First off, this isn't about pork.  A HOG is a sporting activity named by combining it's two priniciple components: The H-ike and the j-OG.  This is the perfect exercise for those of us who still like to run a little and pretend we're kids again, but aren't kids anymore and frankly can't run very damn far without walking some.

Back in the olden times, I used to trail run a lot.  Did that all over the U.S., Canada and Europe starting back in the 1980s.  But somewhere in my early fifties, I becames a "gravity" runner: If the trail is downhill (and gravity is my friend), I'm running; if I detect a hint of incline, I'm walking.  Thus was born the prestigious sport of HOGGING.

I'm not real religious about how much jog versus hike I do.  I run when I feel like running and I walk when I want to walk.  That makes the whole process more like fun and not some A-type psycho workout behavior.  I can even stop and smell the creosote anytime I want.  And the older I'm gettin', the more creosote I'm smellin'.

Great HOG trail.  Note bench for collapsing purposes.

Bad HOG trail.  Note sharp tripya rocks.

Oh.  This is where my oldest living friend and attorney, Bob, says I need a disclaimer.

WARNING:  The activities described here are performed by highly conditioned and experienced crazy people and should not be attempted with or without a physician's approval.  The author is not responsible for any death, dismemberment, heat stroke, broken ankles, insect bites or anything at all resulting from you reading this.

So, back in mid-June (this is year-round entertainment), I hit the trail around 6 PM with the thermometer nudging 108 degrees.  No problem.  North Mountain and the little canyons in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve keep me mostly in the shade this time of day.  It's a touch warm, but I used to do this in the middle of the day all summer long, including the day it hit 122.  But after a few unpleasant heat stress incidents, my body and my wife convinced me to wait during summer jaunts until Mr. Bad Sun drops behind the hills.

Anyway, I'm hoggin' along down the trail and here comes Ol' Son running up the trail, sprinting hard.  Now Ol' Son is a pure trail runner; does l-o-n-g distances uphill and cross-country and thinks hoggin' is for wimps and "old" people like me.

So he staggers to a stop, gasps for a while and says, "I wouldn't go down there," indicating the trail behind him with his thump.

"Trouble?" I ask.

"Bees," he says.  "Angry bees."

"You okay?"

"Yep.  Outran 'em again."

"Again?"  I'm starting to detect an especially strong Ol' Son Stupid Behavior Warning.

"Yes sir," he laughs, "I got me a new runnin' game.  I call it Bee Racer."

"Bee Racer?"

"You should try it," he suggests seriously, "Just find a bee hive in an ironwood or up in the rocks somewhere, get real close, heave a stick at 'em, count to three and run like hell.  Most of the hives out here are africanized, so they'll chase ya real good."

"How did you come to devise such a stunningly idiotic idea?"

"Well, my late mile times were starting to lag and I read somewhere that bees can fly about six or seven miles an hour.  I need to hit about eight miles an hour for this next race..."  He trailed off like the rest was obvious.

"Maybe you should call it "Bye Bee Or Die By Bee."

"Yeah, that's cool," he says.  "Can I use it?"

But I had already turned and headed back up the canyon, running.  Behind Ol' Son was a whole bunch of bees who still wanted to play.  And they had a tailwind.

Early April, 2008 - For the last several years, Dad Hall has been reminding me that since 1960, we've been driving back and forth between Phoenix and San Diego without ONCE stopping to see Painted Rock Dam and Painted Rock State Park. I can almost hear your collective screams of disbelief at this egregious travel omission.

Well, Dad's powering through his 85th year and was not to denied, so south we headed. Passing through Gila Bend, I was conforted to see that things haven't changed much. Sure, there's a cool new prison; but the old Dairy Queen and most critically, the iconic Space Age Lodge still anchor a perfect "middle of nowhere" experience.

That's the pile of rocks, right there yonder.

