’s husband.
How about that! All this time Joshua and I were related (well, sort of) and neither of us knew!
While on the horse pack trip in 2015, a few days after we said good bye to Josh and Al, Dad and I were coming up out of a creek bed wondering which direction we should go at a fork in the trail. We happened to meet a hiker coming the other direction. We stopped and said hello and talked for a few minutes, when I suddenly recognized him as a man with whom I had communicated with by email nearly two years earlier! He is a long-distance hiker and was the designer of the trail known as the Grand Enchantment Trail through southeastern Arizona and western New Mexico. I had posted some questions on a forum in about 2013 about trails through southern Arizona, as I planned our big horse pack trip and this fellow responded and gave me very good advice about routes we might consider. We ended up following some of the routes he suggested. What a surprise when we met him on the trail there in southeastern Arizona, right where we needed him to be. Once again, he provided just the advice we needed and we headed happily on our way. As it turned out later, had we not found him and gotten directions from him at that moment, we would have ended up several miles further along coming up against a locked gate with no way around it.
Then, there was the time I was sitting in the dentist’s chair in Salem, Utah, where Linda and I had resided only about a year and a half. The fact is, Linda and I had never lived in Utah before, except for a few short months during our college years. We moved to Salem, Utah in December 2014 to be closer to our children and grandkids, in our retirement years.
So, here I was, sitting in the dentist’s chair talking to the hygienist as she began cleaning my teeth and preparing me for the dentist. As we talked, I mentioned my horses and the big horse pack trip my dad and I were attempting. She mentioned that for a short period she had lived in Tucson, Arizona, just prior to her college experience. Curiously, she was from Pennsylvania, Pittsburgh area, and was familiar with the area where Linda and I had lived for a short time during 2007-08. I asked her about Tucson, mentioning that I had lived there during my high school years.
She said her family had lived on the northeast side of Tucson. I said I had as well. I mentioned my high school, Sabino, and she said her younger brother had attended there, but she had not, because it was a new school and had no senior class yet. Surprised, I said there was no senior class when I started there and that I graduated as part of Sabino’s second graduating class. I asked where she had lived. She could not recall the address, but remembered the names of some nearby roads. I knew all the roads she mentioned. She said all the homes in the area were on about five-acre lots and many people had horses. I told her our house was on five acres and we had a small barn with horse stalls and kept some horses ourselves.
When I tried to recall the name of the road we lived on and our house number, I found I just couldn’t bring them to mind. She recalled that the name of the road was in Spanish and was “Colina” or something like that. That name turned the switch in my head and I remembered our address, 2901 Avenida de la Colina! When I said the address, her eyes opened wide in surprise.
As it turned out, my parents had purchased our home from her parents. She had just gone off back to Pennsylvania to college, her younger brother had transferred to another school, and her family had decided to down-size and move into town.
Coincidentally, her family owned two dogs at the time, a small dog and a large Black Laborador. They could only keep one dog at the townhouse, so they were looking for a home for the Lab. When we bought the house, I talked my parents into letting me keep the dog. So, not only did my family buy her family’s home, but her dog had become my dog, all those long years ago in 1975.
That dog, whose name I changed from Prince to Tar, became one of my most cherished companions and friends.
What a small world this is.