Several miles west on I-8 you take the Painted Rock exit, and head north deeper into "nowhere." Of course, no desert road ever truly heads nowhere and pretty soon you dead end at the Dam (closed to the public, and so exciting visually that my camera simply would not take it's photo.) Backtracking to Painted Rock State Park, you find youself in the middle of a caldera like basin looking at a pile of black rocks.

Marked by ancient punks, space bugs or mystical native Americans?

This is Painted Rock and it appears that for the past 20,000 years, every passing sentient creature with a scatchy stone stopped here to etch some sign or other. Now, my buddy "Texas" (we call him that because he's not from Texas and it annoys the hell out of him), he believes this collection of petroglyphs is further evidence that ancient teenage street (trail?) gangs, probably from the L.A. area, have been defacing the environment and generally degrading society for millenia. It's a theory.

Historic, and still driveable, Gillespie Dam Bridge

Anyway, we were running out of daylight so we passed on a trip to the nearby Oatman Massacre Site, which was okay with me (if you've seen one massacre site, etc). North out of Gila Bend we took Old US 80, the same road that originally carried the Halls to Phoenix from San Diego (or the Paradise Lost Incident, as I occasionally refer to it without much trace of bitterness.) Naturally, along this stretch you pass by a Shrimp Farm. What other business makes more sense in the middle of a blasted-to-hell desert? But, do yourself a favor and walk into the doublewide office and buy some. They're incredible.

    By the way, we saw no current evidence of teen gangs (except the big shiny new prison) during this entire trip.

Cave Creek flows through the Spur Cross Preserve year-round.

In mid-March, before all the flowers burned up, my Belgian neighbor "W" and I headed up into the Spur Cross Preserve north of Phoenix for a bit of riparian solitude and quiet. What we got was Lexuses full of loud mouthed, cell phone equipped Resort Poodles. These horrible life forms inhabit the Scottsdale and Carefree areas during the cooler months, sometimes wandering out of the golf courses and spas into Actual Nature. Clad in the latest and most expensive GoreTex-wrapped, UV-blocking fashions, they spend the winter loudly spreading their enlightened and always negative opinions regarding everything in sight as it compares to the Platonic Form of Cultural and Aesthetic Perfection: New York.

"W," who shares a native Arizonan's distaste for these peculiar creatures, wondered aloud if they were "in season" as a particularly shrill female discoursed at length about some relative's medical conditions as we hiked as fast as we could to escape. A half mile later, we were happily out of ear shot of the yapping pack.

"W" moving quickly uphill to escape chatty Snow Birds above Cave Creek.

All things considered, we had a great hike. No rabid mountain lions were spotted (one was shot a couple of weeks prior a few miles from here after attempting to drag a boy away from his armed family for a quick luncheon) and no Resort Poodles were attacked by venemous "Jump Snakes" dropping from the Palo Verdes (I'm always careful to warn our out-of-town friends about this little known predator - Try it! Really keeps 'em in their cars.)

So, last Friday, this acquaintance, we call him Ol' Son, comes by after his daily trail run in the Phoenix Mountain Preserve and announces that he's had an "epiphany." "I now possess total and complete understanding of the universe," he says.

Since Ol' Son has quite a history of Great Revelations - though usually it takes several whiskeys and/or another unfortunate female-related incident - I know to remain politely curious and deferential during his wisdom spewing sessions. Otherwise, he tends to get all ironic on you, which is much worse than just listening to the New Truth.

"I was running down that canyon looking for the poppy fields you told me about, I had the earbuds in and the MP3 player cranked..."

"Tool?" I guessed. "Of course not, it's still in the low 70s." I forgot. Ol' Son picks his training music based on outside ambient temperature: 60's to the mid-70s is twentieth century American classical composers; he doesn't get to alt-metal until it's 105.

"I was listening to Hovhaness," he sniffed. "Anyway, I spot the poppy field, pull up and wander out into the center of all these gold flowers and just stand there taking it all in; you know, absorbing the sun, light breeze, mystical music and a thousand gently waving poppies. It was a PERFECT MOMENT. I had achieved union with the spirit of the world. I thought: THIS is the true nature of the desert, the Earth, Everything."

Actual photograph of actual revelation-causing  poppy field.

"Is that when you had this epiphany thing?" I asked, hoping we were done.

"No. That's when then the damn buzz started!"

"The buzz?"

"Yeah," says Ol' Son, "I just spent 100 bucks on these earbuds and right in the damn middle of my perfect damn moment, they're buzzing! I was pissed. So, I pull 'em out and get ready to throw the damn defects into a Palo Verde tree when I notice there's still a buzz. A louder buzz, in fact. Comin' from the bush next to my right foot, in fact."

"Diamondback?"

"Huge!"

"A rattlesnake can play hell with serenity," I observed.

"And THAT'S the epiphany!" He's nearly yelling now. "Just when you get it all figured out - everything fitting perfectly into place - that's when the REAL Nature Of Everything sneaks up and tries to kill you!"

Fortunately, at that perfect moment, my cell phone rang. I lied and said it was an urgent business call and successfully escaped further immersion in The Truth... Until he comes back tomorrow.

Feb. 23, 2008 - The secret to achieving full four-by-four fun includes the ability to blythely ignore the possibility that the weatherman might be partially right, and then, when presented with evidence that he was right-plus, proceed anyway.

"It's just a light shower. See, even the wild burros are still out. No problem!"

So it was yesterday, when me, three friends and two jeeps all decided (yes, the vehicles DO have a say) to continue up the "backroad" from Lake Pleasant to Crown King despite the rain-with-light-snow-above-5500 ft. forecast. After all, there was just a gentle mist falling at the bottom and Crown King (elevation 6000 ft.) is only 500 ft. above the predicted snow level, and the rocks weren't too bad last year when we did this trail.

"It's just a little snow. No problem!"

"It won't get any worse than this, right?"

Well, as the gentle mist turned white and fluffy, it became obvious that the National Weather Service might have OVERestimated the elevation at which the snow started and UNDERestimated the amount that would fall. Now, that NEVER happens, right? It also became quickly obvious that a series of nasty winter rains had washed around and undercut the multitude of sizable rocks in the trail and sculpted previously "difficult" sections into lovely dragon's teeth tank traps. And now, the whole gas tank puncturing collection was wonderfully camoflaged under a fresh blanket of slippy, slidey frozen white. Did we turn back? HELL NO! Besides, by this point there wasn't any place to do that anyway.

Now, Ryan and Karen C.'s HIGHLY MODIFIED Jeep rock crawler had no real issues. On the other hand, my STOCK (including tires) '07 4-door JK, was having just the tiniest, ever-so-slight clearance and traction challenges (as in, "Oh, bad-word, what the worse-word did we hit this time!?" Or, "That didn't sound real good, did it?")

My right-side navigator and old hand in rough places, Jeff Lee, after building the fifth or sxth rock-ramp over the impassibles, developed an increasingly distressing (and invariably wrong) post-obstacle analysis: "Well, I think we're through the worst of it now." "Shut UP! You're cursing the hell out of us!" was my increasingly friendly response.

It got worse.

But five hours after negotiating what I had confidently predicted would take "two hours, two and a half, tops!" we emerged onto the rim of the southern Bradshaws unscathed (except for one my sidesteps), undaunted, and full of that feeling of more powerful manhood (except Karen, who was feeling full of more powerful womanhood or maybe just disgust at our vigorous chest pounding, I couldn't tell).

Karen, Ryan and Jeff in Crown King, glad they didn't have to walk up.

A quick visit to Crown King and very late lunch at Mike and Sam's wonderful The Mill and we were headed back down the easy way to I-17 and home, unfortunately aware that we were bound to do something stupid like this again.